India: another massacre in a “false encounter” by the forces of the fascist Hindutva State: 37 Maoist comrades murdered at Gadchiroli
Mobilization for denounce and solidarity wherever possible and in all possible forms!
On 22 and 23 April no fewer than 37 alleged Maoists were massacred, after being surrounded by police and paramilitary forces. The massacre could also be larger. From the river Indravati corpses have emerged several hours after the killings and the waters could return others.
In addition, the district has been completely surrounded by police and paramilitary forces that continue illegal searches and incursions against the villagers.
Nor, as on many previous occasions, we know if and how many of the killed people were actually Maoists and armed and how many innocent villagers.
What is certain is that there was not a real encounter but a surprise attack with grenade launchers while the assaulted men were having breakfast or resting.
What is certain is that it has been another massacre of the bloody and ruthless war on people that the Indian state has unleashed.
It has been released a video showing jawans celebrating the “success” by dancing among the corpses. May the rage and indignation against this barbaric massacre and the fascist and genocidal regime that ordered it spread all over the world.
This massacre is part of the Operation Green Hunt – a gigantic and protracted operation of repression and annihilation of the armed struggle of the masses and the mass struggle in general launched by the Indian state, today led by the Modi’s fascist Hindutva regime. As part of this operation, in its third phase, there are massacres, deportations, devastation, mass rape and massive and systematic wave of arrests, disappearances, in the countryside as in the cities, universities and against the mass movements, with systematic violation of human rights.
It results in 10,000 political prisoners, including some prominent intellectuals, such as Professor Saibaba, artists, lawyers, student leaders and of course some prestigious Maoist leaders such as Kobad Gandhi, Ajith and others. And now this new massacre in a vain attempt to stop the rebellion of the Indian masses and the people’s war led by the CPI (Maoist)
Pay homage the martyrs of Godchiroli, murdered in the service of the grandiose and glorious struggle for the liberation of the Indian masses that since the armed peasants uprising of Naxalbari, 50 years ago, has never stopped and advances indomitable to victory.
Organize everywhere is possible protests to embassies and consulates and information and solidarity actions!
Support and help to realize the Spring Thunder Tour, a protracted campaign that will reach the largest number of countries in Europe and the world!
Mass initiatives are needed among the masses, for a powerful support and a powerful protest movement against the Hindutva fascist regime of Modi, lackey of imperialism.
Stop massacres and repression! Stop Green Hunt!
Freedom for all political prisoners in Indian
International Committee in Supporting to the People’s War in India
04/26/2018
The recent massacre at Gadchiroli is another sad bloody page with the BJP Hinduvuta Fascist Modi Government killing the people and we call on people outside and inside India to protest this continuous fascistic killing by the Modi Government –in particular at Indian Embassies around the World on May 1st 2018
Those comrades killed serving the people in Gadchiroli names will be added to the People’s hero’s of India and their killers will forever wear the badge of shame.
Long Live The Resistance to Operation Green Hunt
Long Live the heroes of Gadchiroli eternal shame to their killers.
Solidarity with the struggle of the oppressed of India from the Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr and the Welsh Socialist Republican Congress.
May 1st Protest at Indian Embassies worldwide against the killings at Gadchiroli.
The killings of at least 37 Maoists by the combined force of the CRPF and the C-60, the elite unit of the Gadchiroli Police, on 22nd and 23rd April 2018 raises some very disturbing questions about the stateʹs methods of conducting ʹencountersʹ. In the morning of 22nd April, 64 police and paramilitary personnel gunned down 16 Maoists in Karnasur jungle in Bhamragod area in eastern Maharashtra. The following evening, 23rd April, the police commandos and security personnel killed another 6 Maoists in the Rajaram Khandla jungle, in the Jimalgatta area of Gadchiroli district. Subsequently, on 24th April, the police discovered 15 bloated bodies of suspected Maoists in the Indravati River. As of now, the toll stands at 37. While the Maoists have not commented to the attack, the police has claimed that the Maoists have lost three of their high-ranking commanders and seven women too. Hailed as the biggest anti-Maoist operations in four decades, the entire Gadchiroli district has been sealed off and the police-paramilitary combine are carrying out searches and raids.
When the state declares war on its people via encounters, the modus operandi of state is rarely questioned as it is believed that the state is fighting a just war against terrorists and anti-nationals who mostly double up as extortionists and harass the local population—like the Maoists. But, did an encounter really happen at Tadgaon?
Media reports suggest that the encounter on 22nd April began after a patrolling unit received specific inputs about the movement of the PerimilliDalam near Tadgaon, about 150 kms from the police headquarters at Bhamragod. The police surrounded the Maoists from all sides while they were having breakfast and were resting. Not a single security personnel was grievously injured or killed. There was no encounter; the state used a time-tested strategy of launching a one-sided attack with under barrel grenade launchers (UBGLs), meant to inflict a large number of casualties. The SP Gadchiroli, Abhinav Deshmukh, denied knowledge of how many rounds were fired. It is known that ʹencounter specialistsʹ are rewarded with promotions and awards. Not surprisingly, there were celebrations at Tadgaon after the ʹsuccessʹ of 22nd and 23rd April and a video released shows the jawans dancing to the foot tapping number of a popular Haryanvi song featuring Sapna Choudhary.
