Please send in your name if you wish to sign on this Memorandum that will go to the Vice Chancellor on Wednesday. Please distribute among your networks. Alternatively, please print it out and collect signatures which can be collected from you or sent on by you.
We are shocked and outraged at the shameful incident that took place inside the Arts faculty premises, at around 11:30 am, on 22nd July 2011. The Security staff of the university physically and verbally assaulted a woman and her male colleague, in order to prevent them from distributing pamphlets. Several Delhi Police personnel who were present, stood by and watched the assault, instead of preventing it from continuing. Worse, when some students intervened on behalf of the victims, they and the victims were threatened by the police with arrest. Later the students and several college teachers approached the Dean of Students Welfare and the Proctor, demanding an explanation for, and action against the excessive and outrageous conduct of the Security personnel. The Administration was extremely reluctant to take up the issue, and in fact, locked the main gate to the Proctor’s office when they learnt that teachers and students were on their way to meet the Proctor. The strange explanation that was offered for the behaviour of the Security was that the victims were outsiders to the university, and that they were distributing religious literature which is allegedly against the rules of the university. When asked to produce the rule in question, Proctor’s office could not do so. A police complaint was filed and the medico-legal examination revealed injury and swelling above the left eye. The incident is grave on several counts:
1. Even if it were illegal or against University Rules to distribute religious literature (which it is not), the Security do not have the right to physically assault anyone who does so, even if they are outsiders to the university.
2. The Constitution of India guarantees the right to disseminate religious literature. Therefore, the assault is a direct attack on the Constitution. The University’s defence is an attempt to dangerously and gratuitously communalize the sensitive issue in an attempt to wriggle out of the serious charge of manhandling and physical assault.
3. The fact that one of the victims was a woman did not deter the Security from physical violence and the subsequent specious justification of it. It may be noted that in the absence of any female Security personnel, the incident noted above constitutes gender bias and possibly sexual harassment.
4. Over the last two years, both staff and students of the university have repeatedly been threatened physically and verbally on several occasions by the Security. Recently, the Security and the University administration have taken it upon themselves to decide what is appropriate reading material for members of the University. They have arbitrarily forbidden and disrupted programs, harassed faculty and students of the University who have taken up socio-political, economic, etc., issues that the administration does not approve of. This is absurd per se, but more so in a University space.
5. It is shameful and tragic that the University Security is itself a danger to the campus.
6. It is of profound concern that over the last few years the university administration has displayed a tendency to be increasingly hostile towards democratic activities and indeed to the very idea of democratic culture. They are attempting to change the very character of a University.
We demand:
1. Prompt and stringent action against the Security personnel involved in this incident.
2. The repeal of any Directive requiring permission from the University administration for distribution of pamphlets and other such exercise of intellectual freedom. Such activities are the democratic right of any organization and every individual. It is not the business of the Administration to function as a moral and intellectual custodian of the University.
3. Safe campus for women at all times. The University administration should take immediate measures to ensure this without increasing police presence in the campus.
DEMOCRATIC FRONT AGAINST OPERATION GREEN HUNT, PUNJAB HOLDS A MASSIVE CONVENTION AT JALANDHAR!
BUILD A BROAD SPECTRUM OF RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS!
OPPOSE NEO-LIBERAL POLICIES AND SUPPRESSION OF PEOPLES’ MOVEMENTS THROUGH ARMED FORCES!
On 17th October, when people were celebrating Dussehra to mark the victory of Good over the Evil, the Democratic Front Against Operation Green Hunt, Punjab, held a massive Convention in Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall, Jalandhar on “War against the people & Role of Democratic Forces.” It was addressed by noted pro-people thinker and Booker Award winner writer Arundhati Roy and Gandhian social activist Himanshu Kumar. Hundreds of people from all walks of life – University Professors, Research Scholars, Students, Artists, littérateur, cultural activists, press-persons, farmers, agricultural and industrial laborers, trade unionists, thinkers etc., participated from all across Punjab and Chandigarh. The Convention Hall having a seating capacity of 900 was overfilled and hundreds of people were left to hear the programme from outside the Convention Hall.
The Convention Hall was tastefully decorated with flex-hoardings having appropriate messages. The theme hoarding had the poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller – ‘FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE COMMUNISTS’, with a painting depicting peoples’ struggle in the background. Two others were having poems by two noted peoples’ poets of Punjab Sant Ram Udasi- MAGHDA RAHIN VE SURJA (Shine O Sun brightly) and Pash- ASIN LARANGE SATHI (Comrade! We will fight). There were quotations from Shaheed Bhagat Singh, ‘HAWA MEIN RAHENGI MERE KHIALON KI BIJLIAN’ (I may or may not live, but my ideas will remain galvanizing the air eternally)
The Convention was presided over by a presidium consisting of Dr. Parminder Singh (Professor Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar), Prof. A.K.Maleri (Ludhiana), Sh. Yash Pal (Retired Teacher and Editor VARG CHETNA), Prof. Ajmer Singh Aulakh (Noted pro-people Punjabi Dramatist), Com Gandharav Sen Kochhar and Sh. Naunihal Singh(both from Desh Bhagat Yadgar Committee, formed to honor the martyrs of Gadar Movement).
Arundhati Roy opened her speech with the remark that the Indian state has been waging a war against its own people in many parts of the country such as North East, Kashmir, Punjab and many other places for the last 60 years using military and the police to ruthlessly suppress them. She paid rich compliments to the poor people and tribals living in the forests of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Andhra, West Bengal and Maharashtra, who were fighting valiantly to save their lands, forests, water and mineral wealth from being plundered by the world’s richest companies. Preaching non-violence to the tribals of Chhattisgarh is immoral. To those, who accuse the tribals of being violent, she asked: ‘When people are forced to die of hunger, when they are uprooted after depriving them of their lands and livelihood, in the name of development, is it not violence?’ Is it not ironic to advise those, who have empty stomachs and empty pockets, to follow the Gandhian tools of Hunger strike and boycott of foreign goods?
She said that to oppose operation Green Hunt, one need not go and fight in the jungles of Dantewada. Fighting against injustice at our own place is also an important contribution to this cause. Struggles against SEZ and the exploitative Commission Agent (ARHTIYA) system in Punjab are part of the fight against operation Green Hunt. She called upon the intellectuals and toiling sections of the masses to build a broad spectrum of resistance movements against the neo-liberal policies of the State and its onslaught on the peoples’ movements in the form of armed operations such as Green Hunt.
Commenting on the ongoing events in the states under operation Green Hunt, she said that there is a strong link between development and genocide. There is genocide under the façade of development. When the people are uprooted from their lands, culture sources of livelihood, they are doomed to die. In India Crores of people suffer from the AIDS of malnutrition. Malnutrition not only leads its victim to death, but casts its agonizing shadow on the next generations also.
She said while the Naxals are fighting a protracted war against the capitalist system and big corporates, the Indian state was fighting war against its own people. She suggested having diverse methods of resistance in a wider struggle to challenge oppressive policies of the state.
She said the Green Hunt began in Punjab earlier than Chhattisgarh, with the advent of “Green Revolution”. Green Hunt is infact the phenomenon to deprive the people of their land and the resources attached to it such as water, forests, mines etc. Green Revolution and the farmers’ suicides in its aftermath is pointer to this. About 1,80,000 debt trapped farmers have committed suicides in the country. She deplored the Punjab Govt for having branded the 17 organization of farmers and agri-labourers as Naxalite front organizations. Those who raise their voice against injustice are branded as Naxalite. If the rulers continued to follow the policies of privatization and liberalization, then they shall have to deploy army in the whole country. In two decades of neo-liberal policies, the number of people below poverty line have increased manifold, while 100 people own 25 percent of national wealth.
She said the Indian democracy has become shallow. Democracy doesn’t mean mere periodic elections. Democratic rights of the people are being trampled under the foot. Indian Constitution has lost its meaning as the judiciary, media and Parliament have all been made to serve the corporates and monied people. Media is in the hands of corporates. Courts have gone beyond the reach of common man and have become a tool to endorse neo-liberal anti-people policies of the State.
There was a lively discussion on her speech and she answered most of the questions raised by the participants.
