India’s Modi Government Comes Down Hard on Greenpeace

Having been engaged in subversive activities for decades, undermining all major developmental activities throughout the world, Greenpeace received a sharp blow on Thursday when India’s Home Ministry posted a notice on its website announcing the suspension of the NGO’s license for six months. The order on the Home Ministry’s website said: “The government hereby suspends the registration of the association. The government is satisfied that the acceptance of foreign contribution by the said organization has prejudicially affected the public interests … and has prejudicially affected the economic interest of the state in violation.”

The ban was imposed after an audit of the environmental group’s bank accounts in September showed the organization had violated rules governing foreign funding, and had withheld information on transactions. The Ministry of Home Affairs froze all its seven bank accounts, and served it a show-cause notice seeking explanation why its license should not be permanently cancelled.

The order found the association in violation of rules under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) for transferring “foreign contributions received in the FCRA designated account, to the FCRA utilization account and from there to … five other bank accounts without informing the authority concerned.” It further said: “The association has under-reported and repeatedly mentioned incorrect amount of foreign contribution received in violation … of FCRA, 2010.”

A senior government official told Reuters: “We have evidence to prove that Greenpeace has been misreporting their funds and using their unaccounted foreign aid to stall crucial development projects.” These projects included coal-fired power projects, genetically modified organisms, mega-industrial projects including the South Korean firm POSCO’s steel plant and Vedanta’s bauxite project, both in the state of Odisha, and hydro-power projects in Arunachal Pradesh, a strategic state on the border with China, Reuters reported.

The move by the government comes after an Intelligence Bureau (IB) report last June, that Greenpeace and other activist groups were damaging India’s economy by campaigning against development projects, the Hindustan Times reported today. The IB red-flagged 188 NGOs, including Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and Action Aid, alleging misuse of foreign funds and suspected extremist links, saying the Center should set up a probe to dig out the truth.