A move to prevent Santals from reclaiming their land
We are surprised and disappointed that despite incurring continuing losses for the last three years, and a track record of more loss than profit, the Rangpur Sugar Mills Ltd in Gaibandha is increasing production which clearly contradicts common sense. More importantly, it reflects the mill's rigid stance to keep Santals away from their lands. It is a continuation of the saga that unfolded three years ago with mill authorities and local influentials brutally evicting the Santals that left three Santals dead, many of them injured and missing in November 2016. Video footage circulated in the media have shown law enforcement members setting fire to Santal homes. The result has been 1,200 Santal families being left homeless and in a state of painful uncertainty. The question is why has this issue not been resolved yet and why have the Santals not been given back their land?
According to a land acquisition agreement in 1962 it was stated that if the mills produced any crop other than raw materials for the mills the land will be given back to the Santals who had been evicted before after the land was acquired by the then government. Since then the mills failed time and again, so it would have been logical to give them back the land.
Instead, mill authorities violated the agreement when the mill shut down, by leasing the land to local influential groups who subleased it to farmers to grow crops. It goes without saying that those who leased the land out made a fortune. Why were such clear violations of the agreement allowed? In fact, even after a letter was sent to the mills by the governing authority criticising the move, even after the deputy commissioner of Gaibanda investigated and found the Santals' claim to be true, the Santals are still deprived of their ancestral land.
We urge the government, which had initiated the investigation after an appeal from the Santals, to intervene in this crisis and allow the Santals to go back to their homes. The Santals, like most such minority communities, are vulnerable and often in financial hardship. All too often they become helpless at the hands of greedy land grabbers. Their only hope is for the state to protect their rights and ensure that they can stay in the lands where they have lived for generations.
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