SFI-AISF pamphlet on AP Public Meeting

STUDENTS’ FEDERATION OF INDIA-ALL INDIA STUDENTS’ FEDERATION

03.08.07

Friends,
The barbarity of the police firing on peaceful protestors in Mudigonda village in the Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh is, indeed, unprecedented in recent memory. The people of the state were stunned to see the live media coverage of this outrageous police action where peaceful Left Parties’ protestors led by the CPI(M) were gunned down at point blank range. Six died on the spot. Another succumbed to injuries later. 16 people were grievously injured. One person was killed as he was making a call from an STD booth. A truck driver was killed when he stopped his truck from moving ahead seeing the commotion. Clearly, the police forces came with a premeditated plan of firing to kill. In fact, not even one of them such as tear gassing, water cannons etc., were used. The police fired 80 rounds and left only when their ammunition was exhausted. Far from showing any repentance or remorse, the state administration, led by the chief minister, has embarked on an offensive not merely defending but justifying the action. In order to understand as to why the Andhra Pradesh state government has resorted to such brutal repression and continues to justify, it is necessary to briefly recapitulate the origins and character of this land struggle launched by the Left parties.

In response to the CPI(M)’s demand to have a proper assessment of the overall availability and distribution of land, the state government had constituted a land committee under the chairmanship of Shri Koneru Rangarao, a cabinet minister, in December 2004. This committee gave its report in 2006. In Andhra Pradesh, around 42 lakh acres of assigned land was being illegally occupied by the land mafias and vested interests. In an embarrassing moment for the Congress party, the chief minister himself had to return assigned lands illegally held by his family without offering any explanation as to how such lands came under his possession to begin with. In order to legalise such illegal occupation of assigned lands (the list of people in possession of such lands is a virtual who’s who of the ruling class political parties leaders and big influential businessmen), the state government issued a government order under the amended act bringing assigned lands under 54 mandals surrounding Hyderabad under its control. Rs. One lakh crore of property legitimately belonging to the poor was now being legally taken over by the vested interests. Simultaneously, large irregularities were found in the implementation of the Indiramma housing scheme. The fact remains that without the compliance of the same government departments, irregularities could not have taken place in the first place.

Seeing the intransigence of the state government, the CPI(M) launched an agitation on the protection of the assigned lands on May 2, 2007 in Warangal. The spontaneous response of the people was so overwhelming that this struggle spread throughout the state within a week. 195 mass organisations including various societies, movements etc., came under a single umbrella to carry forward this struggle to protect the assigned lands. Throughout the months of May and June, hundreds of thousands of people, braving the heat wave, came out on to the streets. These were met with brutal suppression. Over 24,000 cases have been booked (over 5,000 on women) and 3,080 had been jailed before this police firing. All prominent CPI(M) leaders have cases of land grabbing foisted on them. Given the state government’s intransigence on July 15, twenty five leaders of the struggle committee, went on a week-long hunger strike. When the state government’s intransigence continued by refusing to enter into any discussions with the leaders of the movement, the state secretaries of the CPI(M) and the CPI, went on an indefinite hunger strike outside the state assembly on July 22. Similar hunger strikes began in all the taluk headquarters all across the state. The state assembly was in session. The government, however, was not prepared to either discuss in the assembly or with the leaders on hunger strike. Instead, at midnight after the assembly adjourned on July 27, the leaders on hunger strike were arrested. This led to the eruption of mass anger and call for a successful statewide bandh on July 28 when this brutal firing took place in Mudigonda. Despite lakhs of people all across the state spontaneously coming out in this movement (in Hyderabad city alone, over 1.5 lakh people applied for house sites), the state government’s brazenness can only be understood by its deep links with the vested interests who want to misappropriate public resources on a massive scale. It is for this reason that they continue not only to justify the police action but spread malicious disinformation about CPI(M) and its leadership. It is the CPI(M) cadre’s vandalisation and attack on the police which led to the police firing is one such disinformation.

