Defeat the Politics of Terror

TRINAMUL IN WEST BENGAL

A BRUTAL gang-rape of democracy took place in Bengal on Tuesday, January 8, 2013.

A 50,000 strong CPI(M) rally protesting against the attack on senior Party leader, a member of the state assembly, having been elected uninterruptedly for the last forty years and minister for land reforms in the Left Front governments, Abdur Rezzak Mollah on January 6 by Trinamul Congress goons  led by one Arabul Islam who lost the last state assembly elections, was brutally attacked by armed TMC goons. 

Rezzak Mollah was traveling to attend the district Kisan Sabha conference, on the way when he went to visit a CPI(M) office that was ransacked and burnt down by the TMC goons, he was brutally attacked.  He was admitted in a nearby private nursing home.  The TMC-led state administration, in a display of depraved inhumanity, pressurised the hospital to discharge Mollah  without being properly treated.  The intention was to show that he was not grievously hurt.  However, the MRI scan report of the same hospital showed that he had a serious fracture in his backbone near his waist.  In a perfidious manner, the same Arabul Islam, who led the attack, got himself admitted in a private nursing home claiming to be injured.  The doctors there, however, pronounced that he had no injuries. 

In this attack, 20 vehicles carrying CPI(M) supporters to the protest rally were attacked and set on fire.  27 protestors were injured with three suffering from bullet injuries.  Five are in hospital at this very moment battling for life.  Instead of taking any action on those who mounted such a grievous attack, the state police under directions from the TMC chief are arresting those who are victims of this attack.  The perpetrators moved around scot-free while the victims are being arrested under false charges. 

Worse is the fact that senior ministers of the state government are openly justifying this attack and trying to project this as a CPI(M) initiated attack on the TMC.  The right to peacefully protest is a right guaranteed under the Indian constitution and law. Instead of ensuring that the law of the land is implemented, the Trinamul Congress state government has actually been using the state administration to deny people the right to peacefully protest and, on the contrary, to foist false cases against CPI(M) and  Left supporters. 

From May 2011, after the state assembly elections, till December 31, 2012, 85 CPI(M) comrades have been murderously killed by the TMC goons.  There have been so far 848 physical assaults on women in which there were 129 brutal rapes.  In many of these cases, instead of taking action against the culprits, the Trinamul Congress, including the chief minister, has trivialised  such heinous sexual assaults on women.  Rape and physical assaults on women have become an instrument of demonstrating the TMC’s political power.

Since the assembly elections, 42,724 CPI(M) and Left sympathisers were evicted from their regular residences.  Nearly 3,000 houses have been burnt and looted.  646 CPI(M) offices across the state have been attacked and ransacked.  222 trade union and other mass organisation offices have been forcibly captured by the TMC goons.  There is a large scale attack on educational institutions and 84 students’ union offices, where the TMC students wing lost the elections, have been `captured’. 3,336 CPI(M) leaders and activists are arrested on false and fabricated cases. 

There is large scale extortion that is taking place by the TMC goons all across the state.  The forceful collection of money from nearly 10,000 people has benefited the TMC by nearly Rs 28 crores. 

Rezzak Mollah has been the target of the TMC since he was the minister for land reforms.  The Left Front government’s implementation of land reforms  has deprived many a former landlord of their illegally held land above the ceiling.  These sections have been systematically undoing the gains of the poor farmer and agricultural labour as a result of land reforms.  Nearly 3,500 such farmers are not been allowed to cultivate their own land amounting to nearly 10,000 acres.  27,283 patta holders and bargadars who were given land legally under the land reforms have been evicted in an area of nearly 10,000 acres. 

This is the `paribortan’ that is taking place in West Bengal since May 2011.  There is a merciless attack against all political opponents of the TMC and an open daylight murder of democracy and democratic rights of the people.  Such a naked attack on civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed democratic rights of the people cannot be tolerated. 

Bengal has not forgotten the experiences of the semi-fascist terror that was unleashed during the decade of 1970s.  For full five years, when democracy and democratic rights was severely assaulted by the then Congress party, which included today’s TMC,  many political forces in the country, despite CPI(M)’s warnings,  had seen these attacks as an aberration and isolated in West Bengal alone.  Such illusions were shattered in 1975 when internal Emergency was imposed clamping civil liberties and democratic rights across the country.  It is the Indian people’s struggle for the restoration of democracy that triumphed in 1977. In the election that followed, the Left Front was elected to government in West Bengal and continued to win seven consecutive elections in the state. 

The semi-fascist terror was resisted by the CPI(M)  which lost over 12,000 of its leading cadres in murderous assaults and tens of thousands of families were evicted and many leaders had to function from the underground.  The people of West Bengal, along with the people of the rest of the country,  finally triumphed.  Those who forget this history and seek a similar repetition will meet the same fate – comprehensive political defeat at the hands of the people. 

The people of West Bengal have never bowed in the face of such attacks.  The politics of violence and terror, the current aggressive phase unleashed to terrorise people into submission in the forthcoming panchayat elections in the state, will be defeated politically in a democratic manner.  All those who value our constitution and have faith in our system of parliamentary democracy cannot be mere spectators but need to rise to defeat such politics of  terror, violence, depravity and inhumanity. Such terror and violence has no place in democracy and must be banished.

(January 09, 2012)

People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

January 13, 2013