Rise!
Resist!
Liberate!
REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRATIC FRONT (RDF)
Contact: revolutionarydemocracy@gmail.com
Press Release-
2nd June 2012
Condemn the massacre of 20 adivasi villagers and
their children in Dandakaranya by the mercenary forces of the fascist Indian
state!
Expose the white lies of the killer gang of
Chidambaram-Raman Singh portraying the massacred adivasis and their children as
leaders and cadres of the CPI (Maoist)!
Rise up to oppose the genocide of Adivasis under
Operation Green Hunt by the Indian state and its War on People!
 |
| CRPF brutality in Dandakaranya, Chhattisgara, India. |
When the adivasi peasants of Sirkegudem,
Kothagudem and Rajupenta – adjacent villages separated by not more than
a kilometre in the Bijapur district of south Chhattisgarh – gathered in
hundreds on the night of 28 June 2012 to plan the performance of the
traditional festival Beej Pandum (seed festival), they least expected to
be surrounded by six hundred armed forces personnel of the Indian state.
At least 18 adivasis lost their lives in the cold-blooded massacre that
followed. Two other villagers were likewise killed near Jagargunda
village of Sukma district the same night, and predictably, were shown as
casualties of an ‘encounter’ between the Maoists and the armed forces.
As the testimonies of the eyewitnesses coming through the media, activists
as well as the statements of the CPI (Maoist) now confirm, the killing
of the adivasis was a heinous massacre committed by the Cobra battalion
of the CRPF and the Chhattisgarh police under the command of top police
officials including CRPF Director General Vijay Kumar and Chhattisgarh
Inspector General of Police T G Longkumar. It is also clear that this
massacre is a part of Indian state’s extermination campaign against the
Maoist revolutionary movement and the adivasis of central and eastern
India under the rubric of Operation Green Hunt that was launched with a media blitzkrieg in September
2009.
To
cover up this massacre of genocidal proportions and to defend this indefensible
act, the puppets of the ruling classes, be it the chief architect of
Operation Green Hunt, central Home Minister Chidambaram or Chhattisgarh
CM Raman Singh, have tried in vain to colour it as a ‘major military
victory’ against the Maoists! Chidambaram even went to the extent of
propagating the lie that three important Maoist leaders were killed in this
‘encounter’. The top-brass of the CRPF and police too are shouting from
rooftops about gunning down ‘armed Naxalite leaders and cadres’. They are
patting themselves on their backs for carrying out a ‘daring night attack’!
They have claimed that 6 men belonging to the armed forces have sustained
‘injuries’ during the so-called ‘firing in self-defense’. The cock-and-bull
story of terming this gathering as a big ‘Maoist meeting’ attended by
‘senior Maoist cadres’ has also been floated. A section of the corporate
media has shamelessly echoed the sadistic celebration of this
bloodbath by the ruling classes and their
mercenary armies.
However,
such theatrics and white lies have utterly failed to hide the truth
behind the Sirkegudem massacre. The fact that hundreds of heavily armed
‘security’ personnel commanded by top CRPF and police officials encircled
and indiscriminately fired upon a village assembly with an intent to
kill as many of them as possible, and that the trail of this massacre
was continued till the next day leaving a total of at least 20 defenseless
adivasi villagers dead – including five children – has been laid bare.
At least four instances of sexual assault on adivasi women, a number of
serious injuries and the reign of white terror through arrests and
brutalities against the villagers during this ‘daring operation’ have also
come to light, exposing the fascist fangs of the Indian state and its loyal
armed forces.
The
seed festival is an important event in the agrarian cycle of the adivasi
peasants of Bastar, observed during the onset of Monsoon. The rituals
connected to this festival are believed to be necessary for enhancing
the productivity of the seeds and for ensuring a good harvest of crops. This festival, apart from marking the
commencement of the agricultural season, is also crucial for making collective
decisions regarding the utilisation and distribution of agricultural
land and means of production. Given the import of such meetings ahead of
the seed festival, it is hardly surprising that several hundred
villagers from the three villages were present in the meeting called for
planning the upcoming festival. The meeting included the old and the
young, men and women. Like many of the meetings, ceremonies and
festivals of the Bastar adivasis, the meeting at Sirkegudem village on
28 June too went on till the small hours of the night. The same night,
three teams consisting of two hundred CRPF Cobra commandos and police
personnel each, commanded by a CRPF DIG, set out for Sirkegudem from
Jagargunda, Chintalnar and Basaguda CRPF camps (the first two are
located in Sukma district while the last is in Bijapur). By 1 o’clock in
the night the gathering at Sirkegudem was surrounded by the government
forces and was fired upon indiscriminately. As per the testimonies of
some eyewitnesses published in newspapers, the villagers shouted at the
armed personnel to half fire but the firing was not stopped, and the
bloodbath continued for several minutes. Later some of the dead bodies
were loaded in a tractor by the armed forces and taken away from the
killing fields.