Noted Gandhian Himanshu Kumar, who had gone on a cycle-yatra of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra, after addressing 16 conventions against Operation Green Hunt throughout Punjab on the invitation of the Democratic Front, shared his assessment of the situation prevailing in those states. He said the situation was explosive everywhere. There were many Dantewadas in the making due to anti-people policies of the rulers. He said in Gujrat, the Forest Rights Act envisages grant of land up to 10 acres on lease to tribals in the forest areas. But Modi Government has not granted even an inch of land to them. But the same Govt has gifted away 1,02,000 acres of land to 176 corporate houses. A functioning university has been closed to provide land to Tata’s Nano plant. A hundred people of this country control 25 percent of its wealth. Our Prime Minister says the people are becoming violent. But the question is why after six decades of independence, there is violence. Are only the Naxalite responsible for this violence? In fact the development model, being implemented by the rulers is resulting in the poor becoming poorer and the rich becoming richer. Development has become synonymous with depriving the poor of their livelihood resources, such as land, water, forests, mineral wealth etc., to fill the coffers of the rich. It will definitely breed violence. Instead of following the principles of social justice and equity, we are following the law of jungle, where might is right. This situation has to be changed. Quoting Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave, he said that if injustice and inequity persists in the society, violence is inevitable, because the victims of injustice and inequity cannot be expected to take the things lying down; they will definitely revolt to change the system, to assert their rights. He said injustice must not be tolerated. It should be resisted at all costs. Non-violence should never become an excuse to run away from the fight against injustice.
Both the speakers were presented with the portraits of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, a poster with Pastor Niemoller’s poem, and a set of three books- ‘History of Gadar Party’, ‘History of Naujwan Bharat Sabha’ and ‘Dialogue with the Revolutionaries’. Mrs. Veena wife of Himanshu Kumar, who spent 18 years with him at Dantewada, serving the tribals was also honored.
After the convention Arundhati Roy held an interaction with Research Scholars and students from three universities of Punjab and prominent historians in the Gadar Museum Hall. She along with Himanshu Kumar and his family and Sanjay Kak, went around the museum evincing keen interest in the revolutionary history of Punjab, particularly the Gadar movement.
At the end of the convention the participants passed resolutions with raised hands demanding an end to Operation Green Hunt; withdrawl of military and para-military forces from the tribal areas; disbanding Salwa Judum and such other fascist organizations; recognizing the rights of tribals over their forests, lands, water and natural resources; stopping SEZ and uprooting of tribals in the name of development; roll-back neo-liberal policies of privatization, globalization and liberalization; repeal black laws such as Armed Forces Special Power Act, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act etc.; stop false encounters and implication of innocent people in false criminal cases; revoke the ban imposed on CPI Maoist and its front organizations; allow the pro-people press-persons and democratic organizations to visit tribal areas; hold judicial inquiry in the killing of Maoist leader ‘Azad’ in a fake encounter; stop the conspiracies to foist false cases on Arundhati Roy, Himanshu Kumar, Nisha Biswas, and other noted intellectuals; punish the murderers of peasant leader Sadhu Singh Takhtupura and Pirthipal Singh Alisher and the killers of peasants at Khanna Chamiara in Punjab; Stop implicating leaders and activists of mass organizations of farmers, agri-labourers, employees, unemployed youth in Punjab and other states in false criminal cases and torturing them; Close all the interrogation centers such as the one at Amritsar known as Joint Interrogation Center.
AN EXHIBITION on the HISTORY OF KASHMIR.
Venue: Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University
Date: 21 September 2010
Time: 11.00 AM to 3.00 PM
It has been more than three months since Kashmir has erupted to protest against the murder of civilians by the Indian army. The current phase of protests started on June 11th, when a teenager was killed by a smoke shell fired by Indian security forces. People of Kashmir came out on the streets, en-masse, to demonstrate against this killing. Instead of punishing the culprits who were responsible for this murder, protesters were met with live bullets, tear gas shells, batons, curfew and scores of arrests. According to the Government’s own estimate eighty one people have died since June 11. This includes a numbers of teenagers and even an eight year old child. However, vicious repression unleashed by Indian forces, under impunity granted by the infamous Armed Forces Special Powers Act, has failed to intimidate the Kashmiri people; in fact every act of brutality has brought increasing number protesters on the streets. The latest stage of this decades-old
conflict between the people of Kashmir and the Indian state has only been escalating, with civilian deaths at the hands of the armed forces being reported almost daily.
Today Kashmir has forced us to think critically about Indian democracy. The erosion of democratic space won’t stop at the border of Kashmir; it will engulf us – if it has not done so already. At this crucial juncture it has become imperative for the entire civil society; particularly students to engage themselves with the debate on Kashmir and its future. However, we must remember that the recent protest and repression in Kashmir is not an isolated event, it has a long history of seventy years. If we fail to contextualise the issue then a debate today will be rendered useless. This is particularly important because the mainstream media houses, as usual, are doing their best to trivialise the issue by dissociating it from the historical background.
To start an informed debate on Kashmir and Indian democracy, we invite you to an EXHIBITION on the HISTORY OF KASHMIR.
A Few facts about Kashmir:
700,000 Indian troops are posted in the valley
One soldier for every 14 Kashmiri, biggest militarized non-war zone of the world
80,000 people have been killed, 81 in last three months
International People’s Tribunal found 2700 mass graves where victims of fake encounter killings were buried
Kashmir University Students’ Association has been banned, 15 students were arrested under UAPA for protesting against the recent killings.
Public Meeting
Indian State’s War on People and the Assault on Democratic Voices
3PM-8PM, 24TH APRIL 2010
Gandhi Peace Foundation, Deen Dayal Upadhyay MARG, ITO, DELHI
SPEAKERS: Randhir Singh, Justice Rajender Sachar, PK Vijayan, Madan Kashyap, Sumit Chakravorty, Neelabh, B D Sharma, S A R Geelani, Aparna, Kabir Suman, Darshanpal, Arundhati Roy, Ravinder Goel, Karen Gabriel, N Venuh(NPMHR), S R Sankaran(to be confirmed), Kalpana Mehta, Rajkishore, Varavara Rao, G N Saibaba, Mrigank, Ish Mishra, Radhika Menon, Shivmangal Sidhantkar and others
Operation Green Hunt is an unprecedented military offensive on the people: Indian government has been at war with the people of Kashmir and the North East for decades. In the name of ‘national security and integrity’ and ‘national interest’, the government has been trying to crush the democratic aspirations of these oppressed nationalities with state terror. Through Operation Green Hunt, the government has brought its war on people to the heart of India. If the total number of government forces presently engaged in this Operation is taken in its entirety (including the paramilitary forces and the state police) it comes close to a quarter of a million (2.5 lakh). This is more than double the US forces presently deployed in the occupation of Iraq —approximately 1.2 lakh— and bigger than the armies of Australia, Netherlands and South Africa put together. The war preparations alone speak volumes about the real intentions of the government. Air Force helicopters equipped with guns are used against the adivasis, airstrips are constructed in Raipur and Jagdalpur, tens of Jungle-Warfare schools are established to train the forces in special operations, new barracks and bases to station armed forces are prepared all over the war zone, and public buildings such as schools, panchayat houses and health centres are converted to camps for the Security Forces and torture chambers. In the name of fighting Naxalites/Maoists, new armed forces such as the CoBRA, Jharkhand Jaguar, C-60, etc are raised with public money to unleash terror on the adivasis. With a heinous intent, special emphasis is given by the government to recruit adivasi youths into government forces and state-sponsored vigilante gangs to instigate a bloody internecine war. To top it all, army commanders are deputed to oversee the war operations while the US is providing ‘advisors’, military intelligence, satellite surveillance and overall ‘tactical guidance’.
The hidden objective behind this unprecedented military offensive is to crush all forms of people’s struggles and revolutionary movements so as to clear the way for the giant multinational companies, with whom hundreds of MoUs have been signed by the government. Till September 2009, MoUs worth of Rs.6,69,338 crores have been signed in the adivasi regions of these states (which is 14 percent of the total pledged private investment in the entire country). Arcelor Mittal alone is planning to invest $24 billion for the production of iron-ore in the mineral-rich regions of Jharkhand and Orissa. Likewise, the financial worth of the unexplored bauxite deposits of Orissa alone is estimated to exceed $4 trillion. The powerful foreign and Indian corporations are lying in wait for the government clears the land of the adivasis and smash their resistance, so that they can move into the land with earth-diggers and empty the land out of its minerals. The stage has been set to undertake what has been termed by a Government-appointed committee as the “biggest land-grab after Columbus”. The target this time is not the indigenous inhabitants of North America, but the adivasis of central and eastern India.
