Church of England official to visit Orissa mining site

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has expressed concern over the Church of England's investment with a multinational mining company that is facing staunch criticism for setting an alumina refinery in Orissa's Niyamgiri Hills.

The Anglican Church has shares worth $4.1m with Vedanta Resources of billionaire chairman Anil Agarwal. The company is being criticised for its bauxite mine in Niyamgiri Hills in Kalahandi district which the indigenous Dongria Kondh tribe has strongly protested.

According to The Guardian newspaper, the Archbishop of Canterbury has asked officials in charge of the church's investments to look into the mining company's controversial activities. A Church of England official is to travel to the sacred mountain to investigate the same.

Vedanta's proposed mine site is sacred to Kondh people, hundreds of whom have been engaged in months of protests and blockades against the mine. Environmental campaigners say the mine can put at risk the endangered animals and the untouched wildernesses of the hills.

Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy says, "If Vedanta is allowed to go ahead with its plans for mining the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa for bauxite it will lead to the devastation of a whole ecosystem, and the destruction of not just the Dongria Kondh tribal community, but eventually all those whose livelihoods depend on that ecosystem."

The project has also received strong opposition from major human rights organizations including Survival, Amnesty International, ActionAid, and War on Want.

"Vedanta failed even to inform the Dongria Kondh that it plans to turn their sacred mountain into a vast open-pit mine, yet the tribe has the right under international law to give – or withhold – their consent. This is, after all, something which will have a dramatic, terrible impact on their lives," says Survival's director Stephen Corry.

Survival called on both the UN and India's National Human Rights Committee to stop Vedanta Resources' mine in the ancestral home of thousands of tribal people.