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Over the past three
years, the broad masses of Adivasi and non-Adivasi peasantry in the districts of
Mayurbhanj in Orissa, East and West Singhbum in Bihar, and Midnapure, Bankura
and Purulia in West Bengal, have been organising themselves into revolutionary
mass organisations under the leadership of the CPI (ML) (PW). Revolutionary mass
struggels were conducted on several issues of the peasantry and a new wave of
resurgence of the revolutionary peasant movement has begun to take shape.
Terrified by this growing revolutionary movement, the armed forces of the three
states and the armed goons of various political parties such as the BJP,
Congress (I), CPI (M), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and so on, have unleashed armed
attacks and a campaign of terror against the struggling peasantry and, in
particular, against the activists of the revolutionary mass organisations and
our Party Cadres. Hence, it has become an imperative task before the party to
counter these attacks by arousing the masses even more boldly into revolutionary
action.
With its hilly and
forest terrain favourable for conducting guerilla warfare, the Bengal–Bihar–Orissa
Border Region is a region of strategic importance and has great potential for
developing into a Base Area. Hence the ruling classes have let loose their
terror campaign from the very initial stages to check the revolutionary movement
and the expansion of our Party organisation in the region. Neglected for decades
by the Indian ruling classes and deprived of any improvement in their lives;
subjected to cruel oppression by the feudal-comprador bureaucrat
bourgeois-imperialist combine and by the forest and police officials; the people
of the region are reduced to the most miserable plight and have become permanent
victims of unending famines. Naturally, people thus respond readily to the call
of the Party. Shaken by the tremendous enthusiasm generated among the people of
the region after the entry of our party organisers and, later the armed squads,
the ruling classes and their political representatives, have taken it as a
special task to eliminate our squads and are terrorising the people by way of
armed raids in the villages.
In the past one year
special police forces were deployed in four police station areas in Mayurbhanj
district and began to arrest our Party organisers and the activists of our mass
organisations. The first instance was the arrest of our organiser and one woman
member in Bangriposhi area. Then 11 party cadres including some district leaders
were arrested when they were having a meeting. They were sent to Baripada and
Balasore jails where even the minimum statutory facilities were not provided.
They were treated in an inhuman manner by chaining both legs and hands,
re-enacting the savage methods used by the British Colonialists, in order to
break their morale. Due to pressure from various civil rights organisations in
the country against this inhuman treatment of the prisoners, the practice of
placing chains had to be given up at last, and the rights of the prisoners had
to be respected. After these arrests, the police in Mayurbhanj led by SP,
Bahadur, have stepped up their attacks on the people in the name of patrolling.
The chowkidars and the agents in the villages are being used for keeping a watch
on the movements of the revolutionaries, and are conducting attacks basing on
this information. It was as part of this campaign that about 150 men of the
state’s special police forces, para-military forces, and the police force of
Bangriposhi and Bisoe police stations attacked four villages and fired
indiscriminately upon the squad on Feb. 28 this year. The squad courageously
countered this attack and retreated safely.
While this is the
situation in Orissa, in the adjacent West Singbhum district, the police and
civil officials, comprador traders, some anti-people leaders of the tribes, the
BJP and JMM, have been conducting attacks and malicious propaganda against our
Party and the adivasi peasantry in the past two years. The people who
participated in struggles for increase in wage rates, for supply of provisions
in the fair price shops at prices fixed by the government, and other issues of
the peasantry, are being harassed and threatened. Despite these attempts, the
class enemies have failed to dampen the spirit of the masses in East Singbhum
who are coming into struggles far more determinedly and on an even larger scale.
In the West Bengal
districts of Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia, the attacks on our movement are
unleashed by the BJP on the one side and the ruling CPI (M) and its left front
parties on the other. The BJP, in particular, has equipped its gangs with arms
and has stepped up its murderous attacks on our forces while engaging in bloody
clashes with the CPI (M). The gruesome murder of three relatives of one of our
Central organisers in Midnapore is a stark example of the fascist nature of the
attacks by the BJP goons. The Eastern Frontier Rifles and the Rapid Action
Forces are deployed against the revolutionaries whenever information regarding
the latter’s whereabouts is known. The Party organisers and the revolutionary
masses of the area are boldly facing these fascist attacks and are concentrating
upon advancing the revolutionary struggle to the higher stage. Under the
leadership of the Party, the Bengal-Bihar-Orissa Border Region is being
transformed into a new war front against the ruling classes.
While the Chief
Ministers and the top officials of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar,
Maharashtra and Orissa, led by the Union Home Minister, are co-ordinating their
anti-Naxalite strategy against our movement since ’97 in order to make the
people’s struggles leaderless, the police officials of the districts in
Bengal-Bihar-Orissa Border region have been having joint meetings chalking out
joint strategies since the last quarter of 1999 to suppress our movement. All
these joint strategies of the enemy will certainly be defeated by the people—the
real makers of history—through their valiant and unrelenting struggles under the
leadership of the party.
We call upon all
democratic forces and the people at large, to condemn the repression let loose
by the Indian ruling classes against the revolutionary movement and to render
all support to the people’s struggles against this oppression and repression.
CPI (ML)
[People’s War]
Bengal-Bihar-Orissa,
Border Region
5th March, 2000
(Note : The above statement has been
received by the office of the People’s March, with a request for
publishing it in the magazine.)
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