The ongoing War on People leaves a trail of devastation and death: In the wake of this war imposed by the government on our own people the death-count in mounting. In a region where 40 people are said to be killed every week on an average (Outlook, 22 February 2010), what the corporate media has missed or has deliberately overlooked is the sheer number of adivasis who died in the hand of the government’s armed forces. Whereas the government has claimed success in killing around 170 ‘Maoists’/‘Naxalites’ during the joint operations under Operation Green Hunt till now, whereas the media quoted the Maoists saying that none of the killed were the members of their organisation. There are reasons to believe that a great part of the dead were unarmed and defenceless villagers killed in cold blood by the joint forces in fake encounters. The killing of adivasis in Gompad, Singanmadugu, Tetemadugu, Dogpadu, Palachelim, Palad, Kachalaram and scores of other villages in Chhattisgarh seems to have followed such a pattern.
An attack on democratic voices: By these acts of fascist repression, the government has made it very clear that the Naxalite movement is not the only target of its war operations. Any movement, organisation or individual that fights for people’s demands and against government policies, is to be branded as a part of the Naxalite/Maoist movement and suppressed by the government through Operation Green Hunt. Swapan Dasgupta, the editor of the journal People’s March in Bengali and owner of Radical Publications was arrested. He died in police custody on 2nd February 2010 even before his trial began due to police torture. He has become the first martyr to fall under the draconian UAPA. Lalmohan Tudu, president of People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) in Lalgarh was picked up from his house and shot dead by the paramilitary forces on 23rd February, 2010. On 20th November 2009, Wadeka Singana, the president of the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh (CMAS), Narayanpatna in Orissa along with another activist was shot dead by the police during a rally to protest against the atrocities committed on women by the government’s armed forces. Two of the CPI(ML) leaders Ganapati Patro and Tapan Malik have been arrested on numerous trumped up charges. In Kalinganagar 28 platoons of special police were used to attempt to forcibly acquire land for a road in service of Tatas. When the Bisthapan Birodhi Janmanch Sukinda led adivasis protested, police firing on 30th March 2010 led to bullet injuries to 16 tribal people. Repression is intensifying in the anti-land acquisition movements of Niyamgiri and Jagatsinghpur and against movements under Lok Sangram Manch in Rayagada of Orissa.
The Vanavasi Chetna Ashram of Himanshu Kumar, a Gandhian social activist working in Dantewada for the past 18 years among the adivasis and fighting against the atrocities of Salwa Judum, was razed to the ground on 17th May 2009. In three eastern districts of Uttar Pradesh no mass activity is allowed by declaring these districts as ‘Naxal-infested.’ Two PUCL activists, Sheema and Vishwa Vijay were arrested in Utter Pradesh. Hundreds of leaders of farmers’ organisations in Punjab were arrested to prevent their democratic right to protest against state killings of farmers and other leaders. Thousands have been imprisoned in jails all over the country and tortured for allegedly being Naxalite/Maoist ‘sympathizers’. People’s organisations like PUCL, IAPL, PUDR, RDF, PDFI, CRPP, APDR, DSU, etc. and their activists have been falsely implicated by the government. This is an attempt to unleash state terror in order to curtail our democratic rights and to silence all voices of dissent against this genocidal Hunt of the Adivasis. A climate of undeclared emergency now prevails in the country in the wake of this war on people and the assault on democratic space by the Indian State.
The Home Minister, who has been campaigning desperately to mobilise support for this US-dictated war on the poorest of the poor, has even gone to the extent of denying the existence of Operation Green Hunt! Similarly, he continues to utter the rhetoric of ‘Talks’ while refusing to take a single step towards creating a conducive atmosphere for any negotiation to take place. Such, lies, hypocrisy and double-talk by Chidambaram with the support of the Arnab Goswamis, Rajdeep Sardesais and his other wily allies in the corporate media, has not been able to hide the truth of this war. Even the Supreme Court of India, while hearing a petition on the ‘disappearance’ of 12 adivasis from Gompad village of Dantewada district during Green Hunt, castigated the government’s offensive. The court observed, “Some of the reports appearing in the media are disturbing. Over two lakh people have been displaced in this fight… Where will they go? What will they grow?” (IBN Live, 17 February 2010).
The resistance to the government’s war on people is growing: The millions of adivasis under direct attack from the state’s offensive are using all means to defend themselves and their jal-jangal-jameen. The democratic and progressive sections of the country have also come out against the government’s war on the people in the last few months. Individuals and organisations within India and abroad have in one voice condemned the government’s genocidal war. Hundreds of protest rallys, dharnas and demonstrations are being organised in different parts of the country and outside. Peasants, workers, employees, intellectuals, artists, writers, civil rights activists, students etc. have registered their strong protest against the government, and demanded an immediate halt to the Operation Green Hunt. The need of the hour therefore is to unite and build the broadest possible solidarity among the people against this war and intensify the resistance. Only an unceasing wave of mass resistance can stop government’s assault on struggles against sale of the country and plunder of resources and suppression of democratic struggles.
On 4th April 2010, the Delhi Police and the Special Intelligence Branch of Andhra Pradesh, arrested and detained Dr Sunil Mandiwal, an assistant professor of Hindi at Delhi University. Dr Mandiwal is a popular social and cultural activist besides being a committed teacher. The police’s excuse for picking up Dr Mandiwal and detaining him till late at night was that they wanted to interrogate him in connection with the Kobad Ghandy case. Dr Mandiwal has been informed by the police that he will continue to be interrogated indefinitely from the morning of 5th April. This arrest is in continuation with ongoing and sustained attempts by the state since the charge-sheet against Kobad Ghandy was filed, to criminalise and stigmatise intellectuals and activists. This arrest raises very profound and disturbing questions about the state of democracy in the country. We appear to be fast returning to an unstated Emergency and its reign of terror.
The University community strongly condemns such attempts to harass, victimise and criminalise members of its community. It strongly condemns the impunity with which the state is violating civil and democratic rights. We demand that the police stop abusing its powers and victimising members of the university community forthwith. We also demand that the Indian state immediately cease its vilification and persecution of its citizens and refrain from creating an Emergency-like situation.
To: The President of India
The President of India,
Rashtrapati Bhavan,
New Delhi – 110 004.
Dear Madam Visitor,
Subject: Assault on Democracy
On 18 February 2010, the Delhi Police presented a charge-sheet against Mr. Kobad Ghandy. This document also alleges criminal activities, and support for criminal activities, against several individuals and organisations that have been active in safeguarding and promoting civil and democratic rights, for several decades now. These organisations and individuals have been actively protesting the violation of civil and democratic rights of large numbers of people in the context of ‘Operation Green Hunt’ – the government’s military offensive against ‘Maoists’. Several of those affected by the allegations in the charge-sheet are members of the academic community of Universities in Delhi, who also happen to share in the work and activities of the organisations identified in it.
The allegations against these individuals and organisations are utterly baseless and unsubstantiated; they consequently appear to be motivated solely by the government’s intention to silence all such protests, and to criminalise all such legitimate and democratic activities. This is in continuation with intensifying attempts by the state to curtail spaces for democratic dissent and protest, within and outside the university, and indeed, to erode the very principles of democracy.
Worldwide, universities have traditionally been a crucial space for freedom of expression, the exploration of ideas and critical debate. They have always been, and should always be, sites where even the strongest critique of the state can be – in fact, must and should be – made possible. This is an essential character, not just of the university as an institution, but of the democratic principles of the society it exists in. The attempt to silence these individuals and organisations, therefore constitutes an assault on this very fundamental essence of the university, as well as on the character of democratic society.
We would like to unequivocally affirm that, for the university to remain a space in which democratic principles and practices are sacrosanct and inviolable, the voices that emerge from it must be allowed to do so freely. We consequently also strongly condemn attempts like the baseless allegations in the charge-sheet, to violate precisely this quality of the university and its community.
We request you, in your capacity as Visitor of Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, to intervene and protect the universities and their communities from such assaults. We also request you to ensure that the individuals and organisations targeted in the charge-sheet are not victimised by the baselessly punitive and retributive actions of the state, and that their civil and democratic rights are upheld.
The Delhi University Campaign Against War on People invites concerned organizations and individuals for a preparatory meeting to address issues of state violence and repression and the erosion of democratic spaces, currently epitomised by ‘Operation Green Hunt’. The objective of this preparatory meeting is to jointly organize a future course of action.