The brutal repression by the Andhra Pradesh government once again exposed the dominance of landed interests in the Congress party and bourgeois-landlord class character of the government. The struggle for land will continue as long as our demand regarding the land to the poor is not met and it will intensify in the days to come.

DOWN WITH THE UNDEMOCRATIC YSR REDDY GOVERNMENT!!
OUR STRUGGLE FOR LAND TO THE POOR LONG LIVE!!

PUBLIC MEETING:

LAND STRUGGLE IN ANDHRA PRADESH: BRUTAL REPRESSION OF THE CONGRESS GOVERNMENT

Speakers:

• Com. P Madhu ( CPI(M) MP, Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh and one of the leaders who led the hunger strike).
• Com. Suneet Chopra (Central Committee Member, CPI(M), Joint Secy. AIAWU).
• Com. Sudhakar Reddy ( MP, Lok Sabha from Andhra Pradesh and Member of the National Council, CPI).

Venue: Kaveri Mess 9:15pm 3rd August, 2007 (tonight)

Sd/- Rajiv Kumar Ranjan, Secretary, SFI-JNU.

Sd/- Fauzan, Jt.Secy, AISF-JNU.

PD Article on Andhra Pradesh Land Struggle

Comrades,

This is an article by Comrade Sitaram in the recent edition of People's Democracy which was put up by SFI as a release in the campus on 3rd August, 2007 (Friday).

On Verdict on Mumbai Blasts

Justice Must Not Be Discriminatory

01.08.07

As we go to press, three more people have been delivered the death sentence by the special TADA court hearing the 1993 Mumbai serial blast case. The total number of those sentenced so far has, thus, gone up to 91 out of the 100 convicted. Of these, eleven have been handed capital punishment while 17 others have been sentenced to life imprisonment. The Mumbai serial blasts, readers will recall, killed over 250 people and injured over 700.

While it is welcome that finally some justice is being delivered in this case of mindless killing of innocent people, it must be remembered that it has taken more than fourteen years for these sentences to be pronounced. Fourteen years is the normal period of time that constitutes life imprisonment. Even now, the convicted can appeal to the Supreme Court against these sentences. Given the track record of the system of delivery of justice in India, one need not be surprised if this process continues to drag on for a long time. Such apprehensions are substantiated by the fact that it has taken nearly two decades for known and identified culprits to be sentenced in the ghastly communal riots in Bhagalpur. The perpetrators of the Maliana (Meerut) communal massacre of 1987 have so far only been legally charge-sheeted! Again, after two decades, the Nanavati Commission had submitted a report on the post-Indira Gandhi assassination killings of Sikhs in 1984, without nailing the culpability of any. The perpetrators of the post-Godhra Gujarat genocide continue to roam free while mountains of circumstantial evidence have not led to the necessary convictions.

Then, there is this glaring case of the findings of the Justice Srikrishna Commission on the post-Babri Masjid demolition, 1992-93 communal riots in Mumbai. In fact, the 1993 blasts were widely propagated as being the response of minority terrorism to the majority terrorism unleashed in the communal riots. Far from taking any action against anybody indicted in the Srikrishna Report, the Shiv Sena-BJP government initially tried to reject this report officially when in government nine years ago. Later they settled for rejecting the report in practice. The subsequent Congress-NCP governments have also failed in ensuring delivery of justice. Yet again, the justice delivery system in our country has failed to convict and punish the perpetrators of communal violence and crimes. These are not the only instances in independent India when justice has simply failed to be delivered to the victims of communal riots. There have been at least five important judicial commissions of enquiry that have submitted their voluminous reports, and yet justice has simply been elusive. These are the Justice P Jaganmohan Reddy Commission of Inquiry into the Ahmedabad Riots of 1969; the Justice D P Madan Commission on the Bhiwandi riots of 1970; the Justice Vithayathil Commission on the Tellicherry riots of 1971; the Justice Jitendra Narain Commission on the Jamshedpur riots of 1979; and the Justice P Venugopal Commission on the Kanyakumari riots of 1982. The Kanyakumari riots were the result of a conflict between Hindus and Christians while the rest have been Hindu-Muslim riots. The RSS was indicted in all of these.

