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Gethin Chamberlain in Dantewada 19 May 2009, The National magazine The track ahead is blocked. For mile after mile, the trees on either side have been felled and turned into a natural roadblock. Deep pits have been dug to hinder any attempt to drive into the jungle. Someone here really does not want visitors. From the knee-high undergrowth comes the occasional hiss of a snake moving unseen. A little further on, there are two sentries, armed with bows and arrows. “Go forward and someone will meet you,” they say. Suddenly, the trees open on to a clearing and the most unexpected sight. Here, in the heart of the jungle, someone has built an imposing war memorial. And what makes it all the more extraordinary is that it does not honour the fallen of the Indian state: this memorial, the Hindi script proclaims, is to the martyrs of the Maoist Naxal insurgency. The names of three women from the village of Pedda Korma are etched into the stepped cement pyramid that looms out of the red dirt. Kursam Lakhi and Sukki Modiyam, raped and killed by the police and the Salwa Judum militia on February 6 2005; Comrade Korsa Bhima, martyred in the March 2007 attack on Rani Bodli when 55 policemen were killed. “Long live the CPI [Communist Party of India] Maoist,” the script says. “The martyrdom will not be in vain. Long live the people’s liberation guerrilla army.” This is the Naxal heartland, Dantewada in the southern end of Chhattisgarh in the centre of India, the front line on a war that receives little or no attention outside India, and not that much more domestically. The Naxals – villagers call them dada, Hindi for older brother – get their name from an uprising in the Naxalbari area of West Bengal in 1967, when they took up arms on the side of labourers involved in a land dispute, though they have been around in some form since the late 1940s. Their origins come from a split in the Indian Communist Party in 1964, when pro-Chinese members broke away from the pro-Soviet faction which they regarded as too supportive of the Indian state. Playing on the frustrations of India’s hundreds of millions of rural poor, who are often ignored by the central government, they have won support by redistributing the wealth of the landowners and by opposing industrialisation. The Naxals are estimated to have a strong presence in at least 170 out of India’s 602 districts. In an attempt to counter their influence, the state-supported Salwa Judum (SJ) militia emerged in 2005, ostensibly out of the frustration of those civilians who had suffered at the hands of the Naxals. The idea was to cut the Naxals’ supply lines. The result was more killing, as the SJ members turned on those they accused of harbouring and supporting the Naxals. Caught in the middle are the tribal people who live in the forests, who were prevented even from voting in the most recent election. For all the fear generated by last year’s Islamist bombings and the anger directed at Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks in November, the most potent threat to the world’s largest democracy is internal. That is why Indian cricket’s most lucrative and prestigious tournament, the IPL, is being played this year in South Africa: the Indian government did not believe that it could provide enough security to cover both the month-long general election, which finished on May 16, and the tournament. Most of India’s available internal security forces were needed to combat the Naxalite threat to the elections. Not that the Naxals were in the slightest bit deterred. A landmine attack in Dantewada at the start of the month killed 11 people, including seven police officers. On May 11, another landmine killed 12 policemen and a civilian in Dhamtari district. In the space of one month, the Naxals killed 36 people in Chhattisgarh alone. Chhattisgarh is rich in minerals, but few of the tribal people who live there have benefited from that wealth. The Naxals have seized on this, claiming that the state is intent on taking land and giving it to industrialists to develop. They oppose elections, believing that the ruling political classes are intent on using the electoral system to perpetuate inequality. Large parts of the country are out of the reach of the security forces. The result is that millions of people are denied a vote. In the most spectacular attack of the election period, the hijacking of a train carrying 700 passengers through Jharkhand, at least 200 armed Maoists demonstrated they could strike at will and with impunity by holding off police for hours. Voters got the message. A delayed attempt to hold a ballot in the Naxal-infested Bastar district produced a turnout of just 23 per cent. It was the same story when Chhattisgarh tried to hold state elections. Ballot boxes were stolen, dumped in rivers, election officials were attacked, many villages were simply left off the ballot altogether. The first attempt at holding a ballot in the village of Pandewar went smoothly enough until the police left to visit another village. Ram Singh Oyam, 27, says he saw the Naxals walking into the village. There were five or six men, wearing only lungis – a sort of wraparound skirt – and two women, he said. All were carrying knives. “They came from the far side and asked all the polling officers to come out of the room. Then they brought out the voting machine and broke it with a knife and threw it in the water,” he says. Oyam is nervous, glancing around. He speaks quietly; there were Naxals all around, he explains. “You need to understand this area. It is very dangerous. We have been told that if we vote our hands will be cut off.” This time, the police have swamped the village with 50 officers strung out in two cordons, the farthest only 100 metres out from the village, standing in the shade of the palm and mahua trees. Others stand guard on the roof of the polling station. Leela Dhar, the second in command, says