Police accost women protesting against the Kudankulam nuclear plant in India. Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS.

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, May 23 2013 (IPS)

For years India’s pro-liberalisation, Congress party-led coalition government chafed at civil society groups getting in the way of grand plans to boost growth through the setting up of mega nuclear power parks, opening up the vast mineral-rich tribal lands to foreign investment and selling off public assets.

Now, at the end of its tether, the Interior Ministry has cracked the whip on hundreds of non-governmental organisations engaged in activities that “prejudicially affect the public interest.”

"...The government is trying to promote globalisation while cracking down on the globalisation of dissent." -- Achin Vanaik
On Apr. 30 several NGOs were informed that the bank accounts through which they receive foreign funding had been frozen.

“It is shocking what the government has done – but not surprising given the increasingly authoritarian, undemocratic and repressive measures being directed…against anyone who is seen to challenge or disagree with their positions and decisions,” Lalita Ramdas, anti-nuclear campaigner and board chair of Greenpeace International, told IPS.

Ramdas said NGOs concerned with nuclear power, human rights, environment and ecology – areas where corporate and industrial interests were likely to be questioned – appeared to be particular targets of the government order.

Among the worst affected is the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), a network of more than 700 NGOs that is currently challenging, in the Supreme Court, the government’s restrictions on foreign funding reaching groups that engage in activities that can be described as “political” in nature.

In its court petition INSAF described itself as an organisation that believes that “the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of India need to be safeguarded against blatant and rampant violations by the State and private corporations.”

INSAF said it has “actively campaigned against land grabs by corporations, ecological disaster by mining companies, water privatisation, genetically modified foods, hazardous nuclear power (and) anti-people policies of international financial institutions like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.”

INSAF declared in court that it “firmly believes in a secular and peaceful social order and opposes communalism and the targeted attacks on the lives and rights of people including religious minorities, and regularly organises campaigns, workshops, conventions, fact-findings, people’s tribunals, solidarity actions for people’s movements and educational publications.”

“With that kind of a profile we were expecting this crackdown,” Anil Chaudhary, coordinator of INSAF, told IPS. “Still, the government could have waited for the Supreme Court verdict.”

“At this rate,” he said, “organisations working against discrimination of women and (advocating) for their empowerment through participation in local bodies could be termed “political”, as (well as) organisations working for farmers’ rights.

“The same arbitrariness can be applied to green NGOs trying to protect the environment against mindless industrialisation.”

Chaudhary thinks it unfair that NGOs critical of government policies are being singled out. “Instead of selectively freezing the funding of groups under INSAF, the government should order a blanket ban on all foreign funding.”

Among INSAF’s many campaigns is an intiative to bring international financial institutions like the World Bank under legislative scrutiny for their activities in India.

It cannot have escaped the government’s attention that INSAF’s campaigns have run parallel to powerful movements for transparency and clean governance led by social activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal, founder of the Aam Admi Party (Common Man’s Party) that plans to contest general elections due in 2014.

Kejriwal, whose social activity led to the passage of the 2005 Right to Information Act, has also been closely associated with transparency campaigns led by Anna Hazare, who mounted a Gandhian-style fast against corruption in April 2011 that rallied over 100,000 ordinary people.

Street protests demanding good governance have since been a thorn in the side of the government.  When they peaked in December 2012, following the gang rape of a young woman in a bus in the national capital, police took to beating protestors.

The government, starting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has also been frustrated by NGOs’ efforts to stall work on a string of mega nuclear parks along peninsular India’s long coastline, especially at Jaitapur in Maharashtra, Mithi Virdi in Gujarat and Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.

In February, the government froze the accounts of two leading Tamil Nadu-based NGOs allegedly associated with the protests at the site of the Kudankulam plant, signalling a new and tough stance against civil society groups fighting the displacement of farmers and fishermen by mega development projects.

The two NGOs, the Tuticorin Diocesan Association and the Tamil Nadu Social Service Society, received four million and eight million dollars respectively over a five-year period that ended in 2011, according to declarations they made to the government.