Date and time: 12.03.2010, 2:30 p.m.
Venue: Room no. 207, Indian Social Institute, Lodhi Road, New Delhi.
Press Note based on Reports in the Local Languages involved, Fact-finding Reports of teams of Democratic and Civil Rights Organisations and the Statements issued by the CPI (Maoist)
The last quarter of 2009 has been quite significant in the annals of history of the Indian subcontinent with the much publicised war, euphemistically called as Operation Green Hunt, of the Government of India on the Adivasis-the poorest of the poor- of the region ostensibly to usher in, what is being time and again termed as Progress, Prosperity and Peace. The tragedy unfolding behind the smokescreen of this media blitz of the Government of India should be brought to the notice of one and all for its alleged intentions, and the real, concrete fallout of this campaign that is taking place under the direct guidance of the learned, erudite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the lawyer/politician/finance minister turned Home Minister P Chidambaram.
An unprecedented military offensive
If the total number of government forces presently engaged in this operation is taken in its entirety (including the paramilitary forces and the state elite police) it comes close to a quarter of a million. This is more than double the US forces presently deployed in the occupation of Iraq-approximately 120 thousand in September 2009-and bigger than the armies of Australia, Netherlands and South Africa put together. The preparations speak volumes about the real intentions of the government as Indian Air Force helicopters turned into gun ships are being used against adivasis, airstrips constructed in Raipur and Jagdalpur, jungle-warfare schools opened to train the forces in special operations, new barracks and bases to station armed forces are established all over the war zone, public buildings including schools and panchayat houses are converted to paramilitary and police camps and torture chambers. To top it all, army commanders are overseeing the war operations while US is providing ‘advisors’, military intelligence, satellite surveillance and ‘guidance’-in one word called logistic support.
Contrary to the claims of the government, to secure the land against “the single largest internal security threat”-Naxalism-to this country, what is unfolding to the concern and anguish of every democratic and progressive mind is the calculated assault on the tribal people inhabiting the forests of Jharkhand, West Bengal stretching from Paschimi Midnapur-Bankura-Purulia in West Bengal to Srikakulam-Vishakhapatnam-Vizianagaram-East Godavari in North Andhra Pradesh and Khammam-Warangal-Adilabad in North Telangana as well as the eastern districts of Maharashtra – Gadchiroli and Chandrapur. The war zone under the blue-print of the Operation Green Hunt slated by the Government of India includes the Southern districts of Orissa – Koraput, Gajapati, Ganjam and Mulkangiri.
This has added yet another sordid chapter to the continuing assault on the tribals of the subcontinent in the form of Destruction, Destitution, Displacement and Death (four dreaded Ds of the Indian state’s policy). Thus the campaign for Prosperity, Progress and Peace by the Government of India under the UPA government is bringing in untold miseries to the adivasis in the form of Destruction of their lives and livelihoods, growing Destitution among them, massive Displacement running into hundreds of thousands due to increasing atrocities of barbaric dimensions by the paramilitary and security personnel, and last but not the least Deaths and Disappearances of tribals who have refused to leave the forest areas which are their natural habitats. Thousands of paramilitary, CoBRA, Greyhounds, C-60 and other elite armed police forces reared for this purpose by the state governments are being deployed in each and every part of Dandakaranya and other regions under this operation. These forces are entering forests, hills and village settlements unleashing immense brutality on unarmed and defenceless adivasis.
Adding intrigue to this murderous exercise, the Home Minister, who has been, and is still travelling the length and breadth of this country, announcing the various facets of this US inspired war on the poorest of the poor of this land, is the sudden and audacious denial by the minister himself about the presence of any such operation termed as the Operation Green Hunt. What provokes any discerning mind into consternation is the total blackout in the media of continuing atrocities on the tribals while P Chidambaram who had earlier graphically explained the various manifests of the Operation goes on a denial mode of such a massive military exercise-with the paramilitary belonging to the CRPF, BSF, CoBRA, Grey Hounds, C-60, SPOs and what not deployed in the forest tracts of Central and East India-unheard or untold in the history of this region.
The terror of development
While this massive operation is taking place in the rural interiors of Central and Eastern India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke with a forked tongue at the Chief Minister’s Conference on Implementation of the Forest Rights Act 2006, on 4 November 2009 in New Delhi. To quote: “There has been a systemic failure in giving the tribals a stake in the modern economic processes that inexorably intrude into their living spaces. The alienation built over decades is now taking a dangerous turn in some parts of our country. The systematic exploitation and social and economic abuse of our tribal communities can no longer be tolerated.” But the Prime Minister was quick to add while stressing the need to make tribals “the primary beneficiaries of the development process”, the need to win the “the battle for their hearts and their minds”.
What is worth mentioning here is that the geographical terrain, where the government’s military offensive is planned, is very well-endowed with natural resources like minerals, forest wealth, biodiversity and water resources, and has been the target of systematic usurpation by several large, both Indian and foreign, corporations. So far, the resistance of the local indigenous people against their displacement and dispossession has prevented the government-backed corporates from exploiting the natural resources for their own profits and without regard to ecological and social concerns. As hundreds of MoUs have been signed by the various state governments under the auspices of the Central Government and the foreign and domestic corporations the government is deliberately hiding the truth behind this unprecedented military offensive as an attempt to crush democratic and popular resistance against dispossession and impoverishment. Significantly the Prime Minister himself is on record talking about the need to make way for the vast mineral and other forest wealth in these forest lands to be exploited to facilitate the march to progress. This is corroborated by the statement of the Home Minister about the need to ‘secure the whole area’ first so as to usher in ‘development’. Operation Green Hunt thus is unequivocally a calculated move towards facilitating the entry and operation of these large corporations and paving the way for unbridled exploitation of the natural resources and people of these regions.
Operation Green Hunt-a euphemism for genocide of the tribals
Of significance is the number of killings that has happened ever since the commencement of the Operation Green Hunt, say from the third week of September under the gaze of the ‘Reality Show’ driven sensation hungry media wherein more than 4000 CRPF and 600 anti-Naxal CoBRA commandos entered Dantewada’s Chintagufa area. People resisted this intrusion by the government’s armed forces, and in the battles six soldiers, including two commanding officers were killed.
To avenge the death of the armed forces, the troops ‘managed’ a massacre of adivasis while resorting to arson of their villages, in which at least nine villagers were murdered in cold blood and four villages got totally gutted leaving nothing behind. The government claimed that all those killed were Maoists, while the eye-witness accounts, local media reports and independent fact-finding visits have confirmed that it was yet another stage-managed genocide of adivasi villagers, who were picked up and killed. Starting from the incident of 9 August 2009 in Vechhapal under Bhairamgarh police station (Bijapur district) to the one near Kistaram (Dantewada district) on 10 November 2009, all have been fake-encounters. Seventy adivasis in total have been killed in these fake encounters in this period. It should be noted that not a single one among them was a Maoist!
The government’s claim of killing 7 ‘Naxals’ in an encounter on the 10th of November 2009 near Kistaram is incorrect as the CPI (Maoist) issued a statement stating that none of their cadres died in the incident. It must be registered here that even if one of their cadres get killed, the CPI (Maoist) declares it openly apropos the normal conduct of CPI (Maoist) is observed. On 9 December, more than 500 paramilitary and policemen entered the area under Kistaram police station from Cherla Dommaguda police station area in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh. They reached Tetemadgu village through Dokpad and Kurigundam, and encircled it. From morning to evening of that day, the police burnt down houses, women were particularly targeted through sexual violence while the rest of the villagers got brutally tortured. They took away four persons from the village. Two more villagers from Dokpad who came to visit their relatives in Tetemadgu were also abducted in this manner. After spending the night in the forests, the police force reached Palodi village in the morning of 10 December; they detained yet another adivasi while completely burning down the village. The police then took all the seven captives near Kistaram and riddled them with bullets. The government is quick to claim this to be an ‘encounter’ with the Maoists. The police took away a few more adivasi villagers with them. Till date they are untraceable.
Between 7-9 November hundreds of CRPF, CoBRA, SPOs and police forces unleashed a reign of terror in the adivasi villages under Chintagufa police station. They attacked the villagers of Burkapal on 7 November, Elma Gonda on 8 November, Minpa on 9 November, and forcibly abducted 24 persons. Their whereabouts or their fate is still unknown even after two months. Given the track record of the security personnel operating with impunity there is every reason to apprehend that the police has murdered many of them and disposed of the dead bodies.
