New Delhi: The developmental projects slated for the Great Nicobar island will be tantamount to the genocide of the Shompens, an indigenous community who live on the island, international indigenous rights organisation, Survial International, said in a report to the United Nations on April 15. “Survival [International] is extremely concerned about the fate of the Shompen,” read the report, which highlights the various environmental, ecological and human rights problems that the megaproject will cause, in addition to the decimation of the Shompen community living on the island.Survival International (SI) has said it will submit this report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD, a body under the United Nations that monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by member parties), relevant United Nations Special Rapporteurs and other relevant UN officials.Impacts of the Great Nicobar megaprojectThe Indian government is planning a slew of developmental projects on the Great Nicobar Island, the southernmost island in the Andaman and Nicobar island group in the Bay of Bengal. These include an international transshipment terminal, a greenfield airport, a township and a power plant to fuel the township. The government has already granted forest and environmental clearances to the Rs 72,000 crore-megaproject despite stiff resistance from conservationists, human rights activists, social scientists and several civil society groups who have raised various environmental, ecological and ethical concerns about the project.The SI report noted that the Shompen, an indigenous community whom the Indian government has categorised as a “Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group”, have never been asked for their Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) for the project. Moreover, because most of the community’s settlements are uncontacted, this would be “impossible” to obtain too, it noted. The community is also clear that they do not want “outsiders” in their forests, and that they do not want their trees to be cut down for the project, the report said.“Don’t come into our forests and cut them down. This is where we collect food for our children and ourselves. We don’t want outsiders in our forests,” the report quotes a Shompen woman as saying in the context of the megaproject.The SI report added that the megaproject would take up around a third of the island, with half of it within the official tribal reserve demarcated for the Shompen and the Nicobarese, another tribal community on the island. Parts of the reserve have already been denotified for the project, and this means that the Nicobarese will not be able to return to their ancestral villages in the reserve, which was already destroyed during the 2004 tsunami when its people moved out to temporary settlements on another part of the island. Four Shompen settlements are also very close to the proposed project area, the report said.Apart from cutting down “millions of trees” for the megaproject, the construction activities that will ensue will not only cause environmental destruction but also destroy the Shompens’ foraging areas, per the report. For instance, the megaport will restrict the mouth of the Galathea River that flows in the island by 90% and this will have “serious effects on the ecosystem upstream”, the report said. This will likely lead to a huge backlog of silt in the floodplains to the north and destroy the pandanus trees that grow along the river. The Shompen depend on these trees as its fruit is one of their food sources. This could force tribal clans to move to other territories, causing conflicts between the tribal settlements.The megaproject that aims to make the southern part of the Great Nicobar Island the “Hong Kong of India” will also increase the current population of the island by 8,000%, which could also result in further encroachment into the Shompens’ territories, the report said. Another concern with the increase in population would be disease, per the report. The Shompen have little to no immunity to many diseases. This could decrease the population of the indigenous tribe which currently stands at just around 300 now. Similar to what happened to the Jarawa, another tribe who live on the neighboring Andaman islands, “human safaris” where tourists are brought to see these communities could further increase in Great Nicobar, again exposing the Shompen to diseases, per the report.Legal violations“Such exploitation is likely to increase the likelihood of epidemics, accidents, dependency of the Shompen on outsiders, and their exposure to alcoholism, sexual harassment and other traumatic experiences. All of these threats have been seen among other Indigenous peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands who have had more sustained contact with outsiders,” the report noted.The Great Nicobar Island Development Project also violates several national and international laws, the report highlighted. Apart from the Indian government not taking the consent of the Shompen and Nicobarese for the project – which violates the ILO Convention, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination – it is also a clear violation of the Shompens’ right to life and health, as per the SI report.It also added that the megaproject violates Article 338A(9) of the Indian Constitution as it has not sought prior consultation with the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, and also the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006 which recognizes the rights of communities over their lands. “Finally, it violates the 2015 Shompen Policy, which states that the welfare and integrity of the Shompen must be prioritised in any large-scale development on the island,” the report read.“Indian authorities were right to arrest the American tourist who illegally landed on North Sentinel Island, home to the uncontacted Sentinelese tribe. But they must act just as swiftly to stop the overwhelming threat they themselves pose to the Shompen by imposing this devastating project on their island,” the report further stated.On March 31 this year, the Indian government arrested a 24-year-old US national who visited North Sentinel Island, a place out of bounds to all people and home to the Sentinelese indigenous community, an uncontacted tribe who have made it clear that they do not want to be disturbed by outsiders in any way.‘Abandon the project’The SI report has called upon the Indian government to abandon all current and future plans for the Great Nicobar project and renotify the territory belonging to the Shompen and Nicobarese in the designated tribal reserve. It has also asked that the government expand the current tribal reserve so that it accurately reflects the Shompens’ territory, and enable the Nicobarese to return to their pre-tsunami villages – a demand that the Nicobarese have been making for several years now.It has also asked the United Nations to raise these concerns at all levels of the organisation, and ask the Indian government to shelve the plan immediately.The report also urged companies and financial institutions interested in the megaproject to withdraw all expressions of interest and tenders to develop, run or otherwise participate in this project, and not finance the project in any way.This is not the first time that activists have warned that the developmental projects upcoming on the Great Nicobar island could be catastrophic to the tribal communities who live there. In February last year, International experts on genocide wrote to Indian President Droupadi Murmu raising concerns regarding the mega-project. They said that the developmental projects were a “death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide”.Researchers, conservationists, environmentalists, political parties and several civil society groups as well as retired administrative officials have been consistently highlighting several concerns about the megaproject as well. In March this year, the Association of Indian Primatologists cautioned that the projects would endanger the Nicobar long-tailed macaque population present there and “gradually wreck its entire ecosystem”. However, Union ministers, including the Minister for Tribal Affairs, have been claiming that the project will not affect people or the environment in any way.