With strong backing from the Church, the groups continue to operate despite the freeze on their assets.

During the same five-year period a total of about 22,000 NGOs across India received roughly two billion dollars in foreign contributions, going by government records.

Unexpected protests have surfaced from among the Congress party’s partners in the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Devi Prasad Tripathi, general secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party and member of parliament, reminded Interior Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde that the UPA is “committed to protecting and promoting secular, democratic and progressive forces in the country.”

“Effectively, the government is trying to promote globalisation while cracking down on the globalisation of dissent,” commented Achin Vanaik, professor of political science at the Delhi University.

The government’s move stands in stark contrast to promises made not two years ago at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid and Development Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, where 159 governments and member organisations honoured the vital role played by the non-profit sector by pledging to foster an “empowering” climate for civil society.

In his most recent report to the United Nations General Assembly, Maina Kiai, special rapporteur on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, noted with grave concern that India has repressed “peaceful protestors advocating economic, social and cultural rights, such as…local residents denouncing the health impact of nuclear power plants.”

Miles of farmland around the crippled Fukushima reactor have been transformed into contaminated wastelands. Credit: Hajime NAKANO/CC-BY-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 26 2013 (IPS)

Pushed and pulled in opposite directions, the future of Japan’s energy plans in the wake of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant two years ago is emerging as a fight between national economic advancement and what anti-nuke activists call “the lives of the people”.

“The tug-of-war between the government and opponents of nuclear power has become an excruciatingly difficult issue in Japan,” Professor Takao Kashiwage, nuclear technology expert at the prestigious Tokyo Institute of Technology, told IPS.

“The emotional (turbulence) following the devastating consequences of the Fukushima accident is masking a real and objective debate” about the country’s energy needs and its nuclear future, he added.

Kashiwage sits on the official cogeneration energy committee and backs Japanese Prime Minister Shintaro Abe’s energy platform that calls for a re-start of Japan’s nuclear reactors after the implementation of new safety standards that will be established by an independent expert commission in July.

“Japan’s energy security is heavily dependent on nuclear power. To halt this source (that produced around 30 percent of energy needs prior to the accident) completely is too drastic a step for the country,” he explained. Japan currently imports 84 percent of its energy needs.

On the other side of the fence are anti-nuclear activists, who have drawn negative attention to the development of nuclear power plants by Japan’s nine most powerful utility companies, supported by public funds on the basis of creating a secure supply of energy for resource-poor Japan.

Large sums of revenue were poured into cash-strapped localities to host nuclear plants that were touted as “safe”: according to official estimates, a single reactor costs about 10 billion dollars, though activists say the amount is much higher when other expenses, such as support for new facilities and subsidies for hosting local governments, are taken into account.

But, as the Fukushima accident made tragically clear, those projects failed to meet safety requirements such as contingency plans for large-scale evacuation of residents in the event of a crisis.

Activists point to the heavy toll the Mar. 11 disaster took on communities living close to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors as one of the more jolting examples of the tragic human consequences of nuclear power. They have also called attention to the environmental risks of storing radioactive material that could easily poison the surrounding area.

Indeed, life-threatening radiation leaks have already forced entire communities to leave their homes and jobs, with more than 300,000 people still living in temporary housing, scores of families separated and miles of farmland transformed into contaminated wastelands, unable to produce a single edible crop.

Yasuo Fujita, 67, is one of these many nuclear refugees.

His family had lived for several generations in Namie village, located just seven kilometres from the stricken nuclear plant. Shortly after the meltdown, he was forced to give up his beloved sushi shop that he had run for 30 years and move to Koto-ku, a Tokyo ward.

Today Fujita is still waiting for compensation from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to restart his life. “I lost everything in a second because of the Fukushima accident,” he told IPS.

“Despite government plans to rebuild Fukushima within three to four decades, nobody believes they can return. With (scores of) young people now moving away, there is no point in returning even if the government does make the area safe again, a prospect we do not believe in anyway,” Fujita added.