It may well be argued that the Maoists have engaged in similar attacks: in Chintalnar (Chhattisgarh) in 2010 when 76 CRPF jawans were killed or in Burkapal (Chhattisgarh) in 2017 when 25 CRPF jawans were ambushed. The pertinent point that is easily forgotten is that the state has the arsenal and not the Maoists. And, when the state decides to kill and not engage in political dialogue with its adversaries, it is necessary to revisit how the state looks upon its enemies and why.In 2010 the then Home Minister, P Chidambaram had said, ʹIf this is war, it is a war that has been thrust upon the state by those who do not have a legitimate right to carry weapons or killʹ. In 2016, his successor, Rajnath Singh said, ʹThere is no place for violence in a developed society and it is my desire to see that instances are brought down to an end in this country.ʹ There is no better proof than these ʹdesirousʹ statements of our Home Ministers, past and present and, which are reflected in the modus operandi of the present UP Chief Minister who has authorized no less than 1000 encounters in less than a yearʹs time.
If the state looks upon itself as the protector of the people, it has to be bound by lawfulness. PUDR strongly criticizes the mass killings at Gadchiroli on April 22nd and 23rd and the harassment that the local population is receiving at the hands of lawless security personnel in the name of searches and raids.
Shashi Saxena and Shahana Bhattacharya
Secretaries, PUDR
Following we want to document a report from Austria, where numerous activities were developed, regarding the 49th anniversary of the founding of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). [source: demvolkedienen.org]
“If one wants the revolution, one has to have a revolutionary party”
(Mao Zedong)
On the 49th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) numerous actions in five federal districts in Austria took place. The revolutionaries in Austria organized meetings, made an action in front of the Indian ambessy und many posters and paintings where put on walls, with the attitude of proletarian internationalism.
Today the Communist Party of India (maoist) continues the way which was started in 1969 under heavy circumstances. People’s war in India today is the biggest revolution in the world and revolutionaries all over the world express their solidarity – because it is a shining role model in the struggles for revolution and the reconstruction of the Communist party.
At this great occasion the struggle for the liberation of political prisoners was put in the centre by the revolutionaries in Austria. In the prisons of the hindufascist Indian state more than 10.000 revolutionaries and communists are kept in captivity. Amongst those are great representatives of the revolutionary movement like Professor G.N. Saibaba who was sentenced to a life penal. Dispite the repression, terror und genocide in India they are not able break the neck of the revolution. In the opposite, the way of the new democratic revolution is breaking it’ way through, under the leadership of it’ revolutionary party, the Communist Party of India (maoist).
Freedom for all political prisoners in India!
Recognition of the prisoners of war in India!
Support the people’s war in India!
Long live proletarian internationalism!
Vienna – Revolutionary activists organized a meeting in Vienna, in which the history of the Communist Party of India (maoist) as well as the situation of political prisoners where topics. Especially the unbending attitude of the Indian comrades deeply impressed the guests and in the end of the meeting they were convinced that “they have to make their struggle to ours”!
With great internationalist enthusiasm and full of vitality an action in front of the Indian embassy was organized to show that the genocide in India is nor accepted in Austria and people’s war is supported!
The International Committee to Support the People’s War in India proposed a Spring Thunder Tour – a series of coordinated initiatives in various countries for information and support to the people’s war in India – currently the largest armed struggle of the masses in the world – in the 2nd most populated country in the world, that affects a “red corridor” of Indian states, with about 100 million inhabitants, led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
The countries reached by the call for the campaign are, in Europe, Italy, France, Galicia, Spain, Austria, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Norway, Sweden; outside Europe, in Northern America USA, Canada; in Latin America: Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia , Panama; in Asia: the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, Manipur, Sry Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan; in the Middle East/Maghreb: Tunisia. Other countries may be added during the construction.
It was called Spring Thunder Tour because Spring Thunderwas named the armed peasant uprising in Naxalbari, whose 50th anniversary occurred in 2017.
Part and articulation of that is the campaign is against the Operation Green Hunt – gigantic and protracted repressive and annihilation general offensive against the armed struggle and mass struggles launched by the Indian state, today led by the Modi’s fascist Hindutva regime. As part of this operation, at its third phase, there are massacres, deportations of populations, devastation, mass rapes and huge and repeated waves of arrests, disappearances, affecting cities and countryside, universities and mass movements with systematic violation of human rights.
It results in 10,000 political prisoners, including some prominentscholars, such as Professor Saibaba, intellectuals, artists, lawyers, student leaders and of course some prestigious Maoist leaders such as Kobad Gandhi, Ajith and others.
In Europe on the issue of the political prisoners and Dr. Saibaba there is also a democratic mobilization and specific pressures on the European Parliament and European governments.
