On 28 February, in the attack by the people’s militia and the PLGA led by CPI(Maoist), around 25 Salwa Judum activists were killed near Errabore village in Konta block of Dantewara district. The central and state governments, the police bosses, Mahendra Karma—the leader of the criminal gangsters carrying on brutal terror in the name of Salwa Judum—and the media unleashed a campaign that the Maoists had killed innocent adivasis. Unfortunately some civil rights organizations too fell prey to this false propaganda and had described the attack as an attack on innocent tribals without even conducting minimum investigation. Though there were two or three civilians among the dead for which we express our heartfelt regrets, our attack was targeted entirely against the Salwa Judum activists and the special police forces who have been running amok burning entire villages considered to be the strongholds of the Maoists, destroying houses and property of the activists of sangams, murdering the adivasis who are active in the revolutionary movement, raping women, forcing entire villages to be evacuated and organizing forced surrenders of the sangam members. In the preceding fortnight our heroic PLGA annihilated almost a dozen personnel of the notorious Naga Battalion and injured several more in various incidents in Dantewara district. None but the spokespersons of the exploiting classes can think that we, the real representatives of the adivasis and the oppressed people, can ever launch attacks on these very same people. We appeal to those genuine but misinformed sections to conduct investigation at the grassroots level and declare the truth to the world.

The irrefutable truth is that the so-called Salwa Judum campaign is not a campaign organized by the adivasis for peace, not a revolt against the Maoists, but a consciously organized terror campaign by the UPA government at the Centre and the BJP government in Chattisgarh and directly led by Chief Minister Raman Singh, Home Minister Ramvichar Netam and the ex-Congress Minister and opposition leader, Mahendra Karma. Eight Battalions of central forces are mustered along with a massive police force in the state to conduct this peace march. Ruias of Essar Steel, Tatas, Mittals and several comprador houses, big contractors and the feudal forces had poured in huge funds for the campaign. The worst type of anti-social lumpen elements, rapists and murderers who were punished in the people’s courts, some tribal elders who had lost their traditional privileges due to the awakening of the adivasis, the big villages that fall outside the organizational influence of the Maoists have been mobilized in this brutal war against the adivasis in the interior villages that are the strongholds of the Maoists for over two decades.

The atrocities committed by these criminal gangs are indescribable. During the past nine months since June, when this state-sponsored terror campaign began, over 60 villages were burnt to ashes and 20,000 people were forced into the concentration camps maintained by the government in the name of relief camps. The plan is to create Vietnam-type strategic hamlets with a view to flush out the fish from water. At least 150 adivasis were murdered in the most brutal manner by the CRPF-Naga Force and the Salwa Judum gangs led by Mahendra karma. 50 women were raped. The media, which today cries foul when some Salwa Judum activists are killed by the Maoists, has maintained criminal silence when these savage acts were going on. We cite a few of these ghastly crimes committed by the Salwa Judum-police gangs. On August 28, Naga Jawans and Judum goondas cut the head of a 12-year-old boy in Aakva village. On September 2, they shot dead 10 people, including a 12-year-old boy, who were hiding in the jungle near Arial village 2km from Mirtul. On October 10, a 14-year-old boy, Barsa Sonu, was caught and shot dead after brutal torture in Paralnar village by the police. On October 3, they murdered Koval, president of Janathana Sarkar of Mankeli village, and abducted his 14-year-old son Raju, whose whereabouts are still not known. Even more gruesome is the murder of two women in the village of Mukavelli. One of them was pregnant and the savage police-judum goondas, not content with killing them, tore open the womb of the woman and pulled out the foetus. A 1 1/2 –year-old baby nearby was also shot by Insas rifle. One Anganwadi worker, Soniya, was beaten up by the Naga Jawans, tied up with ropes and dragged to the police station. There are several such bizarre stories of police-judum atrocities. If in one village a young boy’s head is chopped off and hanged on the door-post of his house, in another village the beheaded body of an old peasant is exhibited in the village centre, with a note warning that the same fate would befall those who do not surrender. Thus, anyone suspected of being a supporter of Naxalites or a Sangam member is brutally tortured, beaten and in many cases killed.

The Salwa Judum is thus a campaign of mass terror conducted with the aim of facilitating the plunder of the natural resources of Chattisgarh by the big comprador business houses and the imperialist MNCs. It is a campaign aimed at smashing the organs of people’s democratic power popularly known as Janathana Sarkar that have come into existence in hundreds of villages in Dandakaranya and to reestablish in their place the old oppressive institutions and the exploitation by the feudal forces, forest officials, bureaucrats, contractors and the police, which were uprooted by the Maoist movement. It is a campaign to create divisions among the adivasis and pit one section against the other, to create police informers among the adivasis as the cent percent support the Maoists enjoy among the adivasis has made it almost impossible for the police to undertake their suppression campaigns successfully until this day. To hide these real aims they are trying to paint this campaign as one led by the adivasis. Mahendra Karma and his gang are as much representative of adivasi aspirations as the neo-liberal Tony Blair and his gang for British labour. And, likewise, the Salwa Judum campaign is as much a campaign for peace as is the global campaign of terror unleashed by butcher Bush. Just as there are criminals, sadists and deliberate liars who aggressively support Bush’s wars of aggression in the name of global peace, so are there criminals, sadists and liars who call this terror campaign of Salwa Judum a peace campaign.

The dubious role of the media controlled by the big financial barons, is exposed before the people by its criminal silence on the atrocities committed by the police-Judum goondas and concoction of lies that Salwa Judum is a ‘spontaneous uprising’ of the adivasis and about the alleged killings and abductions by the Maoists. The media personnel hold interviews with people in stage-managed shows arranged by the police (reminding us of the embedded journalists during US invasion and bombardment of Iraq) in the so-called relief camps and churn out stories against the Maoists day in day out. Depiction of the incidents such as happened in Kotrapal and Taadimendry on last June 18 and 19 respectively as massacres by Maoists when hardly anyone was killed in these incidents will make even the master liar-Goebbels-turn in his grave.

Ganapathi,

General Secretary,

CC(P), CPI(Maoist).