Across the world, indigenous peoples face arrests, harassment, torture and death in the name of nature conservation. The Kaziranga National Park in India is but one infamous example of this inhumane tendency. Fifty people have been extrajudicially executed by park guards at the infamous “shoot-to-kill” national park in the last three years. Tribal people face being shot, beaten, tortured and killed at the hands of heavily armed park officials. Last year guards shot a 7 year-old boy who is now maimed for life. This violence is being done in the name of conservation. Big conservation organizations including WWF, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Nature Conservancy and Conservation International, among others, have ignored demands that they condemn the practice.
Kaziranga National Park shootings no isolated incident, The Tiger Game shows. The government of India has announced plans to expand this policy in tiger reserves across India. The film The Tiger Game by Indian activist and film-maker Soumitra Ghosh shows that the situation in Kaziranga National Park is not an isolated incident, and that the policy is already a reality in the Buxa Tiger Reserve in West Bengal. The film explores multiple yet overlapping narratives of exploitation, cruelty and injustice, heinous murders of tribal people by forest service employees in the name of wildlife conservation. The film (in English) is available at: 124188855">
Join the Survival International Action Alert and call on government authorities in India to end the deadly shoot-on-sight policy in protected areas at:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/emails/shoot-on-sight
More information (in English) at:
