Collateral damage? Maoists say sorry for killing Bastar journalist (March 31, 2013)

By Dilip -
Maoists say sorry for killing Bastar journalist
Forty-five days after their cadres murdered journalist Nemichand Jain in Sukma on February 12, Maoists have apologised for the act and said their topmost leaders are handling the case. They have also requested Bastar journalists to end their boycott. In an unprecedented step, the entire media fraternity in Bastar had passed a resolution announcing the boycott of Maoists and their press releases until they apologised for the murder and punished the guilty. The rebels called a few journalists to interior forests of Bijapur and apologised for Jain's death. West Bastar divisional committee, CPI (Maoists), members Kamlu Kunjam and Jyoti met the journalists and said: "We have received information about the murder of Jain by some Sangham members of Kanger Ghati area. Since we are yet to identify the accused, senior leaders are facing problems in taking a decision. But very soon, the central committee will probe the matter and inform media about it. Some of our cadres have committed this wrong. We apologise and request you not to boycott us." Kunjam added: "Lower-level cadres committed the act without informing the senior ones. The committee will announce punishment for them." Jagdalpur-based journalist Harjit Singh Pappu was among those who met the rebels. "We had gone for our cause. We are happy that they have apologised. I hope they punish the culprits soon and inform us." 
NB: "Some of our cadres have committed this wrong. (?!) We apologise and request you not to boycott us. Lower-level cadres committed the act without informing the senior ones." If the entire Indian polity and democratic institutions are a fraud, then why are you afraid of a mere press boycott? Why do you want publicity in the 'bourgeois' media? Why claim the protections and privileges of a system you despise and wish to overthrow by armed force? Why? Yet more whimsical murder and yet another apology and statement of regret, as if this were a case of impolite behaviour at a dinner table. This was also the case with the beating to death of NREGA activist Niyamat Ansari in March 2011. The Maoists apologise & we are expected to forget it. In the Jnaneswari train derailment of May 2010, 148 passengers were killed in minutes, hundreds injured. They denied having caused it, yet issued assurances that train travel would be safe in future! 

In the latest massacres in Bastar, the Maoist spokesman says: "The aim behind this attack was to kill Mahendra Karma and other Congress leaders. During the two-hour long gunbattle between commanders of CPI(Maoist) and security forces, some innocent people and low-level Congress workers were killed. They were not our enemies but they lost their lives. We express regret over their death and offer our condolence to the bereaved families."  (The same statement says that the action succeeded in "wiping out of at least 27 Congress leaders, activists and policemen" If all 27 people killed were legitimate targets, then who were the 'innocent people and low level Congress workers'? Or are we to understand that 5 or 6 people were their targets and they killed 27 people and injured 32 including bystanders to achieve that?

Is human life just biomass for the comrades? If the state is brutal and oppressive must the comrades imitate the state? Will such actions bring justice to the people of the area or more repression? If the comrades claim to have knowledge of how society and political systems work, don't they also know that murder and killing generates a deadly cycle of violence in which politics recedes into the background and revenge becomes a force of its own? Have four decades of peoples war achieved any betterment of the political environment? Any change for the good in terms of democracy and human rights? Did they launch a struggle to protect the Babri Masjid? Did they ever even warn the communalists who have murdered innocents in thousands? Will they launch armed struggle to protect women all over the country who are under constant threat of violence and molestation? All they have succeeded in doing is to give the state a handle to attack all popular movements under the cover of combating maoism.

Successive governments cannot escape responsibility for this crisis. Naxalism has been in existence for over 4 decades, even prior to the latest turn in economic policy - had there been a more sensitive, less corrupt administration all this time, the conflict need not have taken such a bloody turn. In Chhattisgarh, over two thousand adivasis are currently in jail, charged with 'Naxalite/ Maoist' offences. Many have been imprisoned for over two years without trial.  Here the official policy was to recruit sections of the tribal population to engage the Maoists in the from of a vigilante force called Salwa Judum - ultimately the Supreme Court had to step in, and after that the state government merely designated them differently. In Jharkhand, an even larger number of adivasis, possibly in excess of five thousand, remain imprisoned as under-trials. The situation is similar in many other states of central and eastern India currently affected by armed conflict between the government and adivasi-linked militant movements, namely Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and West Bengal. The adivasi undertrial population may run into thousands in each of the states. If state functionaries were serious about the Indian Constitution, implemented criminal law with strict neutrality and upheld the Fifth Schedule instead of allowing sectors of the administration to function as instruments of corporates, there would have been no 'security threat'.

As for the revolutionaries, had they pitted (politically, not militarily) the constitution against the state and its policies (whether economic or with regard to criminal justice) - they would have been able to mount a massive resistance, that would have had legitimacy and effect. Here the traditional marxist-leninist-stalinist contempt for 'bourgeois' democracy has buttressed their elitist disdain for the lives of the people they claim to represent. They have only chosen the tribal areas for military strategic reasons - there's no chance of peoples war in Gurgaon. The so-called people's warriors are playing agents provocateur for the state, which will use the latest killings (as in the past) to launch another wave of repression.  Meanwhile despite Maoist activity, the work of the corporate industrialists goes on unabated. Some even pay them regular protection money. Industrialisation thrives on violence, Halliburton made millions in the midst of the Iraq war. The comrades must be dreaming if they think this kind of action will lead to acceptance of their demands, such as the release of innocents and a cessation of forced industrialisation. Do they want to provoke state cruelties? 

Stop the killing -This is an endless spiral comrades, there's no bright future over the horizon. There wasn't one when Charu launched the first CPI (ML) and promised a red flag over Red Fort within the 70's, and there will be no bright future in your new revolutionary calendar.  Ordinary people are for resistance, but not all of them are dreaming of martyrdom and glory. They want to live, even as they resist. It is utter tyranny for communists to decide when members of the public must die. Stop the killing and try and convince people by democratic means. What you are doing is a travesty of socialism. Respect for human life must be the starting point for socialists. Instead of a violent movement to overthrow the constitution, what we need is the broadest possible campaign to uphold and implement it. The fascist sections of the ruling class are already hell-bent on overthrowing the constitutional order - you are merely making it easier for them. The more people you kill, whether guilty or innocent, the more will democratic rights recede into the background. Without non-violent mass resistance, capitalism exploitation and social oppression will thrive. 

Speak the truth. Stop the killing 
Dilip

PS - Here's an article containing a pointer to the chilling cynicism of revolutionaries: 
http://dilipsimeon.blogspot.in/2012/08/extracts-from-sabyasachi-pandas-letter.html Extract: 'It was believed that the Maoist leadership was not happy with the outcome of Saraswati’s assassination. Panda had hoped that the ensuing riots (against Christians) would swell the Maoist ranks. But excellent coordination between the then district collector and district police chief ensured that about 3,000 men who had signed up for recruitment ditched them at the last moment...'






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