Greenpeace India has not received any official communication from the Home Ministry and has demanded that the government respond immediately to its queries. We intend to file RTI applications to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Reserve Bank of India seeking details of what triggered the actions against Greenpeace India.
“On June 23, 2014, we had requested for a financial transfer from Greenpeace International, who transferred the money the very next day. Normally it takes three-four days for the funds to transfer into our accounts. However, on June 30, we were denied the money on the grounds that our bank, IDBI had received instructions from the Reserve Bank of India that they would not be able to transfer the money unless they received a go ahead from the MHA. We had read about this move in the newspapers but had received no intimation whatsoever from the government either to review our FCRA compliance or informing us of this move,” says Samit Aich, Executive Director, Greenpeace India.
What’s even more shocking is that the accused, in this case Greenpeace has been kept completely in the dark. “This is completely antithetical to the principles of transparency in a democracy as constantly referred to our Prime Minister himself. It’s a shame that in the world’s largest democracy, people who oppose unfair policies and fight for justice are left with no voice at all,” says Aich.
In the interest of transparency Greenpeace would like to know:
- What irregularities are Greenpeace India being accused of?
- What investigative procedures have been undertaken so far?
- What information/ evidence are the allegations based on?
- Has the copy of the letter to the banks been made public?
Without any attempt to engage with Greenpeace India and in the absence of a transparent investigation, the government seems to have passed a judgement based on the findings of highly questionable IB reports and media stories. The government has been mum on the issue until Tuesday when Kiren Rijiju, Minister of State for Home Affairs, admitted in the Parliament for the first time, that there have been intelligence inputs on the issue. This statement comes almost a month after the leak of the malicious Intelligence Bureau reports that alleged that foreign aided NGOs, (Greenpeace in particular) were responsible for stalling India’s development. This is too little and too late.
“The leak followed a media blitzkrieg, yet all along Greenpeace did not receive any official communication from the ministry. We repeatedly tried to engage with the ministry, but to no avail. Instead of discreetly leaking malicious reports in the media, it is moral duty of the ministry to answer us, for the sake of transparency,” says Aich.
Greenpeace India slams such attempts to crush any kind of opposition and hopes that the month-old BJP government serves the people and not parties with vested interests that see NGOs like Greenpeace, as roadblocks in their way of personal profits. As the famous African-American social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass said, “Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”