Volume 6, No. 11, December. 2005

{This report from Bastar was received by post at our office in early November. Given its significance we are reproducing it in full……. Editor}

The Chhattisgarh state machinery is waging a most brutal campaign with unprecedented ferocity against the revolutionary masses of Dandakaranya for the past five months. So far, more than a hundred people, including the leaders of the revolutionary mass organizations and fighters of the PLGA of the CPI (Maoist) were butchered in cold blood. More than 40 villages were brunt to ashes. There are many incidents of atrocities on women. Hundreds of innocent peasants were inhumanly tortured. This barbaric murder campaign has been ironically termed as "Saalva Judum" (meaning Peace Campaign in Gondi language). This campaign which started on June 20th of this year is being personally led by the notorious leader of the Congress (I) legislature party of Chhattisgarh, Mr. Mahendra Karma. The reactionary BJP government of the state is fully backing this campaign and the Congress (I) led Central Government is coordinating it through the joint operational command it has set up.

The government, in order to cover up its heinous campaign, has launched a big false propaganda campaign claming that what is happening in Dandakarynya is nothing but a people’s revolt against the armed hegemony and atrocities of the Naxalites. The bourgeois media is in the main faithfully following the state’s line, giving an utterly false picture and willfully suppressing the truth.

It is not a revolt of the masses against the Maoists but a most barbaric suppression campaign being conducted by the ruling classes!

‘Saalva Judum’ is nothing but a campaign aimed at terrifying the fighting masses of Dandakarnya into submission through murder and mayhem. It is nothing but the continuation of two earlier campaigns – one in 1990 and the other in 1996 – run under the name of ‘Jan-Jagran Abhiyan’ (People’s Awakening Campaign), which failed miserably due to stiff resistance from the revolutionary masses. Those two campaigns were also led personally by the same Mahendra Karma. In this campaign he has the full backing of the local reactionary forces and a section of those who were punished by the revolutionary movement for their crimes against the people. They are pouring in money and are gathering lumpen elements to serve as foot soldiers of this campaign. These lumpen elements are being armed with guns by the police, apart from the traditional bow and swords. These goons, along with the central para-military forces and state special armed police forces are forming a gang of about 200-300 people and are conducting punitive raids on villages considered to be the strongholds of the revolutionary movement. At present their campaign is concentrated in the Byramgarh and National Park areas of Dantewada district.

These goons are employing the most barbaric methods to terrorize the people. They are burning down village after village by spraying kerosene on the houses and setting them on fire. Thus they brunt more than 40 villages to ashes and partially burnt another 10 villages so far. They butchered more than 100 people from the revolutionary masses, leaders of mass organizations and fighters of the PLGA. They are not even sparing the women, children or the aged.

The following incidents will reveal their strategy. In one village, these goons beheaded a young boy and hanged his head on the door post of his house. In another village they beheaded an old peasant and hanged his de-capacitated body in the village centre, leaving a warning that the same fate will be fall all those who do not surrender to them. They captured a PLGA fighter who was wounded during a police firing and then murdered him by cutting off his limbs and genitals. They shot dead 10 innocent peasants in a village called Horimal. In Jegurugonda area they sexually assaulted five women and murdered them in cold blood. The police shot dead a peasant who was up a palm tree for extracting toddy. In another ghastly incident in Morabelli village, the police shot and wounded two women who were working in the fields, one of those women was pregnant. The savage police personnel, not content with wounding them, tore open the womb of that woman; then they killed those two women. Not only that, when two girl children – aged 10 and two – of the other women, who were at a distance, got scared and started running away the police fired at them injuring the two year old in the head. At the time of writing this report that child is fighting for her life, without any medical aid. In another incident they caught hold of some militia members of the National Park area, murdered them and threw their bodies down the Indravati River.

They are not even sparing ordinary peasants who cross the Indravati river from the north to the south on some personal work. In one incident they killed 5 peasants who crossed the Indravati. Now, one need not say any thing about the looting spree that is going on in this campaign. Hundreds of peasants have been looted of all their possessions – grains, money, valuables, chicken, goats, pigs etc. – by these murdering gangs. They are not sparing even those who surrendered, inflicting inhuman tortures on them. When some of the victims died unable to bear these tortures, these goons disposed of their bodies by simply throwing them down the Indravati River.

