April , 2007
One tree cut Five Indians dead
Local residents in Uganda's Mabira forest are up in arms against their government. And all Indians based in Uganda. It must be the first time that a green issue sparked a diplomatic crisis between two countries and a racial outburst . Already three people have died - including several attacks on Asians in Kampala and property worth millions belonging to Asians was also destroyed. At the core of the conflict is 7000 acres of prime forest land to be leased to the Indian-owned Mehta group of industries - for growing sugarcane which is being opposed by the local community which does not want the government to sign away their forest. The tension has been brewing for a while in Uganda now. The Ugandan Parliament is yet to change the status of the forests -campaigners have threatened more violence if the forest is given away. The Mabira forest- one third of....




More about Bahar Dutt
Bahar Dutt is a wildlife conservationist by training. She has worked for the last ten years on crucial wildlife conservation projects in India and abroad. In England she worked at the world famous Jersey Zoo set up by naturalist Gerald Durrell and was involved in assessing the conditions for release of endangered primate in the Amazon forests. . She has over 10 awards to her credit including the Ramnath Goenka Award in 2006 and the Wildscreen Award , UK and the Young Environment Journalist Award 2007. As an environment editor at CNN-IBN she has done a range of stories travelling to far and forgotten corners of this country to expose the nexus between the mining mafia, politicians and corporates. She has posed as a furniture maker to expose the illegal trade in banned timber in the Western Ghats, and the nexus between the police and a mining company in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa. One of her most dramatic exposés involved a cement company of global dimensions that had been operating illegally in the forests of Meghalaya on the India-Bangladesh border. More recently, she and the CNN-IBN team exposed the operations of a miner in Goa who had illegally devastated forest lands. Their story led to the shut down of the mine.



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