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New Delhi, March 7: The government has revoked a visa it had granted to a survivor of the Fukushima nuclear accident scheduled to visit India on invitation from Greenpeace India, the environmental group campaigning against nuclear power claimed today.
Greenpeace India has said the Indian embassy had granted Maya Kobayashi a business visa on February 15, with the information that she had been invited by the organisation to “attend events and meet people”.
But Kobayashi, who was scheduled to interact with members of local communities near sites of proposed nuclear power plants in India, informed Greenpeace officials today that she had received a letter from the embassy cancelling the visa.
“Five survivors from Fukushima have visited around a dozen countries and India is the only country to revoke the visa,” said Karuna Raina of Greenpeace India.
Local communities have been protesting against nuclear power at the site of a plant planned in Jaitapur, Maharashtra, and the near-ready Kudankulam project in Tamil Nadu.
Sources in the industry believe intensive campaigns by anti-nuclear activists have fuelled such protests.
Greenpeace India issued a statement criticising the cancellation of Kobayashi’s visa. “This is an attempt to stifle free speech and democracy,” said executive director Samit Aich.
“The people living near the proposed project sites in India were keen to hear from Kobayashi,” Aich added.
Officials of the external affairs ministry were not immediately available for comment.
Senior industry officials have said, however, that it is wrong to describe Fukushima as a disaster because not a single human life was lost as a consequence of the nuclear accident or the radiation leak that occurred after the reactor was crippled.
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