Bangladesh Environment  Network

Home  |  Background  |  TOC |  Arsenic  |  Air Pollution   |  Coal & Gas  |  Water Management  | Climate Change  |  Forests  |  Rivers  | Contacts

BEN Statement on Phulbari Killings of August 26 (Saturday), 2006

 (The following statement was mailed on August 27th to various newspapers in Bangladesh)

Bangladesh Environment Network (BEN) expresses its deep shock and revulsion at the killings in Phulbari, Dinajpur yesterday (Saturday), August 26, 2006. According to press reports, police and BDR members opened fire killing seven people and injuring about three hundred. The people were protesting against the proposed Phulbari coal mining project under which the Anglo-Australian company, Asia Energy Company (AEC), will conduct open-pit mining to extract coal deposited at the site.

Bangladesh Environment Network (BEN), a global network of pro-environment non-resident Bangladeshis, had earlier expressed its solidarity with the people protesting this project. It noted that under this project, a foreign company would extract Bangladesh's coal and earn huge profit by exporting most of it. The proposed open-pit coal mining would uproot lakhs people from their ancestral villages and cause devastation to the environment not only at the mine-site itself but also to a wide ranging surrounding area. The project will also deprive the country in perpetuity from the contribution that this huge area of about 100 square miles makes through farming, fisheries, and many other diverse ways to the national economy.

The little money that the AEC will give to the government exchequer (in the form of a six percent royalty) does not match all these costs. More importantly, the proposed AEC Phulbari project is detrimental to the national interests, because Bangladesh itself may need this coal for its domestic use in near future (when its gas reserves run out). If the AEC project goes ahead, all that Bangladesh will be left with is a huge hole and all the attendant economic, social, environmental, and human costs, with the coal gone.

BEN therefore urges the government to meet the people's demand, cancel all its agreements with AEC, and have AEC offices immediately withdrawn from the site. It also urges the government to investigate into the incident properly, bring the people responsible for killing and injuries to justice, and pay adequate compensation to the families of the killed and injured.

BEN also urges the government to take lesson from this incident and stop its current strategy of handing over the country's gas, coal and other mineral resources to foreign companies. BEN calls on authorities instead to establish and strengthen national control over the country's mineral resources and to ensure their best use focusing on domestic and people's needs. BEN thinks that instead of a pro-foreign company energy strategy, Bangladesh needs to adopt a pro-people and pro-environment energy strategy. BEN urges all conscious citizens of the country to come forward to help Bangladesh formulate, adopt, and implement such a strategy.