Protecting Simlipal indigenous people

Core are village in Simlipal

The news on eviction of core area villagers from Simlipal Sanctuary upset me a lot the other day http://cmsenvis.cmsindia.org/newsletter/enews/NewsDetails.asp?id=65528, my heart aches thinking of, how can all that efforts to bring justice to them go waste?? The work in chilling winter and heavy rain, harassment from government officers, resistance from the indigenous people (who tend not to trust us initially) was constantly hitting my mind. After spending months together with them we gain the villagers trust to empower them for their rights. We could also convince the government officers to think of coexistence than relocating these tribal communities who have been part and parcel of the forest.

The work we did was not restricted in Odisha; we used our pen to let the whole world know about the issue. The message indeed reaches the Survival International, an international organization working on protecting the rights of indigenous people around the world. The issue did made them to visit Simlipal to raise the campaign against the issue. I am glad they have started a campaign now under the banner 'Park Needs People' http://www.survivalinternational.org/parks . It further gives me utter satisfaction to receive email from them reacting upon the issue of evicting people from the sanctuary and brining further campaign to refrain the eviction in other sanctuary.

Dear Madhulika, 

Thanks for writing. It is very good to hear from you. I hope all is well with you. 

We are closely following the situation in Similipal still and are very concerned about what is going on there. As you say, there is a claim that consent has been given by the villagers of Jamunagarh, but we have strong interviews to the contrary: some people felt harassed and pressured and did not understand the document that they were told to sign. We will endeavour to make it known to the authorities that this is NOT consent. We are lobbying the MOEF and the Human Rights Commission. 

On your advice, Madhulika, we’ve been working with Sankar Pani, who seems very committed and capable and maintain strong contact with BijayLal ji - thank you so much for putting us in touch with him. 

We have launched our ‘Parks Need Peoples’ campaign and will be launching a further focus on evictions from Similipal and Kanha tiger reserves shortly. 

I’d welcome any thoughts you have on how we can best stop this wave of further evictions from tiger reserves nationally, which seem mostly to be illegal as per the Wildlife Protection Act and the FRA. 

I would be very interested connect up with you on this issue, Sudhansu. Please get in touch and let us know about your work on this. 

I’m copying my college Sophie Grig, who is working closely on this issue. 

With best wishes to you 

Jo, Survival International.

 I will be continuing to be the support system on whatever capacity to help my fellow tribals.