At least seven adivasis were murdered by the paramilitary-Salwa Judum forces in different villages under Kistaram police station between 9 and 10 November 2009. Of them six were abducted from Tetemadgu and Dogpadu villages on 9 November while the other was picked up the next day from Palodi village. As the recent Tehelka field investigation with eyewitness accounts confirms, the two villagers from Dogpadu-Madkam Budra and Vando Mangdu-were dragged from their villages and shot dead. Similarly, eight adivasi villagers were killed on a single day on 9 January 2010 to be branded later as ‘Maoists’. While four were murdered in Sarpanguda under Jegurgonda police station in Dantewada, the other four were killed in Farasgaon under Benur police station in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh.
The body count of the adivasis is mounting day by day with intensification of the Operation Green Hunt. According to the government’s own admission 107 ‘Maoists’ have been killed during the joint operations under Green Hunt till mid-January. As more and more information pour in from local reporters and facts collected by activists braving heavy repression and threat to their lives, there are reasons to believe that as much as four-fifth of them were unarmed and defenceless adivasi villagers who have been killed in cold blood in fake encounters.
Operation Green Hunt has replaced the Salwa Judum-one of the worst murderous campaigns on the adivasis-with much more brutality as is evident from what is unfolding in the poor tribal hamlets in this mineral rich forest tracts. If in Salwa Judum more than a thousand adivasis lost their lives in Dantewada and Bijapur districts alone, in the hands of the 4500 SPOs created by the government, the present onslaught reaching fascist proportions is adding to those statistics of the growing casualties of adivasis. More than 700 villages were burnt down and close to three hundred thousand people were displaced from their homes in the worst days of Salwa Judum. In all the places where the Operation Green Hunt is on, the police, paramilitary and SPOs are resorting to large scale arson, rape, torture, illegal detention, destruction of property, burning down of villages apart from regularly gunning down adivasis in so-called encounters claiming them as Maoists. The print media has reported that an additional two hundred thousand adivasis have left their homes and took refuge in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh in the last three months fearing atrocities during Operation Green Hunt. Moreover, the Chhattisgarh government is planning to make strategic hamlets out of the displaced population forced to live in government-run camps, thereby permanently dispossessing them of their ancestral land.
In Maharashtra, Operation Green Hunt was launched in the second week of October from the Gadchiroli district, in which 10,000 troops took part. M17 helicopters of the Air Force gave surveillance and logistical support. 18 bases have been established by the paramilitary forces from where they are launching combing operations and extermination campaigns. Large scale repression of people are reported from in the eastern districts of the state, where the police and Anti-Naxal forces like the C-60 have a long history of committing atrocities and terror on the adivasi people in the name of curbing Maoism/Naxalism. In March 2009, policemen from the C-60 force gang-raped a 13 year old girl in the Pavarvel village in Dhanora tehsil. In the Kosimi village of the same tehsil, policemen from Gyarapatti police station raped and killed Mynaben, a 52 year old adivasi villager in May last year. In the latest assault on the people, the paramilitary forces are given a license to kill and torture by the government.
In Jharkhand too, the initial rhetoric of peace talks and negotiations by the newly-elected chief minister Shibu Soren has now taken a u-turn for support to the Operation Green Hunt. The government has stepped up the mobilisation of its armed forces by bringing in CRPF battalions from Asom and Tripura. The unleashing of state terror on the people of Jharkhand is not new, particularly on those sections who have resisted the state-sponsored corporate attack on jal-jangal-jameen. In fact, the police and paramilitary forces along with the vigilante gangs propped up by them like the Nagarik Suraksha Samiti, Tritiya Prastuti Committee, Sunlight Sena etc. have long been a byname for repression, torture, rape and murder. Like Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, Jharkhand too has recently raised a special ‘anti-Naxal’ force called the Jharkhand Jaguars in order to crush any voice of dissent against the government’s policy of destruction in the name of development. Anyone and everyone who dares to stand up against the attack on the lives and livelihood of the oppressed, is branded as a Maoist or a Maoist sympathiser, and persecuted. Various people’s movements against the displacement of adivasis, civil rights organisations, etc. are facing state repression for a long time in Jharkhand, the scale and brutality of which is going to go up during the fascist extermination campaign of Operation Green Hunt. We can already see the inevitable fallouts of this war on people as exemplified by the murder of Rajendra Yadav who was picked up on the night of 31st December 2009 by Jharkhand police, tortured in the name of interrogation, and killed in custody. Similarly in Orissa there are several cases of rape, arson and killing reported from Narayanpatna ever since the commencement of the operation. In fact the president of the Chhasi Adivasi Muliya Sangha was shot dead while in a demonstration before the police and the paramilitary.
Draconian Laws and blanket ban on any form of dissent
Despite the rhetoric of the battle for the hearts and minds from none other than the Prime Minister the manner in which the security and paramilitary forces have wreaked havoc in the lives of the adivasis stand testimony to the utter disregard for the laws and procedures of the land. In fact several laws like the UAPA and the Chhattisgarh Special Areas Act are being conveniently used on anyone and everyone who dares to raise the voice against the policies of the government. The recent arrest and booking of KN Pandit, veteran trade unionist and anti-displacement activist in Ranchi and Gananath Patra, former professor and veteran communist leader who is also the official advisor of Chhasi Adivasi Muliya Sangha of Narayanpatna at Bhubaneswar are fresh examples of the increasing lawlessness of the police and paramilitary in their desperate attempts to browbeat the people into submission. In fact any effort to make independent fact findings into these areas have become next to impossible with the police and the murderous goons of the local parties join hands to humiliate and assault the civil rights activists and intellectuals who took care to visit these areas. The recent case of the humiliation and assault on the all women fact finding team that went to the villages in Narayanpatna to record the testimonies of the rape victims in the police stations let alone in public by the police and the goons speaks volumes of how the Government of India would want to browbeat the hearts and minds of the people into submission. Another case was the detention of the 30 member fact finding team that was trying to visit the areas of atrocities in Dantewada and Bijapur districts.
What is evident from the increasing arrests, incarceration of activists of people’s movements fighting for the rights to lives and livelihoods is a clear cut case of the government bringing in ‘development’ through the barrel of the gun. As is evident from the protests and various submissions made to the governments at the Centre and the states it is evident that these talk about development is nothing but a total loot and plunder of the local people and their resources. The fact that all these areas that are under the cross hairs of the war machine of the government come under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution has hardly deterred the local administration, police and the paramilitary to break laws and provisions with impunity.
Despite the heavy militarisation and the terror unleashed by the governments the protests from the people against such anti-people pro-corporate/multinational policies of sell-out have only increased. The efforts of the centre and the states to handle the situation as a pure ‘law and order question’ have further deteriorated the situation. The Indian government’s proposed military offensive will repeat that story all over again. Instead of addressing the source of the conflict, instead of addressing the genuine grievances of the marginalized people the Indian state seems to have decided to opt for the extremely myopic option of launching a military offensive. As conscious citizens of this country and sensitive to the questions of inclusive growth, justice and equality for all we strongly demand the government at the centre and the states to immediately stop this extermination of the adivasis reminiscent to the days of the US genocide of the Red Indians.
[This is a note that was released to the International Press in a Press Conference held in Foreign Correspondents, Club, New Delhi on the 5th March, 2010 at 3 PM]
The Delhi Police produced its chargesheet against Mr Kobad Ghandy in the Tees Hazari Courts New Delhi on 18.02.2010. This document has baselessly alleged unlawful activities against a number of individuals and legitimate democratic organisations working in the public domain. These include Dr. Darshan Pal of the People’s Democratic Front of India (PDFI), Mr. GN Saibaba, a professor with Delhi University, Mr. Rona Wilson, Secretary of the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners, Mr. Gautam Navlakha of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), PUDR itself, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), the Democratic Students’ Union (DSU), Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), the PDFI, the Indian Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL), Anti-displacement Front (ADF) and the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR; wrongly named in the chargesheet as the Association of Peoples For Democratic Rights). APDR, PUDR and PUCL in particular have been solely concerned with safeguarding democratic and civil rights in India for over 30 years, and are internationally reputed for their rigorous and scrupulous approach to these issues. Among the charges against these established and respected organisations, is the completely unfounded one that they are playing “a very important role to broaden the base of the [CPI (Maoist)] outfit”. The chargesheet has provided no evidence whatsoever to substantiate its allegations.
