Green Options » Survival International

Santa Delivers Human Rights Complaint to Billionaire CEO [Video]

Alex Felsinger — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:14:05 +0000

A representative of the Survival campaign stopped by the home of Anil Agarwal, billionaire CEO of the UK mining corporation Vedanta Resources, to deliver a complaint to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that has been filed against his company.

The company plans to mine a sacred mountain in Orissa, India, which could destroy the 800-person Dongria Kondh, one of India’s most isolated tribes. The OECD lays out standards of good corporate behavior on British companies and anyone can file a complaint.

“The only Christmas present the Dongria Kondh want is for Vedanta to abandon its plans,” said Survival’s director Stephen Corry. “They are in no doubt that the mine will destroy them.”

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Botswana OK’s Diamond Mine Under Condition That Locals Get No Water

Melissa Elliott — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:24 +0000

Mining company Gem Diamonds has gained approval from the Botswana government for a controversial diamond mine on the land of the Kalahari Bushmen, under the condition it does not provide the Bushmen with water. The government has, however, reserved the right to use water boreholes drilled by Gem for wildlife.

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Native Man Killed by Poachers Over Illegal Fishing Catch

Alex Felsinger — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:59:14 +0000

Poachers killed an indigenous man on the remote Indian Andaman Islands after him and other members of his tribe, the Jarawa, requested that the poachers share their fish bounty with the tribe. The Andamans and their surrounding waters are protected but an increasing number of poachers have been fishing in the area.

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Amazon Forest Logging Sucks Peru and Brazil into Fight over Uprooted Indian Tribes

Sam Aola Ooko — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:27:35 +0000

Peruvian and Brazilian authorities are trading accusations that uncontrolled logging on the Peruvian side of the Amazon Forest is uprooting isolated Indian tribesmen forcing them to flee across the border into Brazil in search of untampered land and food.

Indigenous rights groups and Indian tribes researchers in Brazil now believe the uprooting may be a recipe for renewed inter-tribal conflicts over the resource that may suck governments of both nations into a row over the other’s responsibility in the affair, Reuters reports.

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Media Loses Credibility By Calling Uncontacted Tribe Story “A Hoax”

Levi Novey — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:41:45 +0000

Earlier this week, several media outlets chose to dip their hands into the sensationalist journalism cookie jar a second time, and for all of the wrong reasons. About a month ago, an exciting story broke about how photographs of an uncontacted tribe living near the Brazil-Peru border had been taken for the first time. Now some media outlets, following the lead of the British newspaper The Observer, are calling the story a hoax.

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Park Manager in Peru Claims That Uncontacted Amazon Tribe is Not Threatened By Logging and Is Not Peruvian

Levi Novey — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:03:32 +0000

Several weeks ago, almost every major press outlet picked up the story of the photographs taken of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon rainforest near the border between Brazil and Peru. Unfortunately, it seems that fewer members of the media have chosen to keep following the story.

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Previously Uncontacted Tribe Photographed for First Time Near Brazil-Peru Border

Levi Novey — Fri, 30 May 2008 04:05:13 +0000

Just like in Peter Matthiessen’s classic book At Play in the Fields of the Lord, the gut reaction of several tribal members living in a remote area of the Amazon Rainforest was to shoot arrows at what was most likely the first plane they had ever seen passing by. You can see this yourself in one of the amazing photographs taken recently by the Brazilian government’s office of Indian Affairs.

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