by Kate Hoshour and Christine Shearer
Originally published on TruthOut.org
As the sun rose on March 28, 2011, roughly 2,000 people gathered to demonstrate against a mining project that would displace tens of thousands of people in northwest Bangladesh and establish one of the largest open pit coal mines in the world.
The following two articles regard massive protests that took place in Bangladesh yesterday demanding a ban on open pit mining scheduled to break ground in the northwest region of Phulbari. See Cultural Survival's Action Alert on Bangladesh here to send a letter in solidarity with the Indigenous farmers of this area against the destruction of their land.
On Friday, March 25th, Global Response program director Paula Palmer was interviewed on Bob Kincaid's radio program "Head On" regarding the campaign in Bangladesh against the Phulbari coal mine. A native of West Virgina, Bob is very interested in communities struggles against the coal industry.
The Huffington Post today published an interview with Paula Palmer, the director of Cultural Survival's Global Response program, about the current Global Response campaign, to stop construction of a dam in Bangladesh that would displace thousands of Indigenous people and destroy their homeland. To read the article and interview, click here.
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At least 2,000 demonstrators blockaded a major highway in northwest Bangladesh last week to protest government plans for open pit coal mining in Phulbari and nearby Barapukuria and demand compensation for lost crops and the destruction of their lands.
By Kate Hoshour, IAP Senior Research Fellow
Roughly 2,000 protesters united to blockade a highway in the Phulbari region this week and demanded that the government honor a six-point agreement, signed on August 31, 2006.
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