These individuals and organisations have been actively and openly working for democratic and civil rights and liberties across the length and breadth of country, on issues ranging from displacement, people’s movements and rural destitution to issues of ethnic conflict and custodial deaths. Today, however, they are being targeted in the chargesheet because, along with hundreds of others, they have actively and openly protested ‘Operation Green Hunt’ (OGH). They have been consistently engaging with violations of civil and democratic rights arising out of the conflict between the Indian state and the tribal communities that have been resisting it. The Indian state over the last few months has targeted the people protesting against OGH, as well as those who have taken up their cause. The chargesheet is yet another instance of the state’s attempt to criminalise any resistance or protests against its actions in the areas covered by OGH. The allegations in it only suggest the state’s intention to clamp down on legitimate protest against its undemocratic practices, and especially against its own attacks on its citizens – in fact, these allegations themselves constitute an unprovoked and unwarranted attack on these democratic and civil liberties organisations and individuals. It aims to further cramp already restricted democratic spaces: as the Supreme Court recently observed (with reference to charges against Mr. Himanshu Kumar of being a Maoist sympathiser) in the name of ‘sympathizers’ and ‘sympathizers of sympathizers’ and so on, all criticism and opposition is being stifled. It seems the intent of the chargesheet is also to intimidate and silence all those who are engaged in protesting OGH.
Evident in this is a 21st century, Indian version of McCarthyism: an attempt to silence independent voices that was evident in the trumped-up case against Mr. Binayak Sen, in the brutal illegality of the demolition of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram and the eviction of Mr. Himanshu Kumar – all in the name of the fear of ‘Maoists’. The fear psychosis is being sought to be generated so openly now, that the union government even tried to allege that Maoists were infiltrating the Telengana movement in Osmania University – which it had to recant in the Supreme Court recently. We collectively and unitedly condemn the state’s attempt to intimidate and silence legitimate protests and affirm the democratic rights of all people. In the light of the above we also reiterate our demand that the state engage in genuine dialogue with the CPI (Maoist) instead of prosecuting war against its own people.
Signed: People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL)
Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR)
Committee for Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP)
Jan Hastakshep
Campaign for Peace & Democracy (Manipur)
Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR)
Saheli
Kashipur Solidarity Group
On 17th December a rally was held in New Delhi (from Ramlila Ground to Parliament Street) to protest the state’s ongoing offensive against the people of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashra. People from many states joined the rally. For more information…http://radicalnotes.com/journal/2009/12/11/rally-against-war-on-people-december-17-2009/
On 4th December, a convention of organizations and campaigns from all over India was held in New Delhi, to protest the state’s ongoing offensive on the tribal people. For more information… CLICK
The “Campaign Against War on People,” organized a seminar on state repression in West Bengal and Orissa in the North Campus of University of Delhi on 14th December. About an hour before the seminar was scheduled to start, Dr. Anirban Kar, who teaches economics in Delhi School of Economics was stopped from putting posters for the seminar. The security officer, who stopped him, misbehaved with and threatened Dr. Kar, when the latter asked the officer to show him the statute that bans putting posters in that place. For years now these spaces in the University have been used to put up posters. Anyhow, the security officer took Dr. Kar’s University Identity Card (which was later restored to him). The officer, apparently with the permission of the Proctor, told Dr. Kar that the administration will file a court case against him. It needs to be mentioned that the walls of university buildings are plastered with posters of all kinds, including massive business advertisements. Yet the administration finds the A4 size posters of the Campaign most offensive. This incident is no exception. The administration tried to stop a public meeting organized by the Campaign on 13th November, in the University.
Experience has taught us that one of the first moves the administration makes to stop potentially powerful movements of people is the use of threat and pressure based on officio/legal action. On this occasion it went beyond this by using physical force, showing in the process how readily the administration uses violence against students, and even professors.We have repeatedly pointed out the manner in which space for democratically protesting oppressive policies are shrinking. This incident goes to show us the degree of the damage being done. In any case Delhi University has a strange way of demarcating democratic spaces. Small stretches of walls are termed ‘walls of democracy,’ as if (as a member of the Campaign suggested) the rest are walls of Fascism. The issue is not merely of the victimization of Dr. Kar (though that is an important issue that also needs to be addressed), but also of the attempts of the state to reduce our freedom to narrow and easily controllable limits, so as to do away with the possibility of difficult questions that we could raise.
We, the members of this Campaign strongly condemn such moves of the administration and appeal to all democratic voices to join us in our protest.
Seminar on ‘State violence against people’s movement in Orissa and West Bengal’,
Speakers:
Parthasarathi Ray (from Sanhati) on Lalgarh
Bhalachandra Sarangi (Member of the fact-finding team to Narayanpatna and spokesperson for CPI-ML(New Democracy) in Orissa) on movements in Orissa including Narayanpatna
Date: 14th December (Monday)
Venue: Activity Centre (above the Arts Faculty Canteen, North Campus), Delhi University
Time: 10 am-1 pm
Rally Against War on People
from Ramlila Maidan to Parliament Street
11 am, 17th December 2009,
New Delhi
Dear friends,
For a vast majority of the people of our country, these are indeed difficult times. It is not just because the prices of every commodity in the market is rising sky high, not even because jobs are being cut and workers are facing retrenchment, also not because health care and education are increasingly going out of reach of the man on the street. In this period of an all-encompassing crisis, when a vast majority of the people in the cities and villages of this country are struggling to procure even the basic necessities of life and to make the ends meet, a greater and more immediate crisis is looming large on a section of the most oppressed people of this country: the entire population of central and eastern India. This crisis is forced upon them because the Indian government led by Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram has declared war on the people, a war not against any external enemy, but against our own people. This war however is not going to be confined to the forested and far-off adivasi regions alone. It will engulf the entire country and all its inhabitants, including each one of us. In a desperate attempt to wriggle itself and the big corporations out of the present economic crisis which has engulfed the entire capitalist world and their dependent economies, the Indian government is at war against the poorest and most exploited of our people, a war that we must make all efforts to stop.
A war against the people: As a result of the government’s war preparations, a civil war situation is building up in the regions of central and eastern India inhabited primarily by the adivasis which include Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa, West Bengal and adjoining areas. After Kashmir and North East, where the Indian government has been fighting the nationality movements for decades, it is now opening its third war front. The central government is drawing its troops from Kashmir and the North East for deployment in the regions where Operation Green Hunt is presently going on. More than 100,000 soldiers of the Indian security forces are already operating in these regions, and these forces are being increased to 2,50,000. Central paramilitary forces such as CRPF, IRB, ITBP, CISF, along with Grey Hounds, CoBRA and other special forces, state police and Special Police Officers, state-sponsored vigilante gangs like Salwa Judum, Sendra, Nagarik Suraksha Samiti, Tritiya Prastuti Samiti, Harmad Vahini, Sunlight Sena etc., all are being pitted against the adivasi people. The special units of the army such as the Rashtriya Rifles are being readied for deployment, air force helicopters and drone surveillance aircrafts are brought in to strengthen the war operations. The government is taking help of intelligence inputs from US defense satellites too, as was revealed during the joint paramilitary operations in Lalgarh, West Bengal. It is worth noting that many teams of US security establishment secretly visited Chhattisgarh in order to assess and assist in the government’s war preparations. Draconian laws like the UAPA, NSA, Chhattisgarh Public Securities Act etc. has been put in place to silence all voices of resistance and dissent and to give the security forces a license to kill without impunity, as AFSPA has been used in Kashmir and North East. This is in addition to the state’s routine acts of extra-legal murders through fake encounters and custodial killings, of using torture, rape and arson as means to crush the people’s resistance against exploitation and repression in all these regions. The results of these acts by the government have already started to take its toll.
