WA Supporting Farmers and the Sikh Council of Western Australia organised a protest in front of the consulate general of India in solidarity with the Republic day farmers’ protest and tractor parades across India on January 26.
Approximately 500 people joined the “No Farmers, No Food!” event where they hear from community leaders while organisers distributed cool drinks, water and samosas.
“[It was a] great turn out, one of the biggest we had,” Mandeep Singh, one of the organisers, told Green Left. He said another rally on December 11 had drawn about 200 people.
“The best part is that 14 different Sikh organisations got together for the first time in a long time to do this,” he said.
“Today is the world’s biggest protest: 96,000 tractors, millions of people are going to be around Delhi today to protest these three draconian laws put up by the Indian government to completely kill the farming industry... to have total control of the farming industry in India.”
He said that as India largely relies on agricultural-based industry, “not only [are the laws] going to kill farmers and families, they are going to kill the potential of the earth, the soil and try to make it a corporatised, privatised world.”
He said the farmers who doing all the hard work are going to be hit the hardest.
Manjot Singh, Greens candidate for West Swan in the upcoming WA state election, criticised the Indian government for passing the farm laws which favour huge corporations such as Adani. “When India passed the farm [laws] it served its corporate masters at the expense of everyday farmers.”
Singh said state “governments should be for the people, not the corporations and that should be the case everywhere”. He paid tribute to India’s farmers, saying unity made their movement a formidable force.
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