The old
trick deployed by the government armed forces of killing adivasi villagers
and branding them as ‘Maoist/Naxalites’ can no longer fool the people.
The dead have once again exposed the lies of the Indian state. A 9 year
old girl and an 11 year old boy are among the dead, while three more children
of 12 to 15 years of age have been also killed by the CRPF in the massacre.
Kaka Saraswati, 12 years of age, was one of the children killed. Vijju,
an adivasi woman of around 65 years, lost two of her sons in the massacre.
She told reporters, “My sons were not Naxals”. Sabka Mitu, 17, died of a
wound caused to his throat by a sharp object. Irpa Chottu, a 14 year old
adivasi boy of Sirkegudem told that he was caught by the armed forces,
interrogated and subsequently shot in his leg. The next morning the
forces shot dead Ramesh, an adivasi youth, in front of his father Irpa Raju
while trying to go out of his house. These mercenary gangs subsequently
broke open Raju’s house and looted Rs.5000. These are only a few
instances of the atrocities which have come to light so far.
Villagers
who survived the massacre have testified that no Maoist was present in
the gathering and the government’s armed forces did not even care to
check the purpose of the meeting before opening indiscriminate gunfire,
presuming that it was a Maoist meeting. In two separate statements, Vijay Madkam, Secretary of the South
Bastar Committee, CPI(Maoist) and Jagan, Spokesperson of North
Telangana SZC clarified on 30th June that all the people killed in the
massacre perpetrated by the Central and Chhattisgarh state police on 28
June were adivasi villagers and that no leaders or cadres of the Maoist
party were killed. They also said that there was no firing from the side
of Maoists as they were not present at the site of the massacre. Gudsa
Usendi, the Spokesperson of Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of CPI
(Maoist) in a telephonic interview to ABN-Andhra Jyothi has condemned the
statement made by Central Home Ministry that top Maoist leaders Somulu,
Nagesh and Mahesh were among the killed. He also clarified that Irpa
Suresh, claimed by the government to be the commander of Bijapur and
Dantewada PLGA, was also not among the killed. The Irpa Suresh who was
killed was in reality a tribal peasant visiting his relatives in the
village.
Rather
than being brought to book for executing this heinous crime, the armed
forces and their commanders are being hailed as heroes by the political
crooks running the country – whether it is Chidambaram, Raman Singh or
Nankiram Kanwar. These criminals in uniform enjoy so much of protection
and patronage from the state and the ruling classes for faithfully
carrying out their anti-people agenda that a soldier who took part in
the massacre boasted by declaring that “We did not use any area weapons
such as grenades or rocket launchers. If we really wanted to, we could have razed the entire village”. As if more
was left to be done even after carrying out this macabre execution and
brutality!
Indeed,
razing of villages after villages, killing civilians suspecting them to
be Naxalites, fake ‘encounters’, custodial murders, rape, torture and
arrests have become the ‘Standard Operating Procedure’ of the mercenary
forces operating under the direction of Chidambaram fascist gang running the country today. If more than 650
villages of Dandakaranya were burnt down – many of them repeatedly – by
the Salwa Judum during 2004-2008, the latest phase of Indian state’s war
on people under Operation Green Hunt has resulted in hundreds of
cold-blooded murders and brutalities perpetrated against
revolutionaries, political activists and adivasi villagers in
Chhattisgarh alone. The Indian state has used unrestrained coercive
powers – often legalised through draconian laws such as AFSPA, UAPA,
NSA, CPSA, etc. – apart from deploying its military might against the
people of the country who have chosen to resist the unbridled exploitation by the ruling classes.
This is
why the struggling people led by the Maoist revolutionaries have become
the ‘biggest internal security threat’ to the feudal and comprador ruling
classes of India. To crush this movement and to prevent the people from
seizing political power, these rulers have unleashed a brutal war under
the direct command of the imperialist powers against the growing revolutionary
movement in central and eastern India. The Sirkegudem massacre is the
latest episode in this all-out class struggle. With the Indian Army
lurking in the outskirts of Maad in North Bastar with the fig-leaf of
‘training’, such brutal massacres and genocide of adivasis in the hands
of the government’s forces threaten to become much more frequent in the
coming days, unless we rise up and collectively resist this fascist onslaught.
RDF appeals to all the democratic and pro-people organisations and
individuals as well as the people at large to demand punishment of the police
personnel, police officers and their political masters who are directly
responsible for perpetrating the Sirkegudem massacre, including the CEO
of Operation Green Hunt, P. Chidambaram and his aide Raman Singh.
President
Varavara Rao
09676541715
General Secretary
Rajkishore
09717583539
G N Saibaba
New Delhi
India
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