Quote:Maoists killed a policeman in West Bengal leaving his family distraught. The only bread-winner of his family, Sanjoy Ghosh, was brutally murdered while he was training at a police camp in Bankura.



Ghosh's father Tapan Ghosh is 64 years old and a contract labourer. He is exactly the kind of poor that Maoist revolutionaries pledge to protect and fight for.



Instead, they have taken away Tapan's sole support -- his son Sanjoy.



A Bengal Armed Police constable, Sanjoy was tortured and beheaded by alleged Maoists in Bankura on Tuesday.



Sanjoy's body was so mutilated that family members were asked not to open his coffin for a last look.

..

Quote:Suspected Maoists blew away a portion of railway tracks in the wee hours of Monday near Rourkela in Orissa causing derailment of a goods train and disruption of train services on the Howrah-Mumbai route.



A portion of the railway track at a place between Bhalulata and Jareikela, about 30 km from Rourkela, was blown up by suspected Maoists at 1 am leading to derailment of two wagons of a goods train, Rourkela railway station manager S K Panda said.



However, there have been no reports of injury or casualty in the incident.

Quote:Dornapal (Chhattisgarh), Feb 17 (IANS) By bombing hundreds of schools since 2005, Maoist militants have taken a heavy toll on education in Chhattisgarh, officials say.



'Education and children's life have been severely hit in Bastar's interiors, militancy has virtually destroyed school education in vast areas where schools were either blown up or a majority of teachers refused to attend schools due to risks to their lives,' Raja Toram, a teacher based in this small town in Dantewada district, some 500 km south of capital Raipur, told IANS.



The mineral-rich Bastar region spread over about 40,000 sq km in the south of the state has witnessed [color="#0000FF"]over 1,500 casualties in Maoist violence since 2005 and at least 440 school buildings have been bombed by Maoist rebels [/color]after the government started to use the buildings as temporary shelters for securitymen.



Officials estimate that Maoist militancy has denied at least 100,000 children access to primary education since 2005 in Bastar, especially after a government-backed controversial civil militia movement, Salwa Judum, started against the guerrillas in June 2005.



Bastar -- termed the nerve centre of Maoist militancy in India -- has five districts, Bastar, Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur and Kanker. After the birth of Salwa Judum, a large number of troopers occupied the school buildings for anti-Maoist drives and the rebels retaliated by targeting schools.



School teacher Toram said that Maoists were making the most of children's lack of access to education by forcibly recruiting into their ranks those who had dropped out. The outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) has a children's unit called Bal Sangham.



Dantewada district Superintendent of Police Amresh Mishra said: 'Militancy has surely affected education. Dozens of schools based in forest areas were blown off by militants though schools that come under the 'war zone' are being relocated to Salwa Judum base camps or areas where schools can be protected by forces. But attendance has dropped heavily.'



Om Prakash, sub-divisional police officer at Dornapal -- an area which witnessed a string of deadly attacks by Maoists since 2005 -- remarked: 'Children's life and their education have been really the worst hit since 2005; the primary school students are not enjoying education at relief camps under security cover as they earlier were in their villages.'



He added: 'The whole educational system in interiors has been devastated; Maoists are taking advantage of the situation and persuading parents to send their kids to Bal Sangham for which recruitment age starts at six.'



The NGO Human Rights Watch released a book in July 2008, titled 'Being Neutral Is Our Biggest Crime'. It had two chapters - one called 'Recruitment and Use of Children' and the other 'Impact of the Conflict on Education'.



The book says: 'Naxalites (Maoists) usually enlist children between ages six and 12 into Bal Sanghams, the village level children's association where children learn Maoist ideology. Most children who are part of Bal Sanghams also work as informers and are trained in the use of non-lethal weapons such as sticks...'



'In some cases, Naxalites approach parents and pressure them to send their children to join the 'people's war'. In other cases, Naxalites visit schools and ask children to join them.'



Quoting a former Maoist leader, Subha Atish, the book said: 'They go to school and ask children to join a dalam (unit). This has happened in the Jagargonda area.'



Jagargonda, in Dantewada district, is near Dornapal, where the state's most populous Salwa Judum camp houses over 10,000 residents who have fled their villages, plus a Central Reserve Police Force company to guard them.



Authorities deny that the presence of troopers is affecting studies. 'At present, there are security forces staying in around 40 schools. Of them, 18 are schools where classes are going on at the same time. The other 22 are school buildings that had already been damaged after being bombed by Maoists and no classes could be held there any way,' a Dantewada district official said.

