National News

Oxfam running a sinister campaign against Assam tea, LRO writes to MHA asking for probe

March 1, 2021
The Commune

The global non-profit organisation Oxfam is regularly in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Caught in the eye of the storm for suppressing an inquiry into allegations of its staff members in Haiti soliciting sex from underage prostitutes, the global aid organisation is now under the scanner of Indian authorities for running a “motivated campaign” against tea plantations in the north-eastern state of Assam, reports Organiser.
 
An investigation against the UK-founded and Nairobi-headquartered NGO kicked off in February last year at the behest of the activist group Legal Rights Observatory (LRO), which had written to the Ministry of Home Affairs to probe into Oxfam’s “conspiracy” against Assam’s tea industry.

According to the LRO, Oxfam had started a campaign by asking countries to stop purchasing tea grown in Assam’s gardens, as Oxfam alleged that the tea workers in the state had deplorable working conditions and scant workers’ rights.

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a rally in Assam’s Sonitpur, had spoken about the global conspiracy against tea production in Assam. He had said, “People who are conspiring to defame India have stooped so low that they are not sparing even Indian tea. You must have heard in the news that these conspirators are vowing to malign the image of Indian tea in a systematic manner across the world.”

Thanking PM Modi for taking up the issue, LRO had tweeted, “Thanks @narendramodi for directly naming enemies of #Assam Tea! Since yrs, @OxfamIndia headed by CEO @AmitabhBehar (treasurer of @harsh_mander NGO @CEStudies ) running defamatory campaign against #AssamTea using #Bollywood. Hope @himantabiswa @sarbanandsonwal fully crush them”.

Pointing out that Oxfam ran a #TruthAboutTea hashtag on Twitter over the last two years, LRO’s complaint had stated, “The Indian government is now faced with the task to defend its own tea industry because thousands of stories pertaining to the so-called pathetic state of Assam tea workers have already made their way to international media and human rights groups.”
 
LRO’s complaint alleges a “sinister plot” by Oxfam and other allied NGOs to “destroy the reputation of Assam’s tea” and warns of a “massive digital campaign” launched by this controversial NGO to malign India’s image.

According to LRO, the Indian government has the unenviable and very difficult task to correct the perception against Assam’s tea in other countries, a perception that was cultivated by Oxfam.

It must be noted that India is number two in terms of global tea production after China, the latter having a verifiable history of perpetrating human rights violations.

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