Are environmentalists economic terrorists?

The Indian government has launched a crackdown on Greenpeace and other environmental groups (Sierra Club, 350.org, Avaaz and the Bank Information Center) after intelligence officials accused climate activists of harming the country’s economic security. Authorities over the weekend barred a Greenpeace staff member from traveling to London to speak to British lawmakers about alleged legal and human rights violations in India by Essar, a British-registered energy company. Another Greenpeace staffer was barred from entering India in September despite holding a valid visa. Soon after Modi took office in May, India’s intelligence agency, in a report leaked to the news media, said that advocacy campaigns by Western-funded nongovernmental organizations were “stalling development projects” and had reduced India’s annual economic growth by 2% to 3%. Greenpeace, it said, “is assessed to be posing a potential threat to national economic security.”

The government last year blocked Greenpeace from accessing foreign funds, and Indian media reported this month that authorities had imposed similar restrictions on four U.S.-based environmental advocacy organizations. A representative of one of the groups has had his personal bank account frozen and been ordered to explain every deposit sent from the group’s U.S. office since 2010.

Activists say the five groups are being targeted for campaigning against India’s coal-based energy industry, the source of 80% of the country’s domestic power production and a linchpin of the government’s economic development plans. They have organized protests against the coal projects, arguing not only that the carbon emissions pose an environmental threat but also that the process of awarding coal blocks has been plagued by corruption, environmental degradation and land-grabbing. With one-quarter of its 1.2 billion people lacking electricity, India rejects arguments by green activists that it must move away from coal energy, saying the alternative would be to keep its citizens in poverty. Indian authorities have frequently lashed out at critics of their development strategy, accusing activists of undermining India’s development at the behest of unspecified foreign interests. Last January, Greenpeace activists posing as a cleaning crew scaled the glass facade of Essar’s 21-story offices in Mumbai and unfurled a banner saying, “We Kill Forests,” a reference to the Mahan forest, which would be destroyed to develop the coal mine.

“The groups who’ve been working on coal and climate change are the groups that are being singled out,” said Priya Pillai, the Greenpeace staff member who was blocked from traveling to London. “Is it now an offense in India to speak out for the most marginalized people in the country?” Pillai asked.

“The so-called free speech they are talking about is not free speech, it’s not free opinion; it’s paid opinion,” G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, the national spokesman for Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said, “They are acting as foreign propagandists and foreign agents.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged to make India more business-friendly and begun to chip away at the regulations that domestic and foreign industries claim have stifled investment and economic growth. Last week, at a major business convention in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said U.S. companies were eager to do business with the new government.