Power Engineers join hand with NAPM and NBA to support anti-nuclear movement

[हिंदी] The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF)'s general secretary Shri Shailendra Dubey said that AIPEF will join hands with National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) and Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and mobilize over 12 lakh AIPEF members across the country to demand open and unrestricted dialogue on energy issue and push the mandate of no carbon and no nuclear energy in India. 

The below statement was issued today (10 March 2012) in a press conference held in Lucknow:

We condemn the undemocratic manner in which nuclear energy is forced upon us

We strongly condemn the undemocratic manner in which nuclear energy is forced upon us. Not only Indian government has used a strong hand to snub the people’s movement against nuclear energy (PMANE) in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu, but also is trying to intimidate and stifle resistance by misleading allegations of a ‘foreign hand’. Dr Udaykumar who leads PMANE has declared his personal assets and he has no FCRA account to receive foreign money. Whereas it is clear that Indian government is working hands-in-glove with bigger ‘foreign hands’ of USA, Russia and other countries in its joint military operations and expanding nuclear programme.

It is the people in Europe and America that have forced their governments by coming out in large numbers to abandon nuclear energy. But Indian government is trying to stifle such people’s initiatives to have their say. Sadly government is so hell-bent to kill people’s voices against nuclear energy that it has earlier deported a German national who participated in anti-nuclear energy protests in Kudankulam, and on Thursday, 8 March 2012, India had revoked the business visa which was earlier granted on 15 February 2012 to a Fukushima survivor from Japan, Maya Kobayashi, to spend a week in India campaigning against nuclear power plants. Maya was invited by ‘Greenpeace’.

The cancellation of Maya’s visa is a clear indicator on the extent to which Indian government is determined to not let people who have faced dangers of nuclear radiation share their experiences in open meetings.

Recent nuclear emergency in Japan leaves no doubt that this world needs to renounce nuclear power for military and civil/ energy purposes, as soon as possible, to put an end to any further catastrophe in the name of 'energy', 'security' or 'technology'. Nuclear power is clearly the most dangerous options for civil or military use. Countries that have been using nuclear power such as Germany have resolved to abandon nuclear energy by 2022. Japan, Italy, USA, China, and many such nations who were earlier pursuing nuclear energy option have now abandoned it.

We believe that India should adopt the futuristic energy policy like Japan and the European Union (EU) relying on renewable sources of energy which are non-polluting. Like EU and Japan, India too should aim for a low-carbon energy production system. India’s future energy policy should be low carbon and no nuclear.

We appeal to the Indian government to support dialogue on nuclear energy in a democratic way.

Shailendra Dubey (General Secretary, All India Power Engineers Federation), Alok Agarwal (Narmada Bachao Andolan- NBA), Dr Sandeep Pandey (National Alliance of People’s Movements - NAPM), Arundhati Dhuru (NBA/ NAPM), Bobby Ramakant, Shobha Shukla, Rahul Kumar Dwivedi, Asha Parivar, Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD), Socialist Party

- CNS



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