[Sign Petition] International Solidarity Statement in Support of Jaitapur Anti-Nuclear Protest
This month, on 27th August 2018, thousands of farmers and fisherfolk in the Konkan region on the western coast of India will observe a day of intense protest. By resorting to ‘voluntary arrest’ (jail bharo), a form of peaceful protest adopted during the Indian freedom movement by eminent leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, they will express their collective disapproval of the world’s largest nuclear power project which is proposed in Jaitapur.

For over a decade, people in the region have been protesting against the Indian authorities and global nuclear corporations. They have voiced their opposition to the French company Areva (now Orano), EDF as well as Mitsubishi, which have stakes in this project.

The Jaitapur project threatens to destroy the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people – farmers, fisherfolk, women and children – in the Konkan region of Maharashtra state. The project was approved in India without any cost-benefit analysis or a comprehensive analysis of safety, social impacts, and cost of the electricity from the proposed nuclear plant.

The Indian government, including senior officials of its nuclear establishment, have maintained that the project must be set up in order to accommodate the interests of foreign suppliers. Considering the Jaitapur nuclear project as a fait accompli, the Indian government has brutally suppressed the massive and peaceful protests by the local communities, killing and arresting protesters in the past. It has also turned the democratically mandated procedures for environmental clearance and land acquisition into a farce – invariably, people’s consent is taken under police duress during public hearings.

It is shocking that the obsession with the Jaitapur project has remained unchanged despite the global decline of the nuclear industry in recent years, serious safety concerns raised by the French nuclear regulator, as well as the massive cost and time overruns of EPR projects in Finland, China and France.

The safety concerns regarding EPRs and Jaitapur, including the presence of an earthquake faultline just beneath the proposed site, have been raised by renowned independent experts and monitoring bodies. These concerns are exacerbated by the complete lack of transparency and accountability of the Indian nuclear establishment. The absence of an independent regulator, and the resort to ‘national security’ as a justification for denying the public basic information about radiation safety and site selection, do not inspire trust among the common citizenry.

We stand in complete solidarity with the struggling people of Jaitapur who have faced brutal police repression during this movement, the killing of some youth activists, including Tabrez Soyekar, and repeated incarceration and intimidation.

We strongly urge the Indian government to learn from Fukushima and to stop imposing dangerous nuclear plants on its population. We express anguish at the callous profit-mongering by the French nuclear industry which is pushing for the Jaitapur project despite the EPR’s financial failures and undeniable safety risks.