The state is forcefully herding people into concentration camps along the lines the US forces did in Vietnam – Strategic Hamlet Policy. More than 15 thousands people are at present languishing in these camps. Moreover the state is trying to give a picture that all these people were in reality victims of Naxalite’s atrocities, who approached them for protection. With so many people in confinement, the police machinery got busy presenting some of the people before the media as surrendered Naxalites.

This ‘Saalva Judum’ was started in the Byramgarh and Bijapur blocks of Dantewada district and got confined to that area as it was facing stiff resistance from the masses. Though the state is trying by all means to extend it to the adjoining areas of Bhopalpatanam, Voogoor, Narayanpur, Dantewada, Kunta and other areas it was unable to speed it up to the extent of its intentions. Even Mahendra Karma, with all his boasting was unable to gather people for this campaign outside of a handful of his stronghold villages. So, the state resorted to a big publicity stunt, by organizing a big meeting in the state capital, Raipur, on October 1st. The Chief Minister participated in this meeting along with Mahendra Karma and a host of other leaders. The chief minister lit a lamp and handed it over to the DGP, asking him to keep the lamp burning until all the Naxalites in Chhattisgarh are wiped out. Subsequent-ly, meetings were also held at Ambikapur (Sarguja), Koira, Jeshpur, Champa and Janigar towns. In all these meetings, the ruling class leaders boasted that they will drive out all the Naxalites from Chhattisgarh by June, 2006.

The ‘Saalva Judum’ clearly exposed the anti-people nature of the big media in the country. The media is maintaining a complete silence about the murders and atrocities that are going on in the name of ‘Saalva Judum’. Though more than 40 villages were burnt down, and though the local representatives of the media know well about the real perpetrators of these ghastly acts, the media has closed its eyes willfully. When a progressive reporter here and there sends factual reports the media barons are suppressing it. Moreover the media has been enthusiastically running one false story after the other, depicting the ‘Saalva Judum’ as a great revolt of the people and as an answer of the people to the so-called violence and atrocities of the Naxalites.

Even though the state machinery is rushing more and more para military forces into Dandakarnya its ‘Saalva Judum’ is not progressing to the extent of its wishes as it is facing stiff resistance from the revolutionary masses and the PLGA forces of the CPI (Maoist). Though their houses are being burnt down, though their children are being murdered, though their women are being violated by these goons the revolutionary masses has not lost heart, they are rather standing firmly on the path of revolution. Though the para-military forces have set up many new camps in Bijapur and Byramgarh area and are conducting intensive combing operations under the name of ‘carpet security’ the PLGA forces have been on the one hand dealing blows on the enemy and on the other hand are offering protection to the crops of the peasants. On September 3rd, the PLGA forces successfully blew up a mine proof vehicle of the police forces, killing 27 policemen. The people’s militia is providing protection to the people who have to go either to the forest or to the market for their daily needs. The militias have been maintaining a 24 hours vigil. It has exposed and annihilated the leaders and the most notorious ones among the ‘Saalva Judum’ goons. The revolutionary masses have firmly rejected the propaganda of the state and are preparing to intensify their resistance under the leadership of their Party, the CPI (Maoist).

The above is a brief picture of the campaign of murder and mayhem going on in the Dandakarnya for the past 5 months. The tribals of Bastar have appealed to all democrats and progressive intellectuals to raise in one voice to condemn this brutal campaign against the revolutionary masses of Dandakarnya, to demand its immediate stoppage and to demand the imposition of exemplary punishment to the perpetrators of these savage atrocities on the people.

The government of India, backed by the imperialists (particularly the US) wants to unleash a civil war on the impoverished masses of this country. Instead of meeting their just demands and livelihood questions they are being pushed deeper and deeper into the abyss of destitution and poverty to serve the interests of the likes of the Jindals, Mittals, Tatas, Reliance and the TNCs. India is being turned into a hunting ground of these robber barons. At the rate at which MoUs are being signed with these business magnets in just this past one year the iron ore reserves of this country will get fully depleted within the next 30 to 40 years. This is not ‘development’ it is ‘destruction’. The vast mineral wealth of the country is being looted. The forests are being devastated; the rivers polluted and the entire ecology ravaged. Vast tracts of the country are being handed over to the mining mafia. All this will be the result of the new policies, of which crushing the local tribal is the main aspect.

The people of our country face a clear choice — and that is not between so called peace and ‘terrorism’, but between the rule of this mafia led by the imperialists or that of the masses led by the Maoists. The lines are clearly being drawn; all must decide where they stand.

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