Quote:Over 120 heavily-armed Naxalites swooped down on Kasari village in Bihar's Jamui district and fired indiscriminately, killing nine villagers and leaving 12 others injured, five of them critically.



The ultras stormed the village on Wednesday night and burnt over 25 thatched houses and fired a hail of bullets killing the villagers.



The rebels also abducted some villagers.



The strike was said to be in retaliation against the recent killings of eight activists of the proscribed CPI (Maoist) allegedly by the villagers, according to leaflets left by the ultras at the spot.



The injured have been admitted to hospitals at Sikandra and Jamui, where condition of five persons was stated to be critical.



Maoists had given a three-day bandh call in eastern part of Bihar to protest the killing of their activists. The bandh ended last midnight.

Quote:"Something has gone very wrong," a sombre Chidambaram told reporters outside his North Block office.

Quote:[url="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100406-262607/RP-Reds-now-train-Maoist-rebs-in-India"]RP Reds now train Maoist rebs in India[/url]

Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 04/06/2010



MANILA, Philippines—The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is not only thriving, it is exporting its cadres to train Maoist insurgents in India, according to reports reaching the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).



A DFA senior official, who asked not to be named saying he did not want to preempt an official reaction from the agency, said the Philippine government was expecting an official request from New Delhi for help in tracking down the CPP members in India.



Indian media reports over the weekend said two suspected Naxalites recently arrested in the western Indian state of Gujarat had confessed to their police interrogators that CPP members had been training them in guerrilla warfare.



This is the first time that the CPP—Southeast Asia’s longest-lived communist insurgent group—has been reported to have engaged in such training activities overseas.



The CPP was founded in 1968 by English teacher Jose Maria Sison, who is now 71 and lives in exile in the Netherlands.



Military officials say that the CPP has become irrelevant since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The officials say that the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), is nothing more than a bandit group engaged in blackmail and extortion.



The daily Indian Express described as “startling” the revelation that international Maoist groups were involved in arms training.



One such training took place in the forests of the southwestern state of Kerala, according to the suspects.



Police based in Gujarat’s Surat district who conducted the arrests said that the Naxalites were operating among landless tribal farmers in the neighboring Dang district.



The DFA official said it was possible that the CPP members who went to India came from Europe, saying most Filipinos who go to India are businessmen.



The CPP’s political front, the National Democratic Front, is based in the Netherlands. The CPP and the NPA are considered terrorist groups by United States

Quote:The reaction to Tuesday’s ghastly Maoist attack on CRPF jawans deep in the densely forested Abujhmad region of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh has been predictable. There’s outrage across the country that the lives of 76 security forces personnel should have been so cruelly snuffed out. Politicians have responded with lachrymose statements; some have pretended anger at Government’s ‘flawed’ policy of using security forces as cannon fodder in the war on Red terror. Strangely, or perhaps not, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has been criticised by colleagues in the Congress for “provoking” the Maoists into striking with such ferocity. Security experts have been prompt in pointing out faultlines in the overall strategy and ground level tactics, not so subtly suggesting they could have done a better job. Sympathisers of the Left extremists, who masquerade as ‘intellectuals’, have had no compunctions about using friendly media outlets, including television channels, to slyly justify the slaughter. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has expressed “shock and grief”, which really amounts to saying nothing.



While the sense of outrage (tinged with frustration) that prevails among the people is genuine, it is doubtful whether the reaction of the political class is motivated by concern for national security. Mr Chidambaram’s colleagues in the Congress, no doubt displeased that he should have emerged as an effective Minister on whom praise is lavished frequently, have seized upon the opportunity to try and run him down. Those in the Opposition who mock at the Government do so unthinkingly. Their own track record in tackling the Maoist menace is a tale of callous indifference or, worse, shameful capitulation. The JD(U) spokesman would do well to bear in mind that Maoists have ‘liberated’ large stretches of Bihar from the civil administration where the writ of the state no longer runs. As for our security experts, it is possible that their criticism of the Government’s strategy and tactics is well-meaning, but the course of an asymmetric war cannot be predicted by the best strategists and tacticians.



Could Tuesday’s massacre have been prevented? In hindsight, the answer to this question would be, yes. If only the CRPF jawans had been more cautious, if only they had not used a vehicle in a terrain likely to have been laid with landmines, if only they had not under-estimated the firepower of the Maoists, if only they had not ventured out at that hour of dawn, if only… If ifs and buts were pots and pans, there would be no need for tinkers’ hands. Or, as another version of the proverb goes, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas. The point is, ifs and buts are neither pots and pans, nor are they candy and nuts. In battling insurgency, the best laid plans can go wrong and fatalities can be high, just as collateral damage cannot be entirely ruled out.



