Terming the killing of 24 security personnel in West Bengal a provocative act by the Maoists, a group of intellectuals has said this reflected their lack of seriousness in getting the ban on the Communist Party of India (Maoists) and its front organisations lifted.
At the same time it called on the government to immediately stop all human rights violations in Jangalmahal area of West Bengal, sincerely settle the problems of the local people and not use the latest Maoist attack as an excuse to go ahead with intensification of the conflict.
“We hope for a quick and peaceful resolution to the conflict, which is putting at grave risk the lives of a very large number of innocent people trapped between the Maoists and the Indian State,” said the statement signed by A. Marx, Bhaskar Vishwanathan, Praful Bidwai, Dileep Simeon, Apoorvanand, Aditya Nigam, Nivedita Menon, Amit Sengupta and Satya Sivaraman.
It said the attack comes at a time when there are active attempts by many sections of civil society to get the government to call off its proposed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ against the Maoists. This provocative act by the latter can only result in a hardening of attitudes all around, the intellectuals said.
“While there are many genuine grievances of the local population against the West Bengal government and the security forces operating in the tribal areas of West Midnapore — including arbitrary arrests and killings — none of them can be used to justify the latest Maoist action. In fact the purely military methods adopted by the CPI (Maoist) are inimical to the task of finding both short and long-term political solutions to the long-standing problems of the local people,” they said.
“Every such killing and violation adds to the spiral of grief, trauma and revenge that is already consuming our polity; and from which the common people desperately need relief.”
