Fear triggers exodus in India's Maoist badlands
09 Mar 2006 16:19:32 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Simon Denyer and S. Radha Kumar
DHARBAGUDA, India, March 9 (Reuters) - The landmine catapulted him out
of the truck. As he lay on the ground in agony, his left leg broken
and bleeding, Khurrum Bojji watched Maoist guerrillas move in on the
injured.
"When they saw a boy giving water to the injured, they brutally killed
him with an axe," he said, lying in a hospital a week after an attack
that killed 55 people.
"After that we didn't dare move, we just played dead until the police
arrived."
Panda Lakshmi too said she played dead, and heard the screams and
pleas of at least five people killed nearby in cold blood by the
Maoists.
Others were maimed, their hands or even legs chopped off by the
Maoists "so they could never recover and work against them", she said.
This is Chhattisgarh state in central India, and a side of the country
that U.S. President George W. Bush failed to see on his visit last
week.
Almost unnoticed even by Indians is an increasing violent conflict
with tens of thousands of Maoist guerrillas who many compare to Peru's
Shining Path.
Just a few hours' drive east of Hyderabad, the landmine attack came
only three days before Bush visited the gleaming tech city.
It was one of the deadliest incidents in four decades of conflict with
the Maoists, known as "Naxals" after the town of Naxalbari where their
movement began in 1967 to fight for the rights of the peasants and the
rural poor.
The conflict has taken a turn for the worse in recent months, with
civilians now directly in the firing line.
The spark is a new, government-sponsored anti-Maoist movement, which
emerged last June among tribal people living in the forests of
Chhattisgarh.
The victims of last week's attack were returning to their homes after
a series of rallies by the Salwa Judum (March for Peace), as the
anti-rebel movement tried to expand its influence into the Maoist
stronghold of Konta in the southern tip of the state.
DEVIL AND DEEP BLUE SEA
Survivors say rebels had repeatedly told them to boycott the rallies
-- and took brutal revenge when they disobeyed.
"The Maoists are doing everything they can to smother this movement,"
the state police intelligence chief Sant Kumar Paswan told Reuters.
"They know that if it spreads to other areas they are finished."
Today, bloodstains mark the scene of the blast on an unmetalled road
through the forest.
Bloodstained clothes lay alongside abandoned bows and arrows, all the
Salwa Judum supporters had to defend themselves against the rifles and
explosives of their foes.
The nearest village, Dharbaguda, is deserted. Police say around 12,000
people have fled their homes to ill-protected Salwa Judum camps since
the anti-Maoist movement came to Konta two weeks ago, an exodus which
accelerated after last week's blast.
In all, more than 46,000 people have abandoned their villages for the
camps dotted around southern Chhattisgarh since the movement was
launched, officials say.
This week, more deaths have followed. Six people were killed in two
separate attacks on Sunday and Monday, and four people beheaded by the
Maoists not far from Dharbaguda on Wednesday, police officers said.
On Thursday, police said they killed six Maoists, one of them a woman,
in two separate clashes in the forests of the neighbouring state of
Andhra Pradesh.
But critics say the government also bears some responsibility for the
latest deaths. The Salwa Judum has turned civilians into combatants --
and into victims of the state's proxy war.
"The Salwa Judum is politically created, and is creating havoc," said
Father K.T. Thomas, who has been doing social work in the area for
more than two decades.
"People are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. If they go
with the Naxals, police will torture them. If they go with the
government, the Naxals will torture them."
--
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing
their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and
let them rewrite history." -- ***** Cheney 11/16/2005
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" -- Ambrose Bierce
"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." -- John Updike
"Long term commitment in relationships is only necessary because it takes
so damn long to raise children. Marriage may well be some kind of trick
to keep the males around beyond sexual satiation." -- Captain Compassion
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
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