Those who are suddenly mindful of the fact that 76 jawans have been killed should look at the statistics of Maoist violence over the past few years. In 2009, Maoist violence and encounters with security forces witnessed a spurt in casualties, and fatalities added up to a whopping 998. Among the dead were 292 Maoist cadre, 312 security forces personnel (including policemen) and 392 civilians. It would be absurd to suggest that since more security forces personnel have died than Maoists, or because civilian casualty is so high, the state is losing the war on Red terror. [color="#0000FF"]Insurgency driven by ideology extracts a terrible toll; if we are to win the war, we should stop counting the body bags. Excessive focus on casualties of war weakens national resolve. [/color]Maudlin sentiments have never helped anybody win a battle, leave alone a protracted war which the offensive against the Maoists is going to be: The ‘liberated zones’ won’t be liberated from Red terror overnight; it will take at least a decade to re-establish the authority of the state where Maoists now rule the roast.



This is not to suggest that the lives of our security forces are expendable, or that they can be sacrificed without any concern on the altar of belligerent extremism, but to underscore the fact that the Indian state’s success in overcoming several challenges to the nation’s unity and integrity have not been without the loss of lives — of security forces personnel, of civilians and of those waging war on the state. Public memory being notoriously short, few would recall the terrible price that had to be paid to put down insurgency in the North-East, or restore peace in Punjab. Young officers and jawans in the prime of their lives are routinely killed while fighting terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir or while preventing jihadis from crossing the Line of Control into India. If we must shed tears, we should do so for all our men in uniform who have laid down their lives for their country and their people, and steel our resolve to avenge their deaths by exterminating the practitioners of violence, no matter what the shade of their evil ideology or their purported cause.



No purpose, however, would be served if the state were to take recourse to either senseless bravado or a bull-headed response to grisly blood-letting by the Maoists, irrespective of whether the victims of their butchery are civilians or security forces. The state must move stealthily, it must strategise with absolute clarity about what it seeks to achieve, and, most important, it must adopt tactics that will enable the security forces to outmanoeuvre the insurgents at every step. There will be errors of judgement, there will be mistakes and there will be slip-ups. Those strategising and fighting the war on Red terror will have to learn from these and recalibrate their tactics accordingly.



Mr Chidambaram has rightly cautioned against any “knee-jerk reaction” to Tuesday’s savagery by the rabid ilk of Koteswara Rao and advised that “at this moment we must remain calm and hold our nerves in the fight to rid India of the grave threat of Maoists and to save democracy”. Successive strikes by the Maoists in recent months — Sildah in West Bengal where 24 jawans of the Eastern Frontier Rifles were killed; Koraput in Odisha where 11 CRPF jawans died after their vehicle hit a landmine; and, now Dantewada in Chhattisgarh — suggest the need for course correction by those strategising the war on Red terror. Once this is done, the Government must stay the course and press on till the objective of ridding India of those wish to supplant our democracy with a totalitarian state no different from Pol Pot’s regime is achieved. Liberty comes attached with a price tag and we should be willing to pay the price, no matter how high.

Quote:Eggs thrown at Medha Patkar in Chhattisgarh



http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/eggs-thrown-at-medha-patkar-in-chhattisgarh_100300074.html



January 7th, 2010



Raipur, Jan 6 (IANS) Dozens of tribals Wednesday threw eggs and tomatoes at social activist Medha Patkar and Magsaysay award winner Sandeep Pandey in Chhattisgarh’s insurgency-hit Dantewada district for allegedly supporting Maoist sympathisers, police said.



Trouble began when Patkar, Pandey and a few activists reached Dantewada, some 380 km south of Raipur, to join the ongoing campaign of rights activists against alleged atrocities being committed by security forces on local tribes.



A large number of tribals, under the banner of Ma Danteshwari Swabhiman Manch, opposed the activists’ visit to the tribal area and alleged that they were supporting Maoist sympathisers, who were trying to stall the anti-Maoist operations in the restive Bastar region.



“Local tribals threw rotten tomato and eggs on the social activists and raised slogans against them,” a witness told IANS from Dantewada town. The protesters were demanding that the activists should leave Dantewada immediately.



The activists then marched to the office of Dantewada district superintendent of police and staged a sit-in, alleging that the local people were being ifluenced by some vested interests.



Superintendent of Police Amresh Mishra told IANS over phone: “Before the people got violent, the police took control of the situation and cordoned off the activist leaders. They were escorted to my office.”