Asom reeling under bloodbaths By Nava Thakuria Fri, 19 Jan 2007, 08:34:00 http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/article_33435.shtml The new year 2007 brought sad news for the people of Asom in the first week itself. The Northeast Indian state of Asom received international media headlines for a series of bloodbaths carried out by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). The armed group, which is fighting New Delhi for an Independent Asom (out of India) since 1979 went on rampage to kill nearly 70 people in three days. The carnage launched on January 6 soon after the dusk and continued for many successive days simultaneously in different parts of the locality to shake the nation's conscience. The gun totting ULFA cadres targeted the poor unarmed victims from zero range and shot at them to death. The mayhem was followed by two explosions in Guwahati, where no causality was reported.
The massacre invited spontaneous reaction and grave concern from various levels cutting across the society. The President Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh were quick to condemn the massacres terming it as an act of cowardice. Then strong reaction came from the UPA chief Sonia Gandhi and it followed the outburst of anguish from various political party leaders. The Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and the NCP leader (also former Loka Sabha speaker) P.A. Sangma to Asom chief minister Tarun Gogoi everyone expressed grave concern at the carnages. The Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony to the Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaisawl and the Railway Minister (also RJD chief ) Lalu Prasad Yadav to JD (U) leader George Fernandez made it possible to visit the locations and met the victim families. Condemnation came from all political parties of Asom and also organizations, which are usually sympathizers to ULFA like Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti (MASS) and Peoples Committee for Peace Initiatives of Asom (PCPI). Powerful students body, All Assam Students Union (AASU) too came on heavily on the killing of common people in the state. The New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) termed the killing of those labourers as 'barbaric acts of terrorism'. The Army, paramilitary forces and Asom police had launched a massive counter insurgency operation in Asom and its adjacent state of Arunachal Pradesh, where from the ULFA militants suspectedly carried out those gory massacres. But was the carnage a prompt reaction to an opinion poll that negates that negates the demand of an Independent Asom by ULFA? The January 6 morning witnessed a public meeting in Guwahati to disclose the outcome of the opinion poll, where nearly 96 per cent people of the state expressed big No for ULFA's core demand of a sovereign state out of India. The Guwahati meeting at the District library auditorium also heard many speakers refuting ULFA for their impractical design of arm struggle that only misguides 26 million people of Asom. The opinion poll, conducted by Assam Public Works, a voluntary organization comprising family member and relatives of ULFA cadres was as a signature campaign to know whether the people of the state supported the primary demand of ULFA. All total 25, 64,128 people (from various districts of Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, Darang, Kamrup, Barpeta , Bongaigaon, Goalpara and Dhubri) participated in the survey, out of them 24, 49,740 rejected the sovereignty demand by the outfit. Till the afternoon, it was big news for the reporters of morning dailies, as the opinion poll was first of its kind in Northeast India. But more cruel news waiting for them, that poured in the evening from upper Asom, where ULFA militants went on killing spree to take the lives of nearly 50 people in single night. The upper Asom districts namely Dibrugarh, Tinchukia, Dhemaji, Sivsagar, Golaghat emerged as theaters for the dances of deaths, where most of the victims were identified as Hindi speaking milk vendors, workers in brick kilns and daily wage earners. They were targeted by ULFA militants at point blank ranges in most of the events (a section of local newspapers received messages from a battalion of the outfit informing their acceptance of responsibility for the incidents). Now the question that arises was ULFA leaders too panic to face the result of the opinion poll. The ULFA chief Arabinda Rajkhowa termed it as a task of Research and Analysis Wing (of India), but even then the outfit exposed its panicky while dealing with the outcome. The armed group might succeeded in sabotaging the prime news space deserved by the opinion poll that reflected their eroding public support (the editorial comments of the dailies of Asom were however very much critical to ULFA's misdeeds), but it lost the confidence of the general public to a greater extent. For a huge section of indigenous Asomiya populace, ULFA would never indulge in mass killing, but the recent slaughtering in the state tarnished the image of the outfit as cruel as any other terrorist organizations. And the loss of credibility will definitely force the ULFA leaders to succumb to the worsening situation in the coming days. KOUSHIK HAZARIKA http://www.asom.co.nr
