STOP THESE PROFITS FROM DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!

STOP THE AGM!

FOIL VEDANTA! STOP THIS KILLER CORPORATE!

Stop the AGM: Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Broad Sanctuary, Westminster, London SW1P 3EE Wednesday 3.00 pm, 27 July

WHY THE UK GOVERNMENT SUPPORTS VEDANTA: Vedanta plc is a London listed FTSE 100 Mining Corporation which has brought death and destruction to thousands across India. It is owned by Anil Agarwal and his family through their Bahamas-based company Volcan Investments Limited. The UK’s Department for International Development and Department of Trade and Industry helped launch it on the London Stock Exchange and still support it. The UK’s massive arms industry feeds on Aluminum and the conference centre where Vedanta’s AGM is being held is an executive agency of the UK’s Department for Communities and Local Government. Vedanta’s bauxite mining has killed thousands, mainly Adivasi (indigenous) people, in India in accidents, police firings, forced displacement, injury and illness. It has displaced thousands of families and destroyed the environment contaminating drinking water sources with ‘red mud’ and fly ash, and devastating vast tracts of fertile land in an area which has seen famine every year since 2007

BRING MULTI-BILLIONAIRE CEO ANIL AGARWAL TO JUSTICE!

Vedanta’s CEO, Anil Agarwal is the seventeenth richest person in Britain, whose personal wealth has grown even in the recession by 583% according to 2010 figs.

Agarwal and Vedanta have close links with the Sangh Parivar, the umbrella group of Hindu right-wing organizations in India responsible for genocidal attacks on India’s minority Muslim and Christian communities, in Orissa, Gujarat and elsewhere. Vedanta is funded by more than 30 major banks and financial agencies including HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Axa, Royal Bank of Canada, Credit Suisse, J P Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Lloyds Banking Group, Nordea Bank, ICICI, Citigroup, National Bank of Kuwait, ANZ and Merrill Lynch. But the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, Martin Currie Investments, the Church of England, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Dutch Pension Fund PGGM have disinvested because of Vedanta’s ecological, and human rights crimes.

STOP THESE PROFITS FROM DEATH AND DESTRUCTION! STOP THE AGM! CELEBRATE SEVEN LONG YEARS OF STRUGGLE BY PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS!

Because of People’s struggles supported by international solidarity: In Niyamgiri Orissa: Vedanta has been accused by the Indian government of ‘land-grab’ and illegally clearing forest land for its refinery in Lanjigarh and prohibited from mining this sacred mountain of the Dongria Kondh.

In Puri, Orissa: it has been ordered to return the thousands of acres stolen from the people to set up the so-called Vedanta University.

BUT THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES! Vedanta continues to spread death and destruction as before: In June this year its Lanjigarh refinery in Orissa polluted the locality with toxic red mud In Chhattisgarh: Vedanta and its subsidiary BALCO are responsible for the collapse of a power plant chimney causing the deaths of 40 people In Goa: Vedanta’s Sesa Goa iron ore subsidiary are guilty of illegally dumped mining waste causing floods. In Zambia Vedanta has been fined for poisoning the Kafua river .

NOW INDIAN GOVERNMENT STEPS IN TO SUPPORT VEDANTA AND DOES A SHADY DEAL TO HELP IT DIVERSIFY INTO OIL

India’s new environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan has promised Vedanta that ‘the past is over’ and ‘speedy decisions will be ensured’ for ‘major projects’ such as those of Vedanta and South Korean steel corporate Posco. Meanwhile, the Indian government has also helped Vedanta to diversify into oil by clearing the way for it to take over majority shares (belonging to India’s stateowned Oil and National Gas Corporation) in Cairn India a subsidiary of Cairn Energy plc. It has started off-shore drilling in Sri Lanka; and Rajasthan; and through Cairn Energy in Greenland. STOP THESE PROFITS FROM DEATH AND DESTRUCTION! STOP THE AGM! STOP THE AGM! STOP THE AGM!