Bombay Catholic Sabha Demands Scrapping SEZ Plan, Halt To Attacks On Minorities

MUMBAI, MAR. 18, 2008, 16.50 Hrs (SAR News):

Over 6,000 Catholics demanded a halt to attack on Christians and acquisition of Church land for setting up Special Economic Zones in Mumbai at a massive protest rally in Mumbai city.

"The divide between the rich and the poor is widening as the country rushes forward with its economic development plans," Auxiliary Bishop Bosco Penha of Bombay Archdiocese told protestors at Azad Maidan in south Mumbai, March 15.

"We need to protest the rights of all sections of society, especially their land that sustains them or else there will be a growing discontent among the people, especially the poor farmers", the prelate warned amidst cheering from the audience.

Bishop Penha said, "I am here today to express my solidarity and support to what is happening here at the rally. For me, it is not a matter of this government or that, of this political party or that. It is a matter of emphasizing human rights, defence of human rights and safe guarding the interests of the helpless, the vulnerable and the poor."

Bombay Catholic Sabha president Dolphy D'Souza urged the state government to halt the process of any further land acquisition, dispossession, demolition and displacement.

He demanded that the government lay down a new comprehensive policy and set up an effective mechanism to ensure protection of the interests of people, not as a post facto formality but as a necessary precondition to the resumption of work on projects, including those related to SEZ at Gorai-Uttan in Mumbai and the Mumbai international airport expansion and development.

D'Souza said nearly 1.5 lakh people, mostly Catholics, would lose their land and homes in Gorai-Uttan belt if the government succeeds in developing SEZ in the area for entertainment for a private party.

"Nearly 10 Churches are under the threat of being acquired, paving the way for their demolition and it is not clear why fertile agricultural land is being acquired for SEZs," D'Souza lamented.

"Also, the proposed expansion of the international airport at Sahar in Mumbai will only cater to the demands of the rich in the form of more malls, convention centres and fire star hotels, while displacing and dispossessing the local people, majority of whom are Catholics belonging to East Indians, the original residents of Mumbai," D'Souza said.

He said even as this rally was protesting attacks on the Christian community, two nuns -- Sister Merciana Tuscano and Sister Philomena D'Mello of Congregation of Carmelite Religious in a village near Alibaug were thrashed by alleged Hindu women and men activists under the false garb of conversion.

"The nuns are involved in empowering the tribal women in seven villages and working there for the last 15 years but not a single person had been baptised," he said, adding that the 13 culprits who had brutally attacked the nuns were hurriedly produced before a local court on frivolous charges and granted bail," he explained.

D'Souza demanded that the attackers be booked under the non-bailable stringent Adivasi Atrocities Act and warmed the government that it could not take the Christian minority community as a soft target of attacks.

Ulka Mahajan, an activist of National Alliance of Peoples Movement, Father Francis Britto, former editor of 'Suvartha' (good news) Marathi monthly magazine of Vasai diocese and founder of the Harit (green) Vasai Movement and Right To Information activist Shailesh Gandhi spoke on the anti-people policies of the state and the union government vis-à-vis SEZs and urged the authorities curb the attacks on the minority communities in the country.