Friday, June 19, 2009

Llgarh: Repression vs. Resistance

The paramilitary forces, West Bengal state police and Calcutta police have started their Lalgarh operation. According to the government they are going to flush out Maoists from a vast area of 18 police stations. A movement which has been started in November 2008 in protest of police atrocities now again becomes the target of state repression in the name of Maoist flush out. Surprisingly, to the demands of a popular movement, which simply seek apology from responsible police authorities before people of Lalgarh, the government not only turned a deaf ear, but also intensified the root cause of the movement—the state repression. Obviously, flushing out of Maoists is an excuse of the state machinery—the sole aim is to protect the repressive regime—to continue and aggravate the repression.

In a democratic society, the demands of the people are supposed to be considered by the state machinery and the government policy is supposed to be determined by the demand of people. In Lalgarh, where, what people want has already been clear, the state and central government do not even bother to show respect to the people. Instead of positively responding to the popular demands by asking responsible police officials to apologies before people of Lalgarh, both the state and central government preferred to take preparation a fresh bloodbath.

In the last seven months, people of Lalgarh showed their support to the demands of the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities. With time people have learned to identify the enemies and have built up resistance against them. This is what makes the government so repressive. The popular movement of Lalgarh has already taken the form of mass upsurge and is spreading in new areas everyday. Obviously, the paramilitary operation in Lalgarh will show the true repressive and exploitive face of the government to the people of not only Lalgarh, but also of whole West Bengal and India. The consequences can not be good. The acceptance of government, whatever still prevails among people will vanish soon. Repression only results resistance and fierce resistance.

From the very beginning of the movement of the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities, we expressed our solidarity. We are still with the side of the people.

We condemn combing operation and state repression in Lalgarh.

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