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Silent Emergency in Koodankulam
For the villagers around the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu who are agitating against its commissioning, it is as if they are facing a second Emergency, albeit a silent one. False cases have been slapped against them, their leaders have been charged with sedition and waging war against the government, prohibitory orders have been issued within a seven-km radius of the plant and the government continues to spread stories that the struggle is being funded by foreign sources.
On 26 June, S P Udayakumar and M Pushparayan activists protesting against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) completed 100 days of their “self-exile” in the small coastal village of Idinthakarai in the Tirunelveli district of southern Tamil Nadu even as the 37th anniversary of the Emergency passed by. They stay in the “quarter-km-radius prison” as Udayakumar, coordinator of the People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) calls it. Thousands of people keep vigil around the house through the nights should the police come to arrest the duo.
It is as if the eerie silence of the dark days after 26 June 1975 still resounds in every corner as a “Silent Emergency” is being surreptitiously declared with the accompanying human rights violations. Prohibitory orders have been imposed from 19 March within a five-km radius of the KNPP. These orders were later extended to seven km and until August with a posse of armed policemen guarding the town and restricting the people’s movements.
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