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Abuse Clinton in Marxist
Bengal and land in jail
ALOKE BANERJEE
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Times of India, Dec 8, 2001
KOLKATA: It is not safe in Marxist West Bengal to
criticise former US president Bill Clinton even
when the
state government has decided on Thursday not to
move a bill to enact Prevention of Organised Crimes Act
(POCA), a cousin of the much reviled central law the
Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO).
Two girls in their early 20s, Deepa Sarkar and Kakoli Mandi,
found this out to their great misfortune. The girls,
Naxalites
attached to People's War, were arrested from Salboni in
Midnapore for carrying a "Clinton Go Back" placard. Both were
charged with sedition and have been languishing in jail since
March.
The lack of an act on organised crime has not deterred the
administration from putting nearly 1,000 political prisoners
behind bars for prolonged periods. All of them have been
arrested under the existing laws. As many as 686 of them are
members of the Kamtapur People's Party which is demanding
a separate state in North Bengal. The rest are activists of
various Naxalite factions.
Ironically, the Left Front and the CPM too had raised similar
slogans during Clinton's first visit to India in March
2000, then
as the president of the United States.
The opponents to the proposed law from within the CPM have
insisted that there was no need for a law such as the POCA
and existing laws were enough to deal with organised crime.
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