Anti-nuke environmentalists teach schoolchildren about solar panels as an alternative to nuclear power. Credit: Courtesy Morihiko Shimamura/Otentosan Project

Meanwhile, the announcement last Monday that cooling of the spent fuel rods of three reactors at the Fukushima plant would be suspended due to a power outage created national panic and exposed a key problem in Japan’s nuclear industry: the lack of transparency leading to poor information dissemination and negligence of solid safety procedures.

The ‘Yomiuri’, Japan’s leading daily, noted on Thursday that TEPCO’s public announcement of the problem on Monday evening came too late, and illustrates the company’s “lax safety measures”, including the absence of a back-up plan to deal with accidents.

But as Japan’s massive fuel bills continue to rise for the second straight year – in February liquefied natural gas imports grew 19.1 percent, contributing almost 40 percent of the record 8.2-billion-dollar trade deficit, according to the Finance Ministry – and household utility bills climb 20 percent on average to meet increasing electricity costs, public support for the anti-nuke camp appears to be wavering.

An opinion poll conducted by ‘Asahi’, Japan’s leading national newspaper, in February revealed that 46 percent of respondents were in favour of continuing nuclear power if safety measures are strengthened — higher than the 41 percent who support total abolishment.

Only two of Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors – units 3 and 4 of the Ōhi nuclear power plant located in the Fukui Prefecture – are operating, while the rest have been closed for maintenance or repairs, bringing nuclear power supply to almost zero.

This is a drastic reduction from pre-Fukushima levels, and a huge set back for national plans to grow the energy source to 50 percent of total supply.

Faced with the stark reality of the impacts of the accident and deep public commitment to avert another disaster, Abe is currently pushing safety measures, including installation of the new Nuclear Regulation Authority, comprised of independent experts, which has already issued seismic warnings against two nuclear power plants.

An upcoming national election in the summer marks an important turning point. If Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party wins, experts contend the coast will be clear to restart idle nuclear plants.

But Aileen Smith, head of Green Action and a leader in the anti-nuclear movement, told IPS that activists will do their best to halt these plans, applying pressure in the form of lawsuits and large public protests and demonstrations.

“The government is talking of restarting idled plants. But the dangerous reality on the ground is such that utility companies applying for permission will face an uphill struggle,” she said.

(END)

The All Obachan Party is attempting to break through old-fashioned, male-dominated politics. Credit: All Obachan Party

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Dec 18 2012 (IPS)

The return to power of Japan’s conservative and hard-line Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Sunday indicates that voters traded urgently needed social and environmental reforms for traditional male-led leadership, according to analysts here.

Youth and feminist organisations who had campaigned vigorously for better environmental protections, labour equality and the upholding of regional peace ahead of the elections, expressed frustration about Sunday’s outcome, lamenting that the victorious LDP is yet to present concrete policies to tackle Japan’s most pressing problems.

Three years ago the Japanese electorate ousted the LDP in favour of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). This year the pendulum has swung back in the opposite direction. “It’s time to give the LDP a chance at tackling national problems. The ruling DPJ was a disaster,” Keitaro Noguchi (34), a company employee, told IPS, summing up the overall post-election mood in the country.

LDP leader Shinzo Abe, whose brief term as Prime Minister ended abruptly in 2007, is now set to take back the reins.

A hawkish politician, he has raised his profile by promising to usher in a militarily stronger Japan – against the backdrop of a simmering territorial dispute with China regarding a cluster of islands in the East China Sea – and rekindle the economy by boosting expensive public works programmes to create new jobs.

The LDP is also faced with the monumental task of addressing the country’s consistently low growth rates – less than two percent for the past two decades, according to the Cabinet’s Office – while simultaneously attempting to reduce a soaring public debt and meet the social security demands of unemployed youth and a rapidly aging population.

But while these high-profile issues will almost certainly receive their fair share of political attention, activists are concerned about two areas they fear will slip beneath the radar of the incoming administration: the country’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of the disastrous accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor following the earthquake and tsunami last March; and job stability for youth and women, both grappling with badly paid or part-time work.

