Dimapur, June 30 (MExN): The familiar voice demanding the withdrawal of the 9th Naga IR battalion from Chhattisgarh has risen again. But this time, the voice is not from Nagaland and her civil society. It is from civil society and intellectuals from mainland India and Chhattisgarh state.
An appeal is made to all Naga frontal organizations, public in concern and relatively the government of Nagaland, to withdraw the battalion. The call comes in the face of what a team of intellectuals comprising of journalists, social workers and educationists said was the unimaginable atrocities perpetrated on the people of Chhattisgarh, in the name of flushing out Naxalites.
The solidarity groups comprise of Prof. Amit Bhattacharya, History head of Jadavpur University in Kolkata, freelance journalist from Delhi Abhishek Srivastava, GN Saibaba of an NGO Revolutionary Democratic Front, Prosun Chatterjee of the Gana Pratirodh Manch (GPM from West Bengal), a Jawaharlal Nehru University research-scholar Rona Wilson and Swapan Dasgupta of Radical Publications. The team is here in Nagaland since the last three days.
A press conference was held at Hotel Saramati, Dimapur, where the plight of the local populace, suffering under the atrocities of Indian military, vigilante groups as well as the Naga IRB, was highlighted. Attending the press conference were also the Naga Students’ Federation (NSF), Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR) and the Naga Mothers’ Association (NMA).
Expressing solidarity with the struggle of the Naga people for self-determination, the team said that the Indian government is pitting a suppressed people against another suppressed people.
The state agencies have used the 9th Naga IRB to create terror among the people by circulating “demonizing propaganda,” atrocities of rape, murder and arson, the team told the gathered pressmen. According to them, prior to the arrival of the IRB in Chhattisgarh, the government of Chhattisgarh had even gone to the extent of propagating them as ‘people who are ferocious, demonic and even eat dogs and snakes’ to plant terror in the hearts of Naxalites.
This has resulted in the rape and murder of even women and children in large numbers, destruction of property and livelihood of the locals, the team said. The Naga IRB is just another instrument of the Indian government to subjugate indigenous struggling peoples all the more, the solidarity said.
The team also apologized to the family members of the score Naga IRB personnel killed in Chhattisgarh. Sharing in their pain, the team said that state agencies had used the struggling, suppressed peoples, cornering them into a situation of kill-or-be-killed.
Further, the IRB personnel are under extreme psychological stress and trauma from being exposed to constant death and destruction, the team said while expressing pain at the psychological suffering of the personnel. They have not been able to cope with the acute psychological pressures resulting even in suicide and mental illness, it was informed.
The solidarity, expressing total solidarity with the Naga people’s struggle for self-determination, has sought the same from the people of Nagaland.
A joint statement was later issued appended by the solidarity groups’ members and the NSF, NPMHR and the NMA.
