Police face ‘fury’ over deaths of 10

Clash toll hits 15

CHENNAI, India, May 23, (Agencies): Outrage swelled Wednesday over the deaths of 10 protesters at a rally over a copper plant in southern India, after police opened fire on demonstrators in what critics termed “mass murder”.

Violence erupted Tuesday in Tamil Nadu state at a long-running demonstration demanding the closure of the smelting plant owned by British mining giant Vedanta Resources which residents say is causing environmental damage.

The state’s chief minister has ordered a judicial inquiry into the shootings but the move failed to stem rising anger over the clashes, which also left about 80 wounded.

M.K. Stalin, leader of the main Tamil Nadu opposition party the DMK, said police were guilty of “atrocities”.

“Mass Murder of Innocent People,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Who ordered the police firing on protestors? Why were automatic weapons used to disperse the crowd and under what law is this permitted?”

A video of a police officer on top of a bus and pointing an assault rifle at crowds has fuelled fresh anger.

Rahul Gandhi, the national leader of the opposition Congress party, has called the deaths “a brutal example of state-sponsored terrorism”.

“These citizens were murdered for protesting against injustice,” he said.

Police said Tuesday that 12 people had died but later revised the toll in the port city of Tuticorin.

P. Mahendran, superintendent of Tuticorin district police, said 18 officers were also wounded in the clashes.

“The situation is tense but under control today,” he said. “The post mortem on the bodies is being conducted and they will be handed over to families today.”

The plant, about 600 kms (375 miles) south of Tamil Nadu’s state capital Chennai, is currently closed as Vedanta’s Sterlite Copper subsidiary seeks a new licence so it can be expanded.

The protesters had set ablaze the local administrator’s office after they were denied permission to hold a rally at the plant.

Police said efforts to disperse the crowd of several thousand with a baton charge and tear gas volleys failed before authorities used live ammunition.

Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami ordered the judicial inquiry into the shootings but defended the police.

Gandhi

Tea workers in appalling conditions:

Women working on tea plantations in northeast India earn a “pitiful” $2 a day and live in “appalling” conditions with almost no toilets, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The investigation by the British charity Traidcraft Exchange found workers in the teagrowing state of Assam were paid 137 rupees ($2) a day, far below the minimum wage of 250 rupees. More than half are women.

Assam is the largest producer of tea in India and its estates supply top brands including Britain’s Twinings and Tetley. Both are working to improve conditions for workers, the report said.

“The women who pick the tea we drink live in appalling conditions and are paid pitifully low wages by tea estates in Assam,” said Fiona Gooch, a policy adviser for Traidcraft Exchange.

Workers live in decrepit houses with leaky roofs. They have little or no access to sanitation facilities and most have to defecate in the bushes outside, the report said.

A spokeswoman said Twinings was “fully committed to ethical sourcing”.

“Our Sourced with Care programme — directly addresses the needs and improve the lives of communities on the ground, from access to sanitation to children’s rights,” she said in a statement.

Tea giant Tata Global Beverages — which owns Tetley — was not immediately available to comment.

Stephen Ekka of PAJHRA, an Assam-based charity fighting for tea workers’ rights, urged global brands to be more transparent about how they source their tea.

“In the global supply chain of tea business, the condition of workers is not taken into consideration,” Ekka told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Assam’s tea industry has faced accusations in the past of exploitative work conditions, leading to labour disputes that have forced some plantations to shut.

4 more killed in Kashmir:

A mortar and gunfire battle between Indian and Pakistani forces along part of their Kashmir frontier killed four more civilians Wednesday, police said, taking the death toll in the six-day confrontation to 15.

Since last Friday nearly 40,000 residents have fled the 200 km-long (125 mile) conflict zone, between the Jammu region in India-administered Kashmir and Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Indian authorities have closed all schools within five kilometres (three miles) of the border and have lodged panicked residents in camps away from the guns.

The Indian and Pakistan militaries held talks this week but failed to calm one of the deadliest flare-ups this year.

“Four residents were killed and 30 were injured in the Pakistani firing,” Indian Kashmir’s director-general of police, Shesh Paul Vaid, told AFP, giving the toll from the latest night of shelling.

On Tuesday an Indian soldier and an eightmonth-old baby were killed. Nine people on either side of the border died on the first day of hostilities, just before a visit to Kashmir by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“People are helping each other to flee. Police are also helping in evacuating vulnerable border residents,” Vaid said.

Another police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity described the flare up as a “warlike situation” in the affected districts of Samba, RS Pura, Akhnoor and Arnia.