“The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will definitely turn its back on the policies of the outgoing centre-left government, which set a target of eradicating Japan’s nuclear dependency by 2030,” said Koichi Nakano, a well-known political analyst at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Speaking to foreign reporters, Nakano explained that power companies, which have pushed nuclear energy onto the national development agenda, have thrown their support behind the LDP.

“Japan’s green movement, which promotes clean energy as a replacement for nuclear power, has not been successful. A more hawkish regime that commands a strong majority in the Japanese Diet (the upper and lower houses of parliament) will stigmatise anti-nuke protestors as dangerous radicals. I see more arrests of activists,” he said, referring to the Sept. 16 arrests of 16 activists at a large anti-nuke rally here.

The election result has also been a bitter disappointment for women’s groups who have been lobbying for better treatment of female workers currently comprising 80 percent of the country’s part-time or contract labour force; stable childcare; and welfare for the elderly, who are overwhelmingly women.

Professor Chizu Arashima of Kobe Gakuin University based in west Japan, views the LDP election victory as a step back for women’s rights and employment.

“As a working mother of three sons I am bracing for the return of old-fashioned LDP family values that promote divisive gender roles that push women to stay at home, have babies and rely on men,” she said.

Arashima is a member of the three-month-old All Japan Obachan Party – a women’s organisation based in Osaka, Japan’s second largest city – which is now gaining public recognition for helping raise women’s voices on national policies and close the gender gap in the political realm.

‘Obachan’ is a gender-biased term in Japanese that pushes the image of active middle-aged women who are ready to challenge men. Kyoko Tada, a legal expert and a founding member of the organisation, told IPS, “The title (was chosen) deliberately to call attention to a sector that is determined to break through old-fashioned male-dominated politics.”

She said the group has gathered more than 1,000 members nationwide already, and is gaining support for its alternative views, such as its anti-war stance, support for fostering community strength, an anti-nuclear policy and advocating for the use of tax money for social security services rather than public works programmes.

The organisation faces many hurdles in overcoming gender disparities in the political sphere. Only 38 female candidates, from a total of 225, won seats in the parliament during this election, a major dip from the 54 women who won seats at the last poll in 2009.

Already, Japan has been ranked as low as 110^th on the World Economic Forum’s latest gender gap survey, which rates countries based on gender equality in political representation.

Arashima explained that the outcome of this election proves that women have been lured by the hope that the LDP will improve the economic situation and ensure income stability.

“The lack of public discussions that should have highlighted alternative choices for women is a key lesson for activist groups this time. We are determined to address these issues,” she explained.

(END)

In Japan, anti-nuke protests draw tens of thousands of average citizens. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug 9 2012 (IPS)

A new wave of anti-nuclear protests in Japan this summer, sparked by the disastrous meltdown at a power plant last year, suggests that civil society is no longer willing to allow the government to take the lead in deciding the nation’s energy policy.

A clear example of the impact of grassroots activism was the decision on Aug. 3 by leading prosecutors, after months of deliberation, to accept criminal complaints against Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Japan’s largest utility corporation that operated the now-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor.

“The new move by prosecutors is a cornerstone in our long and hard fight to force TEPCO to face its criminal responsibility. It is an unprecedented achievement for civil organisations in Japan,” Hiromi Ebisuwa, a veteran activist in Fukushima who is leading the criminal complaint, told IPS.

The lives of tens of thousands of residents, including young children and infants, were drastically affected when they were forced to flee dangerous radiation exposure after the nuclear accident at Fukushima, which followed a massive earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11 last year.

Since Jun 1,300 residents in Fukushima prefecture have filed complaints with the Fukushima District Public Prosecutor’s Officer. They have identified 33 people, including former executives at TEPCO and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, as culprits in the crisis, for failing to install anti-tsunami protections in the nuclear reactor.

The criminal complaints centre on negligence resulting in death or injury and the violation of the environmental pollution offense law.