there is danger all around. “If they see a police vehicle they may target it with a landmine. Each and every inch we move we are thinking that it may be dangerous for us, there may be a landmine.” A policeman wanders past holding a khukri, the curved Nepalese knife popular with Gurkhas. “In case he runs out of ammunition,” Dhar explains. Pandewar escapes the attention of the Naxals this time; instead, they hit a convoy of election vehicles leaving Parden village a little further into their territory. The convoy limps back to base hours later after a half-hour gunfight. A little later, news filters through that eight policemen have been killed in an attack farther north. At Kathia polling station the head constable, Dinesh Kumar, says his men walked for 30km to reach the village of Koilibeda where voting was meant to be taking place, only to discover that it was empty. It was about 10am. The 125-strong police group accompanying the polling officials had trekked through jungle and over hills to reach the village. They had already walked into one Naxal ambush, which they had fought off. When they reached the village they found the school locked. They moved on to the next village, but there the Naxals were waiting again and again they came under fire. “The officials decided it was not worth it,” he says. Voting was abandoned. In Chhattisgarh alone, in the last two years, 578 civilians have died in Naxal-related violence. The police and special police officer death toll stands at 231 compared to 142 Naxals. In the past eight years, in the Dantewada district, 72 roads have been destroyed, 18 banks, 291 public vehicles, 87 schools, two hospitals, 24 railway lines and 56 electricity stations. There was no voting in the state elections in November in the village of Nendra, whose few remaining inhabitants are trying to eke out an existence amid the crossfire between the warring Naxals and SJ militia. Nendra was once quite a prosperous place, the countryside around it beautiful, all palm trees and lush meadows; there were about 200 houses and many cows and the people made a living selling ghee at the local markets. It has been attacked by the Naxals three times; 145 houses have been burnt down, 16 adults and nine children killed. Four girls are still missing. Most of the inhabitants fled to Andhra Pradesh; others went into the forests. The few who returned huddle together around the one building that has a roof – a blue tarpaulin has been stretched over the top. But what stands out, what is so unusual, is that the pink walls are almost entirely covered with neatly painted Hindi script. Someone has spent a lot of time with a brush and a pot of red paint to do this. Had they checked to see if the villagers could read Hindi, they might have saved themselves a great deal of effort; no one does, or will admit to being able to do so. The villagers look at the writing as if seeing it for the first time. They have no idea what it says, they say, or how it came to be there. They seem unconcerned by its presence. But the message the Naxals have left is unequivocal. “Don’t take part in elections. Don’t listen to the Hindu fascist members of the BJP [the Hindu nationalist opposition party]. Throw away their leaflets, don’t help the police...” Scared at first, the villagers of Nendra relax as night falls. Yes, the dadas come from time to time, they say, but what can they do? They feed them and send them on their way. Then the SJ come and burn their houses and kill those who cannot run away. “We are just living and surviving,” says a voice in the darkness. Many villagers depend on the forest for their living, collecting tendu leaves which are used to roll bidis, the Indian cigarette. When the state sent in forest guards to keep them in check, matters got worse. Guards would charge villagers for services, demanding a chicken here and 100 rupees there. When the Naxals intervened to stop the guards, it was enough to convince many that the Maoists were on their side. Nendra is one such village stuck between the two factions. The night is hot and muggy. It belongs to the mosquitos in this malaria-riddled region. In the foggy morning, Mutti Muchaki, a woman in her fifties, is preparing breakfast. She was with her husband Rama Pula and two grown sons, Ganga and Veko Pula, when the SJ came the first time. “They tied our hands behind our back. We were taken to the [SJ] camp at Errabore. On the fourth night they said there was a meeting and took away the three men. Later we heard they had been killed with a knife and their bodies were thrown into the nala [drain].” The headman, Timmaia Muchaki, says the naxals take the young people into the jungle to their meetings. “One side is here, one side is there, we are caught in the middle. This side wins, that side wins, we don’t care, we just want to get on with our lives,” he mumbles. It is Rahul Sharma’s job to defeat the Naxals. The superintendent of police for Dantewada district lives in a house protected by armed men on the gate and walls topped with razor wire. In his operations room, he points out the Naxal territory on a map. Pieces of pink string glued to the map mark the road which they know to be mined, encircling a huge area controlled by the Naxals. “This is totally out of our command,” he says. “We are facing stiff resistance, but my boys are in there fighting.” Forty per cent of Dantewada is in Naxal hands, he says; 40 per cent is held by the police and they are fighting over the other 20 per cent. “It is the biggest casualty theatre for the Indian government in the country,” says Sharma. “It is a full blown-war and the Naxals are migrating from guerrillas to a full-blown conventional army.” Driving south into Naxalite territory, the car passes a group of heavily armed men in combat fatigues. In the town of Bijapur, a group of special police officers (SPOs) carrying .303 rifles are buying ammunition pouches from a shop selling sweets and various other