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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2007Peasant massacre in Indian state land grabThere has been a shocking massacre of peasants at Nandigram, West Bengal. Peasants who had been protesting and resisting heroically the forceful acquisition of their land by the Left Front government for a chemical hub to be built by the Indonesian Salim Group under the Special Economic Zones (SEZ). It is reported that about 50 peasants have lost their lives in the police firing and more than 200 have been injured. The unarmed peasants were shot at point blank range. Women were specifically targeted for being in the forefront of the struggle. Even those carrying the injured and the dead were not spared and were beaten mercilessly by the police. It is a shame that the Left Front government has committed this massacre of peasants in the name of progress and development. We condemn the Left Front government for this massacre, which is perhaps the worst in Independent India. Even the memories of the Bailadila massacre during the Janata Party regime fade before the horror of today’s massacre in West Bengal. We appeal to all members of CNDP (the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace) to condemn the massacre unconditionally. This cold-blooded massacre in West Bengal has demonstrated that opposition of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)--CPM--to SEZ outside West Bengal is a sham and hypocritical and it has no moral right to oppose SEZ anywhere. Let’s be very frank. Unless CNDP takes a clear stand on the issue and condemns what has happened today at Nandigram, it would be difficult for many of us to remain associated with CNDP in the future. --Arvind Ghosh * * * The Left Front government in West Bengal has done it again. And done it more brutally this time. Hundreds of police entered the Nandigram area in Hooghly district and fired indiscriminately, resulting in grievous injury to about 100 peasants, and at least 35 peasants were killed. Armed cadres of CPM along with armed police have blockaded all the approach roads to Nandigram. The dead bodies are strewn in the villages and there is no one to carry them. Nandigram is the fertile and prosperous area earmarked for the Special Economic Zone, conferred on the Salim group of Indonesia by the West Bengal government. Despite the assurance by the chief minister of the state of stopping all attempts to seize the village lands for the SEZ, the police and cadres entered in the area with a clear intention to clear the area for the multinational capitalists. The villagers still kept a vigil and did not allow anyone involved with the displacement and SEZ to enter their villages for over two months, erecting barricades and maintaining round-the-clock watch. The villagers time and again expressed their opposition to acquisition of their land and had announced that they would resist the takeover and that they would try and stop the police from entering the village. The police face opposition from the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee, consisting of the villagers and their organizations and people’s organizations all over W. Bengal and India, like the National Alliance of People’s Movements. This is not the first time that the police have opened fire in the area. On March 6, police fired in the air at Mahespur village to rescue a CPM leader. Before that, six peasants were killed on Jan. 7 in an attack by CPM cadres in Nandigram. The so-called progressive Left Front government takes pride in beating Singur farmers and killing Nandigram peasants for the sake of the capitalists. Even before indiscriminate firing by police on March 14, the police and power-holders of Bengal started their usual glib explanations that “Villagers pelted stones at the police and damaged their vehicles. That’s when the police opened fire on the villagers" or “Many policemen were also injured in the violence." It is high time that the bluff of the CPM being the pro-people and progressive force--at least in Bengal--is called. It is painful to see that prominent progressive people in Delhi and other places on India have even avoided talking about outrages in Bengal, let alone condemning it. We who are outside of Bengal have experienced brazen and unashamed adamancy and arrogance of CPM activists, even in the face of atrocities by the West Bengal government. There is nothing progressive in these killings, even though some vulgar party people would quote from Lenin and Stalin. The corporations now have in their pocket communists also, to unleash on the people who dare to oppose naked capitalism. --Sanjay Sangvai |
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