'How is the adivasi supposed to live?' Soni Sori speaks on her continuing battle for tribals' rights
Soni Sori’s lonely battle in Chhattisgarh for
adivasis' rights doesn’t have many takers. In the video above she invites
people to visit Bastar and talk about the adivasi struggle to give strength to
the movement.
Sori, who was in Mumbai recently, spoke of how
adivasis are being labelled Naxals and killed just so the government can get
access to their land. The Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas or PESA Act
protects Adivasi rights over their land – so, she alleges, the way out of that
problem is to just kill them.
“I used to think the government was fighting to kill
Naxals. But now I think it’s wrong because the officials themselves tell me,
‘The adivasi will have to die at any cost!’ because they don’t have any
identity, they have to die like insects.”
“They told me to end my fight and I said you stop
killing adivasis and I’ll stop fighting to which they said, ‘But they have to
be killed because the government wants that land’.” "If we talk about the adivasi rights, they label
us Naxals and antinational, though that doesn’t bother me at all," she
says.
Sori has recovered in some measure from the
“acid-like” substance attack on her face in February. She says that while the
extent of the torture has now reduced because of the attention her case
received, it is still ongoing. Women’s nipples are chopped off, they are
electrocuted and raped, young girls' lives are destroyed and innocent adivasis
killed.
The video above is from a Youtube channel called Dear
Prime Minister, run by recently graduates of TISS, Mumbai.
see video here:
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