everyday items. A small group of policemen are hiking along a dirt track. One is playing with a grenade, tossing it from hand to hand and fiddling with the pin. On the edge of what constitutes the state-held world stands the Salwa Judum camp and the police base at Errabore. The camp was the scene of one of the most notorious Naxalite successes in recent years. On the evening of July 16 2006, 600 Naxals attacked Errabore. A plaque on the wall of the main police building lists 24 police officers killed. Another 32 people in the camp also died. Some reports say the Naxals spent much of the night in the camp, carefully selecting Salwa Judum members and executing them. Three SPOs are on guard duty, sharing one rifle, which is chained to a log. If they leave their post, one of them chains the rifle around his waist, to make it more difficult for Naxals to steal. The SPOs are young tribal men, paid to augment the police presence. For this they receive 2,150 rupees (Dh160) per month. The compound is surrounded by rolls of barbed wire. In the centre is a watchtower which doubles as a home for half a dozen young men. The door is reached by a rickety wooden ladder propped against the wall. Inside, a couple of old .303 rifles are propped against the white painted concrete wall. A radio playing Hindi tunes in the corner fades in and out There are three bunks; they take turns sleeping. Duty is two hours on, two hours off. Raju Soyam, 20, lives in the camp with his new wife. They used to live in a nearby village, but the Naxals were always bothering them, he says. “We are the enemies of the Naxals. We kill them if we find them,” he says. “If people in the villages are giving them their support, then they are their people.” He remembers the night the Naxals attacked. “We were not issued with guns so we fought with bows and arrows. They burnt all the houses and threw people in the fire and killed them. They killed children and old people. We had search lights and could see them. They looked like us, not like a lion or a fox. They had two hands and two legs.” It is hot, and the boys lounge around lethargically. “I don’t know who will win this war,” he says. “I think they have the upper hand at the moment.” The road into the Naxal heartlands winds through the forest, over the Bailadila Hills and on and on through little villages. The clearing opens up after six hours walking into the forest. And finally, here are the Naxals. There is no show of force, no parading of guns. Just a small group of men sitting around, chewing the fat. They seem awkward, apparently waiting for someone else to join them. After an hour or so, a young man appears out of the trees, dressed in a smart uniform of green shirt, blue neckerchief and brown shorts. His name is Lakeshwa Mundari and the others seem wary of him. He leans against a post and listens to what is being said. “In this area there are two or three hundred villages and thousands of houses have been burnt by the Salwa Judum. They have taken and eaten lots of the cows and hens,” says 27-year-old Lakhmu Ram Mudiyam. He is, it emerges, the Naxal leader in Pedda Korma, the village that was home to the young women whose names appear on the memorial a few yards away. “Wherever the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) and the SPOs come to this village, if they find any man, they kill him If they find a woman or a girl, they rape her. They don’t care whether it is an old man or a woman, they kill everyone. “Our force is fighting for the poorest of the poor, the people who have nothing. The Maoists are fighting for the poor people and the people who are dying of hunger. “I can tell you this: my force does not kill anyone without a reason. If someone makes a mistake they are killed, but no one is killed who does not make a mistake. “If you are in the police or a police informant, then that is a mistake and you will be killed for that.” The men accept cigarettes and light up. The martyred women went to the party school and then went for military training, the men say. “There are schools for five days or 10 days and you have to attend,” one explains. “From time to time they set up the camps and people go. There is arms training one day every year.” They draw on their cigarettes, and there is no sound but the birds in the trees. “They are fighting for us, for the people, not for themselves,” another man says, staring down at the red earth. “We are proud of them They are our elders now.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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Tamil children as young as 11 were forced at gunpoint to fight for the Tigers in Sri Lanka's civil war. Survivors talked of their ordeal to Gethin Chamberlain in Ambepusse
In squalid internment camps, the fight for survival goes on amid reports of 15,000 killed The first accounts of the suffering of civilians during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka began to emerge from the camps where as many as a quarter of a million Tamils are being held behind barbed wire. Makeshift Sri Lanka hospital is shelled, taking 47 lives At least 47 people were killed today and more than 50 injured when a shell struck the last hospital inside the so-called no-fire zone in north-eastern Sri Lanka, where casualties of the country's brutal civil war are being treated. 'Two of us fled. 75 other women killed themselves with grenades' 12 Apr 2009: The harrowing stories of captured female fighters who chose to surrender rather than carry out suicide orders At least 128 reported dead in Sri Lanka's 'no-fire zone' 11 Apr 2009: Military announce that operations to free tens of thousands of trapped civilians have entered final stage Sri Lanka rejects UN call for ceasefire in war against Tamil Tigers 7 Apr 2009: Government says it is determined to crush rebel leaders, despite mounting anger over civilians trapped in conflict zone
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