The Adventures of Mr. Chris

Modi Gov Tries to Ban Greenpeace India, Again

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You know you are doing something right when the government attempts to shut you down and silence you. That is exactly what is happening in India at the moment, as the Modi government attempts, once again, to shut down Greenpeace India. First the claim from the Ministry of Home Affairs was that Greenpeace activities had “prejudicially affected the economic interest of the state.” Greenpeace challenged that ruling in the Madras High Court in Tamil Nadu, which then issued a temporary stay on the order. With that tactic having failed to shut the organization down, the government resorted to claims of financial fraud. Greenpeace will also appear this new ruling.

Greenpeace India said in a statement on Friday that its permit to operate had been revoked on the grounds that it had falsified financial documents, the latest in a series of government actions taken against the environmental organization.

The move against the group is one of many “clumsy tactics to suppress free speech and dissenting voices” by the government, Vinuta Gopal, the interim executive director of Greenpeace India, said in the statement.

As criticism of the neoliberal growth at any cost policies of Modi increasingly come under attack from domestic and foreign critics, Modi is looking for ways to silence his critics. And Greenpeace India has been a particular thorn in his side given their opposition to backward policies on coal mining in forests, nuclear energy, GMO crops, and toxic waste policies which have been advanced by the conservative BJP government since coming to power. Greenpeace India Executive Director Vinuta Gopal called the latest action by the BJP government “an extension of the deep intolerance for differing viewpoints that sections of this government seem to harbor.” As the NYT noted in an earlier story on harassment of Greenpeace, this is not the first, and won’t be the last, of Modi’s scare tactics to silence critical NGOs.

The group’s public troubles with the government began in January [2015], when one of its campaigners was barred from flying to Britain to brief members of Parliament about the harmful environmental effects of possible coal mining projects in central India. The government later said that the woman’s actions were prejudicial to the national interest and could have led to economic sanctions against India.

You can read the whole story here: Greenpeace India Says It Has Been Ordered to Dissolve.