India – RSF: Against the Imposition of the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project and the State Repression
We hereby share a statement published by the Revolutionary Students’ Front (RSF) on November 1.
Against the Imposition of the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project and the State Repression Unleashed on the Anti-Dam Movement in Arunachal Pradesh and New Delhi
The Revolutionary Students’ Front (RSF) strongly condemns the brutal police repression of anti-dam protesters in Arunachal Pradesh and the subsequent repression and detention of activists in New Delhi. On 31st October, Delhi Police detained around 40 protesters, including indigenous activists from Arunachal Pradesh, environmental activists and members of Himkhand, who had assembled outside Arunachal Bhawan to protest against the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP) and demand the release of those arrested in Arunachal Pradesh. The protesters were beaten, manhandled and subjected to sexual assault during detention. Vagheesha, a comrade from Himkhand, said that police personnel lifted her shirt and pinched her private parts while forcibly pushing her into a police vehicle. Activist Katon Moyong, popularly known as Abor Man, was also among those detained, while independent journalist Baksheesh Lamba was picked up separately and remained unreachable at the time of reporting. The protesters were taken to different police stations, with women and men separated. This police repression is part of the wider campaign of state repression against the anti-dam movement in Arunachal Pradesh.
On 9th October, four activists, Adum Tayom, Omak Paron, Okut Paloh and Oson Paron, were placed under preventive detention under the undemocratic Arunachal Pradesh Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Reports have documented police raids, arrests without timely information being provided to families, tear-gas attacks on demonstrators, the deployment of paramilitary forces in villages and restrictions on the social media accounts of activists and journalists covering the movement. On 23rd October, security forces again used tear gas and stun grenades against protesters. Subsequently, the fascist government intensified its crackdown, with 69 people arrested and four detained under the APUAPA by 27th October, alongside dozens of police cases and the deployment of additional security personnel. The Hindutva fascist state deploys armed forces against its own people instead of addressing their concerns. The right to protest, organise and defend one’s land and livelihood cannot be criminalised.
The project is being imposed upon the indigenous communities without seeking their free, prior and informed consent or allowing them any meaningful say in decisions concerning their land, lives and future. The proposed 11,200 MW Siang Upper Multipurpose Project will cause irreversible and devastating destruction to the lives, livelihoods, ecology and cultural heritage of the Siang Valley. According to independent fact-finding reports, nearly 20 villages in Upper Siang district and seven villages in Siang district will be completely submerged, while another 52 villages will be indirectly affected. An estimated 1.5 lakh people, nearly 11 per cent of Arunachal Pradesh’s total population, will be displaced. The indigenous Adi communities, whose population is concentrated across the Siang Valley, will bear the greatest burden of this destruction. Their agricultural lands, terrace fields and religious sites will all go underwater, leading to the disintegration of their culture, traditional knowledge systems and relationship with their ancestral land. The Siang, a principal tributary of the Brahmaputra, is also an integral part of a vast river ecosystem sustaining communities and livelihoods far beyond the immediate project site. Constructing a mega-dam of this scale in the ecologically fragile and seismically active Eastern Himalayas poses grave risks of geological instability, biodiversity loss, alterations to natural river flows and the long-term consequences of reservoir formation. At a time when the ecological costs of large dams are increasingly being questioned internationally, the Brahminical Hindutva fascist BJP-RSS government is pursuing yet another massive dam project in one of the country’s most ecologically sensitive regions. A project that uproots entire communities, destroys lakhs of livelihoods and devastates a living river ecosystem is not development. The Siang Upper Multipurpose Project must be cancelled.
NHPC Limited has awarded a contract worth approximately ₹10.91 crore to Mumbai-based Concept Public Relations India Limited to run a public relations campaign promoting the project. This includes paying social media content creators and influencers to produce propaganda, engaging local community leaders and monitoring public opinion to counter opposition to the project. In other words, public money is being spent on propaganda to manufacture public acceptance of a project that will cause irreversible damage.
We, the Revolutionary Students’ Front (RSF), stand firmly in solidarity with the indigenous communities and all democratic forces resisting the proposed dam. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all those arrested and detained in connection with the anti-dam movement, the withdrawal of fabricated and retaliatory cases, an end to the deployment of security forces and the militarisation of the Siang Valley, and an independent investigation into the incidents of physical and sexual assault by Delhi Police. We demand an immediate halt to all project-related survey and drilling activities and the complete cancellation of the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project. We further demand full public disclosure of the contracts, expenditure, financial arrangements and corporate interests associated with the project, along with the withdrawal of NHPC’s publicly funded campaign to manufacture consent among the communities resisting displacement. We call upon all anti-fascist, democratic, progressive and environmental organisations and individuals across the country to unite in resisting the dam project and stand in solidarity with the struggling people of Arunachal Pradesh.
