Plans To Turn An Un-Contacted Tribe’s Island, Andaman and Nicobar, Into A Mega-Port City Will Wipe Them Out
By
Nava Thakuria, New Age Islam
17 February
2024
As President
Droupadi Murmu is scheduled to visit the Andaman & Nicobar islands on
Monday, a debate surfaced on the series
of development initiatives in the Indian archipelago. The first tribal women
head of state is arriving in Port Blair,
executive & administrative capital of the islands, on 19 February next with
a five-day program. In her maiden visit to the union territory
President
Murmu is scheduled to visit Cellular Jail, Swaraj Dweep (earlier known as
Havelock Island), Campbell Bay, Indira Point (southernmost tip of India),
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Dweep (earlier Ross Island), etc. She will also interact with a selected
number of people comprising tribal communities there.
Meanwhile,
expressing serious concerns over the development programs in some parts of the
islands, a group of international genocide experts have written to the Union
government in New Delhi with an warning
that its plans to turn an un-contacted tribe’s island into a mega-port city
will wipe them out. Thirty-nine genocide scholars argued that around 300
Shompen hunter-gatherers, two thirds of them are un-contacted till date, will
face extinction if New Delhi goes ahead
with the development plans.
Shompen
people are one of the most isolated tribes on Earth and they live in the dense
rain forests that occupy the interior of the islands. If the project goes ahead
with original plans for a mega-port, a new city, an international airport, a power station, a defense base, an industrial park and
helping 650,000 new settlers, it will be a death sentence for the Shompen,
asserted the experts, adding that a simple contact with the Shompen (who have
little to no immunity to infectious diseases) may result in a precipitous
population collapse.
Survival
International, a London-based rights body, has been calling for the project to
be abandoned to ensure the Shompen’s
ownership rights over their ancestral lands. Its director Caroline
Pearce asserted that under international laws, no government (or company)
should proceed with interventional activities without the indigenous people’s
consent in their territories. He also revealed that over 7,000 people, arguing
that Shompen people have no idea of the ongoing activities, communicated with
New Delhi with their demand to stop the genocide.
Amid the
Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean, the group of over 830 large &
small hilly islands (with only 31 inhabited),
shares maritime borders with Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand and
those occupy a total land area of around
8,249 square kilometre with a population of 3.81 Lakhs. Andaman islands
in the northern part are primarily home to four tribes namely Great Andamanese,
Onge, Jarawa and Sentinelese. These
tribes are believed to have migrated from the African islands thousands of
years back and most of them survive with the practice of hunting wild animals
and natural agri-produces. Among them Sentinelese are most isolated and they
reject all kinds of contact with outsiders.
On the
other hand, Nicobar islands in the southern part give shelter to two tribes
namely Nicobarese and Shompen, who might
have arrived in the islands several thousand years ago from the Malay-Burma
coast. Nicobarese (they are around one thousand in number) maintain contact
with the outsiders and many of them are now converted to Christianity. However,
Shompen are still a relatively isolated
tribe surviving on hunting local wildlife and also harvesting plants. Many
believe that they can both survive and thrive, if their lands and resources are
secure.
Union
ports, shipping and waterways minister Sarbananda Sonowal alsorecently visited
the islands and admitted that some stakeholders raised environmental concerns.
However, he pointed out that those were
already addressed. Inspecting the proposed mega port at Atlanta Bay, Sonowal
informed that it’s hardly 565 km from
Yangon, 765 km from Sittwe, 1000 km from Chittagong and 1100 km from Kolkata. Once the harbour is
made fully operational, it will drastically reduce the ship travel time to
Kolkata from 72 to 15 hours only, commented Sonowal.
Perhaps,
it’s high time for New Delhi to deal with the issue responsibly so that a
developed Andaman & Nicobar in tune with nature can be achieved. Moreover,
the sea route connectivity with north-eastern States though Chittagong
(Bangladesh) and Sittwe (Myanmar) ports can also be visualized with pragmatic
diplomatic policies in the coming days, as both the neighbouring nations have
agreed to allow using the ports for the benefit of 60 million Indians living in
far eastern localities of the country.
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Nava Thakuria is a northeast India-based
professional journalist who is an engineering graduate.
URL: https://newageislam.com/current-affairs/un-contacted-tribe-island-andaman-nicobar-mega-port/d/131741
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