The war has begun: After the war was started on 1st November this year, the casualty among the people is escalating by each passing day, as grows the number of burnt villages, persons displaced, injured or arrested, as per the sporadic news from the war zone that through the media. By mid-November, more than 12 villages have been completely ravaged, their inhabitants forced to take shelter deep in the forests. Two separate incidents of mass killings took place in Dandakaranya and one in Orissa, in which more than 17 adivasis were murdered by the government’s armed forces. There are reports that thousands of adivasis are abandoning their houses in Chhattisgarh and migrating to adjoining Andhra Pradesh after the Operation Green Hunt was launched. The renewed offensive by the joint forces in Lalgarh too has left hundreds of protesting adivasis homeless. The brutalities of the government forces are increasing by every passing day as can also be seen in Narayanpatna, Orissa. Last month, adivasi peasants demonstrating for land rights were fired at by the police killing two of their leaders. Seventy two people were arrested on cooked-up charges. Cantonments are being built and school buildings are being used to station Security Forces in these areas. Likewise, three districts in UP in adjoining Allahabad have been declared ‘Naxal-infested’, and a meeting of peasants and workers was disallowed by the government. No open meeting is now allowed in this region. And these are only two examples of state terror unleashed during the present war. Given these developments, the number of dead and injured people along with the displaced and destroyed villages will only mount in the coming weeks if the Indian government does not call for an immediate halt to this military offensive against the people, against our fellow citizens. And the government is not going to stop this war on its own, it can only be stopped by building up a strong people’s resistance against it.
Whose war and against whom? The declared aim of this war is to ‘re-establish the sovereign rule of the Indian state’ by clearing off these areas from the Naxalites or Maoists. However, this war is being fought by the Indian government at the behest of the corporates and for their benefit, targeting the life and livelihood of lakhs of adivasis. The worldwide imperialist economy presently faces its most severe crisis after 1929. The military-industrial complex, which includes multinational and Indian big business interests, is looking for wars that have the potential to artificially generate the much needed demand for their products in a crisis-ridden market. Moreover, this war is an attempt to forcibly displace the adivasis from their ancestral homeland and hand over their land and forests to the multinational and Indian corporations who will then plunder the rich natural resources. One of the main proponents of this war on people is Manmohan Singh, who was an economist with the World Bank controlled by US imperialism before he joined active politics. Till the day of becoming the finance minister of the UPA government, P Chidambaram was a member of the Board of Directors in Vedanta, the British mining multinational. He was also the lawyer of the notorious US electricity corporation, Enron. Both Singh and Chidambaram have been die-hard advocates of foreign investment to the country, the two foremost agents of US imperialism in the country. Three years back in June 2006, the prime minister told the parliament that ‘the environment for foreign investment is going to be severely affected if left-wing extremism continues to grow and expand in the mineral-rich regions of the country’. This makes it very clear in whose interest the government is waging this war. This at the same time his war is to crush all forms of resistance against the policies of the government. In the pretext of war, the government has imposed an undeclared emergency, and is curbing the democratic rights of the citizens guaranteed by the Constitution. Right to free speech and opinion is restricted or is denied outright, the media is being muffled, bribed and censored to ensure that only the government’s version gets publicity. A situation already exists in many parts of the country where any protest or dissent against government policies is branded as anti-national or ‘against the national interests’, where all forms of resistance is termed as ‘Naxalism’ or ‘Maoist’, and persecuted.
After ‘liberalisation’ in 1991, and particularly from the year 2001 there has been a scramble among various state governments to outsmart one another in inviting foreign investors and big business houses of the country to their respective states, and to conclude hundreds of agreements and Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs). In Jharkhand itself, more than 100 MoUs were signed by the state government with Mittal, Jindal, Tata, RioTinto and other foreign and Indian big corporations in the last nine years involving mining projects, steel and aluminum plants, electricity plants, dams, and so on. In Orissa too, companies like Vedanta, POSCO, RioTinto, Tata, Hindalco, Jindal and Mittal are eyeing for the unexplored natural resources. The BJP government in Chhattisgarh has already concluded many agreements with big corporations to set up Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the mining sector. In these three states alone, agreements worth Rs.873,896 crores of investment in various projects have been concluded till September 2009. In addition, the people of Bengal, Maharashtra, etc. too are facing the forceful acquisition of land, leading to an outburst of people’s anger and protests. There are many more MoUs, the information of which the government has been hiding from public view.
The most oppressed of our people and their resources are the targets of this war: Exploited and dispossessed continually by the feudal forces as well as by British colonialism, the adivasis who have been systematically robbed of their natural resources, have continued to pay the heaviest price for ‘national interest’ even in the post-1947 period. They have been forced to give up their land and forests for big projects, be it for mining or for big dams. Even though constituting about 10 percent of the country’s population, the adivasis constitute more than 40 percent of the 5 crore people displaced by such projects in the last six decades. The rich of the country have become richer by plundering the adivasi land, who themselves have remained the poorest of people. They are among the people who come to our towns, build our houses, construct your metro, work on our roads… people who paid with their land, homes and lives for the benefit of a few. Theirs are the land where our steel, coal, electricity comes from, but has got nothing in return. The rulers have been mindlessly selling away the most precious minerals of the country to the MNCs to extract super-profits at a time when minerals have become scarce anywhere in the world. The government intensified its onslaught on the people soon after the agreements and MoUs were concluded, and the adivasis in particular subsequently became the targets of state terror.
The unleashing of Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh have left hundreds of adivasis dead, raped and mutilated, thousands of houses burnt, and more than seven hundred villages displaced. Children were decapitated, dead bodies of adivasi villagers were mutilated and hung from trees, rape and violence on women was used as a means of state repression. Around three lakh adivasis were forced to leave their villages, of which more than fifty thousand were forcibly kept in Salwa Judum camps. As a recent government report admits, the first of these police camps that came up in Chattishgarh were financed by Essar and Tata. Those who have refused to be herded into these camps or give up their land are being all termed as ‘Naxalites’, and the Operation Green Hunt launched against them. The peasants who are largely dependent on land, forests and rivers for their livelihood, particularly the adivasis, have refused to give up their resources for corporate plunder. Inheritors of a glorious legacy of uncompromising anti-colonial struggles, the adivasi masses have organized themselves against age-old exploitation and oppression, against forcible land-acquisition for big projects, and for defending their lives and livelihood. Both unarmed and armed, the resistance movements of the people have been able to beat back the brutal repression of the state, be in the form of police-paramilitary or the Salwa Judum-Harmad. The present war is an intensification of the offensive by the government which has so far failed to crush the people. Though the state is presently targeting the adivasi-inhabited regions for its war offensive, this war is not against the adivasis alone. It is against all the oppressed people who have chosen the path of resistance. Nor is it only against the Maoists and or all Naxalites, but is against any and every people’s movement and organization that questions or challenges the imperialist-dictated policies of the government at the centre or the state.
All the democratic and progressive forces of the country must come together to resist this war. We need to demand that the Indian government must stop this war on people, followed by an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its armed forces from these regions. We must demand that all the MoUs and agreements with foreign multinationals and Indian corporations for the plunder of natural resources of the people must be scrapped, and the land forcibly acquired for such projects must be restored to their rightful owners. The rights of the people over land and forests must also be acknowledged.
Participate in large numbers in the RALLY AGAINST WAR ON PEOPLE on 17th Dec. 2009 from Ramlila Maidan to Parliament Street (Assemble at Ramlila Maidan, 11 am).
Forum Against War on People
Contact: Mob. 9971164713, Email: stopwaroncitizens@gmail.com
To
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister,
Government of India,
South Block, Raisina Hill,
New Delhi,
India-110 011.
Sir,
For some time now, there has been a heated discussion in various public forums on the intentions of your government to deploy 100,000 troops – ostensibly against Maoist insurgents – in 7 states in central and eastern India, including Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, a vast area inhabited by tribal groups. To this end, forces withdrawn from Jammu and Kashmir (e.g. Rashtriya Rifles) and the Northeast are joining battalions of CRPF commandos, the ITBP, the CoBRA and the BSF, equipped with bomb trucks, bomb blankets, bomb baskets, and sophisticated new weaponry. The IAF has also been called in to provide air support to these ground forces. The actual strength of the intended targets of this massive action – the Maoist cadre – is believed to be no more than 20,000. We, the undersigned, have no option but to believe therefore, that the scale of this military offensive is because the state is unable to distinguish the millions of tribals in this area from the Maoists, and has chosen the quick solution of war on the entire region. We believe that the eventual goal is to throw open the region to exploitation of its mineral resources by big corporate interests.
