There must be an immediate independent investigation by a fact finding team of
citizens on the killings in Chhattisgarh , as the Court have said every
encounter death must be registered and investigated .We do not maintain armed
contingents and pay taxes to maintain them for the killing of our citizens .
More than one political party in the region has raised several questions on
these killings .
The Indigenous people of India , the Adivasis , are entitled to just access
to their land , produce and resources and are entititled to protect and
preserve their civilization and culture as much as any other state or region in
the country ;to plot their organized killing to take over their land and
resources with the assistance of outsiders, to deprive these regions of their
own perspective of development , is neither democratic nor constitutional, as
the Constitution of India expressly forbids land alienation and seizure of
resources of the Adivasis.
It is necessary that those struggling for the political and economic rights of
the Indigenous people and Dalits forge strong coalitions with other exploited
classes and categories to expose their siege, if they are not to be isolated .
This is what Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar would have mandated, intolerance
of injustice and of the loot of the State exchequer to deprive working people
of access to the national budget , development , a scientific culture and
preservation of civilization and the ecology . They would have also called
for the disbanding and abandoning of political formations waging a war against
all weaker sections of society .
Democratic minded journalists must break through this silence as has
happened in this case , and voices of political formations and movements from
the region be heard in the national capital and all other regions.
Niloufer Bhagwat
----- Original Message -----
From: Brp Bhaskar
To: [email protected] ; [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2012 11:45 AM
Subject: [humanrights-movement:6086] On the recent Chhattisgarh 'encounter'
The Maoists are also Indians
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2012/06/30/the-maoists-are-also-indians/
By M. K. Bhadrakumar
Independent India has been consistent in its approach to the million mutinies
that threatened the country’s unity and integrity through the past six decades
and more. That pattern is something like this: popular alienation is simply
left unaddressed even if the root cause remains no great mystery and is
possible to be tackled; sometimes the ruling party willfully exploits the
alienation to suit the needs of electoral politics (Khalistan); the wounds
inevitably fester over time; and, when the wound becomes septic the Indian
state cauterizes it without any anesthesia so that the patient freaks out with
pain and the horrific memory of state brutality would, hopefully, linger for
ever and teach a lesson.
But the wound as such is never healed. J&K and the northeastern states are
still under army occupation. Isn’t there some other way to handle political
alienation in the 21st century? India prides itself to be a country with a
difference in the world community as a nation of moral stature. In the
international forums, it is losing shyness and has begun taking up open
positions on human rights and human security — for example, on Sri Lanka and
Syria in the UNHRC in Geneva in the recent months. It frequently speaks out at
the UN Security Council debates — be it on Sudan or Afghanistan. These are of
course only appropriate for an ambitious, aspiring regional power.
And, yet, India’s own track record continues to remain dismal. The Indian
state’s “biggest encounter” with the Maoists in the jungles of Chhattisgarh on
Friday once again highlights the tragedy of the situation. Some evidence is
surfacing that the Indian security forces went on a rampage in the remote
jungle villages massacring civilians in the heat of the night of
Thursday/Friday.
The 19 Maoists killed included a 15-year old girl, while not more than two
amongst the 19 killed could be identified as left extremists. If so, who were
the remaining 17 dead souls?
To be sure, Home Minister P Chidambaram is utterly preoccupied with Hafiz
Saeed. Hopefully, if and when he is done with that, we may know what happened.
The security people admit that “a few innocent villagers could have died in
crossfire.” Pray, how few is “few”?
The most shocking thing is that the Indian political class across the board
has had nothing to say. They are preoccupied with the election of India’a next
president — or with the “reforms”. When 19 citizens get killed by their
country’s security forces, in any civilised country in the second decade of the
21st century, some political commotion could be expected. But, not in India?
The silence of the politicians points at the terrible weakening of the moral
fibre of the Indian nation.
The most reprehensible aspect is the deafening silence of the established
parties of the Indian Left who are, arguably, on the same ideological spectrum
as the Maoists. Alright, the Maoists are rebels who got disillusioned with the
Left establishment and bourgeois democracy, but they never ceased to be
believers in the ideology. China can disowned them, but how could the Indian
Left?
In fact, the Maoists’ presence in parts of India where the established Left
doesn’t even exist shows that they have a legitimacy and credibility of their
own which the established Left lacks in very large tracts of the most
impoverished regions of our country that are inherently open to the egalitarian
ideals of communism. An enlightened Left leadership would have sought to
dialogue with these misguided elements — and a good starting point would be to
commiserate with the 19 dead “comrades” in Chhattisgarh. Give them at least a
decent burial.
M.K. Bhadrakumar is a retired career diplomat
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