Salwa Judum and India’s war against its own people
18 December 2006. A World to Win News Service. Chhattisgarh, in central India, is one of 13 states where the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is leading armed struggle based mainly among poor peasants and landless labourers, including adivasis, India’s tribal peoples.
On 13 December, for instance, Reuters news service reported, “Four policemen were shot dead when about 250 Maoist rebels made an attack in central India early on Wednesday, police said. The clash took place just outside a camp housing 1,000 tribal refugees in a forested village of the Dantewada district of impoverished Chhattisgarh state, 480 kilometres south of the state capital, Raipur. The dead included a police constable and three special police officers, locals who have been recruited to act as informers and assistants for the police in their battle against the rebels. Dantewada has become the epicentre of Maoist activity in India since the state government helped set up an anti-Maoist movement called Salwa Judum (Campaign for Peace) in the remote district last June. Around 50,000 tribespeople from 600 villages in the district have been settled in camps run by the Salwa Judum.”
The following is excerpted and slightly edited from a pamphlet published in India in April 2006 called Where the State Makes War on Its Own People: A report on violations of people’s rights during the Salwa Judum Campaign in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, India.
Since June 2005, Dantewada District (formerly part of Bastar district), Chhattisgarh, has been in the news for an alleged uprising of adivasis against the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Most media and official reports described this movement, known as Salwa Judum, as a spontaneous and self-initiated reaction to “Maoist oppression”, and hailed it as a turning point in the fight against the Naxalites (as Indian Maoists are often called). At the same time, a few reports indicated that people had been displaced in large numbers and were living in miserable conditions in camps. While this was officially attributed to Maoist threats and retaliation against those joining the Salwa Judum, stray news also came in about the forcible emptying out of villages as part of the government’s anti-Maoist policy, and of excesses committed by members of the Salwa Judum and security forces. …………. Read the rest of this entry »