Yet another example of the spreading anti-nuclear mood in Japan is a complaint filed against former senior Tokyo Electric Company (TEC) officials by a citizen’s group at the Kanazawa District Public Prosecutor’s office in Ishikawa prefecture.

TEC is debating re-opening its Shiga nuclear power plant in Ishikawa, located on the northwestern coast.

For Aileen Miyoko Smith, head of Green Action, a leading local environmental organisation, the latest developments in the anti-nuclear movement mark a critical juncture in Japan’s energy policy.

“The results of strenuous grassroots efforts after Fukushima, unprecedented in recent decades, are now (visible) in the Japanese political and social spheres,” she told IPS.

She, like other experts, believe the horror of the Fukushima accident, coupled with public outrage about the tragedy, contributed significantly to the temporary halt of operations in all of Japan’s 50 commercial reactors.

National energy security

Today, despite the summer heat, Japan is operating on less than three percent of its nuclear power, another major development for a country that has long touted nuclear energy as the lynchpin of its national economy.

Still, the coast is not clear for protestors. In July, despite continuous public opposition and demonstrations, the government, pointing to the need for secure energy supplies and with the consent of the cash-strapped local Oi government in western Japan, restarted two of the region’s four reactors.

Japan, the world’s third largest economy, currently imports 100 percent of its oil and coal supplies. Nuclear energy provides almost 30 percent of national needs, a figure that represents the country’s desire for energy self-sufficiency.

Indeed, the debate on prioritising between phasing out nuclear energy versus boosting economic growth is now a critical public issue—a July survey by the Japan Sustainable Institute showed that over 80 percent of those polled were against nuclear power.

However, more than 50 percent support a 2050 deadline for closing down all reactors, which illustrates the fact that concern over national energy supplies dilutes the urgency for immediate action and alternatives.

Still, breakthroughs by activists have been monumental.

The local government’s decision to re-start the Oi power plant in May was preceded by months of painful wrangling between national and local governments.

The final decision came only after the government pledged to promote higher safety levels under an independent nuclear regulatory authority that is now investigating the threat from a fault line found underneath the Oi reactors.

Now, leading intellectuals such as Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe and former prime minister Naoto Kan have joined the weekly protests.

As the movement gains steam, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was forced last week to issue a statement that he will meet the organisers of the weekly protests, a drastic change from his stance hithero, which, for many activists, was characterised by his comment, quoted in various local weeklies, that the demonstrations were simply “nosiy”.

For the past two months Misae Red Wolf has been a key organiser of the weekly anti-nuclear demonstrations that snake past government offices in Tokyo, sometimes drawing more than 100,000 people demanding the abolition of nuclear power.

Addressing a crowd in the searing summer heat, Misae demanded the immediate halt of operations in the two newly re-activated nuclear plants and the overall abolition of nuclear energy in Japan.

“Grassroots activism is the way forward. We have been waiting too long for a reliable answer from the government, which continues to ignore the voices of the people who have suffered too heavily from the nuclear accident,” she said.

Eiji Oguma, a prominent Japanese sociologist and professor at Keio University, describes the popular demonstrations as a sign of growing distrust of the country’s political and bureaucratic leadership following the Fukushima accident, and frustration at policies that do not reflect the will of the people.

“Dissatisfaction with politicians has accumulated over 20 years of economic stagnation. The Fukushima disaster and the decision to restart Oi has brought it to a critical point,” a July article in the prominent Asia Pacific Journal quoted him as saying.

The growing rift between politicians and their electorates led to the launch this July of the Green Party, which stands on an anti-nuclear platform and promotes welfare stability for the elderly.

Akira Miyabe, spokesperson for the Green Party, which will debut when it presents its candidates for next year’s Upper House elections on the proportional representation platform, explained to IPS, “The new political party represents a fresh start in Japan.”

“Green Party involvement in gathering criminal complaints against TEPCO for the Fukushima accident is aimed at changing the cozy ties between government and business that has been the (driving force) behind nuclear power in Japan,” he said.

(END)