Central India is rich in mineral wealth that is already being auctioned: Till September 2009, Rs 6,69,388 crore of investment had been pledged toward industry in the troubled areas—14 per cent of the total pledged investments in the country. All that stands between vested interests and this wealth is the tribal people and their refusal to consent to their own exploitation. Even constituent bodies of Indian state machinery acknowledge the gross failure of state in the tribal areas of the country in no uncertain terms. Recently, The Planning Commission Report on Social Discontent and Extremism and The Approach Paper for the 11th Plan have clearly identified equity and justice issues relating to land, forced displacement and evictions, extreme poverty and social oppression, livelihood, malgovernance and police brutality as widespread in the region. They have also clearly identified ‘private interests’ and the state’s culpability in these processes. Again, the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution grants tribals complete rights over their traditional land and forests and prohibits private companies from mining on their land. Despite the above, and in the name of fighting the Maoists the state – in blatant violation of Constitutional rights and against the recommendations of its own committees – the govt is set to evacuate the entire area of the tribals and ghettoise them forcefully in ‘relief camps’, to allow free rein to big business. Instead of addressing the basic rights and needs of the tribals, the state/big business in the face of the stiff resistance from them, is leading a full-scale war on people who are already fighting an everyday battle for livelihood and survival.
This war on the people is in continuance with the Indian state’s repressive measures against all “inconvenient” citizens – as we have seen in the past with the North-eastern states and in Kashmir. As in those instances, this time too, the plan entails a further shrinking of already limited spaces for democratic dissent and articulation of pro people development paradigms. It opens the way for the state to act with force against any form of dissent or struggle, anywhere in the country. Any individual or organization protesting against the policies of the state can be labelled as a threat to ‘internal security’.
We, the undersigned, strongly deplore and condemn your government’s plans in this regard. We call for the immediate cancellation of the proposed military and/or paramilitary action, in the interests of the lakhs of destitute and deprived tribal populace who will be affected by this action. We also demand the immediate revocation and annulment of draconian instruments such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in all parts of the Indian territory, especially in the Northeast and in Kashmir, as well as the Unlawful Activity (Prevention) Act and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act. We demand that all MoUs signed towards corporate investments in these regions be made public and cancelled. We also demand that your government immediately initiate a broad-based, participatory, people-oriented discussion on economic and social development in these regions, founded on the rights of these populaces to their lands and the products thereof.
Statement delivered by Malem Ningthouja,
on behalf of Campaign for Peace & Democracy (Manipur)
at the Convention Against War on People on 4 December 2009
in New Delhi.
Most of us are concerned about the escalating scale of war on people perpetrated by the state mercenaries in several parts of the present day Indian subcontinent. Under the aegis of the bourgeoning Indian capitalist rulers who are in control of the state and the media, war crimes are being perpetrated with impunity everywhere and wherever democratic movements towards durable peace, development and democracy become prominent. On this occasion of the Convention Against War on People I would like to draw your attention towards the prevailing war on people in Manipur.
Historical Background
(1) Present India is a post 1947 political invention under the vested capitalist initiative of the Indian ruling class by overriding the national interests of several ethnic and political communities. The principle of voluntary unionism has not been followed.
(2) The history of war on people may be traced as early as the year 1948 when several Mao Nagas of Senapati District and Hmar in the Tipaimukh regions who had asserted for local self-determination were suppressed and some were killed for their democratic aspiration by the then Manipur government under the instruction of the Indian rulers. In the valley there was a heavy repression upon the attempted communist revolution under the leadership of Comrade Irabot during 1948-1951. Since the early 1960s several Naga peasants have been facing the brunt of military occupation leading to physical assaults and restriction of free movement in search for sources of livelihood. From 1980 to 2004 Manipur as a whole was physically, economically and psychologically affected by military rampages under the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). There are still several other repressive and suppressive acts as well to curb democratic movements.
State of War since 1949
The present state of war on people in Manipur is illustrative in terms of its character manifested in the crisscrossing tactical and structural arrangements.
Tactical collusion:
(1) The Indian rulers (industrialists, compradors, and business establishments) have capitalist interests, dubbed as geo-strategic exigencies in Manipur. Manipur serves as a market, a source of raw materials and a military base for the expansion of Indian capitalism in Manipur and in other Southeast Asian regions.
(2) The bulk of Manipur’s upper class cutting across community affiliations has a class interest of retaining political power in its hands, for which its members at times clubbed together with various political, regional and communal interests in election campaigns and other sectarian assertions. They have emerged as the rulers of Manipur, supporting Indian rulers, so that the Indian state would serve their interest.
(3) The Indian rulers have found a reliable ally in Manipur’s upper class and have erected puppet governments in successive terms who in their turn mortgaged Manipur to capitalist enterprises and perpetuated a class order in the region. Communal and armed agents are being reproduced, if not recruited from amongst the Manipuri people to defend Indian capitalism and fight against the democratic forces. Several misguided youth lured by the prospect of private property or disillusioned by the relative weakness of revolutionary propaganda have either joined the rank and file of the imperialist mercenaries in waging war on the people or have became effective tools of carrying out communal politics.
Structural arrangement:
(1) Firstly, the armed forces (including the union paramilitary forces) are carrying out an unrestrained war on people with impunity under the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958.
(2) Secondly, the police forces (particularly the Manipur Police Commando) lured by money and the prospect for promotion are carrying out massive looting and fake encounters.
(3) Thirdly, the underpaid auxiliary forces recruited on contract basis such as the Village Volunteer Forces in hill districts and Special Police Officers or Village Defense Forces in the valley districts are the camp followers of the regular forces in carrying out widespread hunt for democratic activists.
(4) Fourthly, gangsters in the guise of revolutionaries who are operating either from inside the state jail or under the command of the security forces are carrying out rampant looting, killing and psychological propaganda to confuse the people between gangsters and democratic activists.
(5) Fifthly, communal warlords and conservative reactionaries are being sponsored to divide the people vertically along communal lines and to divert the focus of the democratic movement.
(6) Sixthly, several undercover secret agents, both regular and part time informers are operating as watchdogs upon democratic activities and to advance psychological warfare in order to misguide the oppressed and the exploited people, diverting them from the democratic movement towards personal interest and sectarianism.
(7) Seventhly, the war on people is being covered up through official jargons such as ‘war on terrorism,’ ‘counter insurgency,’ and ‘law and order problem’ and so on. A wrong picture about the democratic movement in Manipur is being presented and widely published across the Indian subcontinent and beyond by imperialist media.
What are the impacts of war on people?
(1) Politically, since the 15th October 1949 the political community of Manipur as a whole has not been able to exercise their right to political self determination (including the right of accession or secession).
(2) Structurally, bourgeois democracy in Manipur is governed by a puppet regime composed of Manipur’s upper class under the strict surveillance of a Governor instituted by the Indian state. At the grassroots the backbone of the government is provided by a bulk of the forces mentioned above.
(3) Economically, while Indian capitalism (a mixture of market expansion and finance imperialism) installed upon a semi-tribal cum agro-based backward economy has drained the wealth of the people and reduced Manipur to dependency, on imports for food and other consumer goods; displacement, marginalization and pauperization have increased because of the ‘development’ projects undertaken under the protection of security forces such as forcible construction of capitalist dams, power projects, offices and institutional buildings.
(4) Physically and psychologically, increasing militarization has created a reign of terror leading to insurmountable human rights violations and a long lasting psychological effect or war hysteria among the affected population.
(5) Constitutionally, the right to life and other democratic rights are being denied. The space for democratic assertion of civil, political and economic rights has been shrinking. There has been a heavy crackdown upon civil society organizations for exposing state terrorism. The number of persons convicted, tortured and jailed or killed for their democratic ideas and initiatives has been increasing. For fear of state repression and brutality several of the war affected persons are forced to submit to the class rule against their own democratic conscience.
(6) Finally, under the patronage of the Indian rulers, sectarianism and communalism continue to play a divisive role by addressing the fundamental question of democracy from sectarian and communal perspectives. As a result no unified democratic force under a common banner capable of overthrowing the class rule could be developed.
Fundamental question
(1) The war on people does not distinguish people along communal or regional lines and the war impact is being felt similarly by the affected people. No particular community or region is responsible for the rampant capitalist onslaught in the name of security and counter-terrorism.
(2) If the class rulers are united for common purpose there can be no reason why the organizations representing the oppressed and the exploited peoples should remain divided in their just struggle against the common enemy.
(3) We need to contextualize the war paradigms of the ruling class and accordingly carry out an all encompassing ideological propaganda and political assertion for a democratic society free from any form of suppression and exploitation. And the emancipated peoples should enjoy the right to either voluntary unionism or secession based on common consent to be drawn out of the objective material conditions.