Clearly, the conflicts between different religious communities that inhabit India have all universally denied justice to the victims. For how long can the modern secular Indian republic afford to not improve its justice delivery system in such instances? The question of punishing the perpetrators of communal strife is necessary not only from the viewpoint of humanism and compassion. It is absolutely imperative that justice be delivered in order to strengthen the secular democratic foundations of the modern Indian republic.

There is a universal adage that justice delayed is justice denied. Not only must justice be delivered promptly, but it can never afford to be seen as being partial. While justice in the Mumbai blasts is, to repeat, welcome, the refusal or the reluctance to deliver justice in the various instances mentioned above, only gives the impression that the justice delivery system is not only a system of inbuilt delays but also a system with inbuilt discrimination. At the expense of repeating what we had stated in these columns two weeks ago in relation to some Indians being detained in connection with the Glasgow terrorist attacks, it needs to be underlined that terrorism cannot be associated with any one religion. Terrorism is a crime against humanity that needs to be erased. But this cannot be done by targeting any one specific community as this can only be counterproductive by creating the atmosphere that breeds terrorism’s recruits. We had also noted that even mainstream Hindi cinema (such as Fiza, meaning environment) has chronicled such instances.

In India’s case, the victims of terrorist attacks have been of such a diverse range that the terrorists cannot be straight-jacketed into any single religious group. We have experienced the agonies of attacks on Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, tribals, Hindus, lost two erstwhile prime ministers through terrorist assassinations, Mahatma Gandhi himself a victim of terrorist bullets, in the sixty years since our independence. What is required is to deal effectively with the environment that continues to breed and perpetuate terrorism as the prime minister himself recently stated. A system of delivery of justice that is seen to be discriminatory only vitiates such an environment further. While the other elements crucial to improving such an atmosphere have been detailed by us earlier and the need to be urgently addressed, this aspect of improving the system of delivery of justice needs immediate attention. In the final analysis, the strength of the Republic is measured in its capacity to treat all its citizens equally without any discrimination. The Indian Constitution promises to do so in its very preamble. The incapacity to deliver this promise can only undermine the foundations of the Republic. India cannot simply afford this. The secular democratic foundations of the Indian Republic must be strengthened by strengthening the equality of all before law.

SAY NO TO DISCRIMINATORY JUSTICE SYSTEM

ENSURE JUSTICE TO THE COMMUNAL RIOT VICTIMS

an SFI release

[People’s democracy, july 29, 2007]

Protest March By AIIMS Doctors

• Down With Casteist Venugopal!!
• Unite Against the Prevailing Caste Discrimination by AIIMS Administration!!
  
  

Join

PROTEST DEMO

From AIIMS to PM’s Residence by Agitating Doctors on 03/08/2007 (Friday)

Bus Will Leave Ad. Block at 4.30 pm JNUSU

Sd/- Dhananjay, President, JNUSU. Sd/- Jyotsna, Jt. Secy, JNUSU.

Public Meeting on Andhra Pradesh

“Thousands upon thousands of martyrs have heroically laid down their lives for the people; let us hold their banner high and march ahead along the path crimson with their blood!”
---Com. Mao Tse Tung

PUBLIC MEETING

Land Struggle in Andhra Pradesh: Brutal Response of the Congress Government

Speakers:

• Com. P. Madhu ( CPI(M) MP, Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh and one of the leaders who led the hunger strike)

• Com. Suneet Chopra (Central Committee Member, CPI(M), Joint Secy. AIAWU)

• Com. Sudhakar Reddy (MP, CPI)

(3rd August, 2007 - Kaveri Mess - 9.30 pm)

SFI - AISF