From the launch of the campaign to now, in some countries there are confirmed joinings, in other discussions that have not yet been concluded.
Therefre, the International Committee is not yet in condition to define the timetable for the Tour, that in any case in May / June will start from some countries – first Italy – and will last throughout the 2018. At the end of the year, an international meeting of the forces in movement will make further decisions.
The campaign includes initiatives and actions also towards the Indian multinationals present in the different countries and the war industries involved in relationships with the Indian government.
Of course the latter are related to the struggles of the workers in India and repressions against them, above all the story of the Maruti Suzuki workers, the mass repression and sentence to life imprisonment for 13 workers.
As regards the specific democratic campaign towards the European Parliament, after a meeting already held in January, an ad-hoc committee – India Solidarity Committee – has been promoted , that with petitions and publications will reach many countries and also the political forces present in the European Parliament, as well as embassies, consulates, economic and cultural institutions related to India.
This campaign will continue until the next European Parliament elections, scheduled the next year.
For all this work, the reference is
“Strongly condemn the harassment of Rona Wilson, Public Relations Secretary of CRPP, and others in the name of ‘search operations’
As part of a shocking search operation conducted by the Pune (Maharashtra) police on April 17, 2018, at the residences of various activists in Maharashtra, the home of the CRRP Public Relations Secretary, Rona Wilson was also searched in Delhi. The Committee for Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) strongly condemns the police raids in the residences of peoples activists in the strongest words.
At around 6.00 a.m in the morning, the Pune (Maharashtra) police conducted simultaneous raids at the homes of prominent activists in Maharashtra namely Sudhir Dhavale (Dalit activist, Republican Panthers), Harshali Potdar (Activist, Republican Panthers), Ramesh Gaychor, Jyoti Jagtap, Sagar Gorkhe, Rupali Jadhav and Dhawala Dhengle (all Kabir Kala Manch activists) allegedly in relation to the violence that ensued after the bi-centenary celebrations of the battle of Bhima-Koregaon on 31 Decemeber 2018 and the subsequent bandh. Alongside, Pune Assistant Commissioner of Police, Ganesh Gawade, and Nagpur DCP, Suresh Bawche, searched the residence of prominent people’s lawyer, Surendra Gadling.
On 31st December 2017, an Elgar Parishad was organised to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima-Koregaon which was attended by thousands who gathered to raised their voice against the forces of Bramanical Hindutva Fascism. On the following day, that is, 1st January 2018, a mob carrying saffron flags instigated by Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote attacked the masses and activists who had gathered for the commemoration. It should be noted that instead of taking timely action against those who incited and perpetrated violence that ensued after the Elgar Parishad, the state machinery has chosen to devote its time and attention to target and harass activists and lawyers who have been speaking against the anti-people policies of the government. Both the main forces behind the pre-meditated violence on 1st January 2018, Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote, are right wing activists closely connected with the ruling BJP and the Sangh Parivar. The police forces have failed to arrest Sambhaji Bhide in connection with this case. Rather, they seem interested in conjuring up an elaborate tale of how the songs of peoples’ resistance sung by activists at the commemoration on 31st December were deliberately intended to incite violence! Allegedly under the same pretext of investigating the Bhima Koregaon incident, a team of Pune police led by Deputy Commissioner of Police Pravin Munde and investigating officer, Shivaji Pawar searched the residence of Rona Wilson in Delhi by arbitrarily trying to frame him under the Sections 153 a, 117, 505 1 (b), 34 of the IPC. The police has seized his laptop, phone, books and some money from his residence under the pretext of this arbitrary raid.
Rona Wilson has been an activist for several years, advocating for the cause of political prisoners all over India. As Public Relations Secretary of the CRPP, he has been at the forefront of organising numerous conventions against the unconstitutional nature of draconian laws like UAPA and AFSPA, and against the arbitrary use of death penalty, specifically against Muslims and Dalit minorities. He is an active voice in the campaign for the release of political prisoners condemning the anti-people ploys of the state machinery for arbitrarily persecuting minorities and marginalised sections.
That these raids are happening at a time when voices of Dalit resistance are transforming into an avalanche of resistance against the anti-people policies of the state indicates the deliberate attempt by the powers that be to stifle all voices of protest. Moreover, it exposes the brazen vengeance of the state against Dalit upsurge organising against the unbridled loot and plunder of resources by imperialist capital aided by the forces of Hindutva Fascism. By targeting activists and peoples lawyers, the state is blatantly trying to snuff out even voices of defense from political prisoners. It must be understood that violence that ensued in Bhima Koregaon is being used as an alibi by the ruling classes to browbeat activists and lawyers who have been fighting for the people into silence. These pre-meditated raids reflect the desperation of the increasingly police state and its growing tendency within the executive to frame activists and lawyers under false charges and keep them in confinement under prolonged incarceration.
It must also be highlighted that this arbitrary and illegal search has come at a time when CRPP has been able to gather public opinion against the conviction of Dr. GN Saibaba, Hem Mishra, Prashant Rahi, Vijay Tirki, Mahesh Tirki and Pandu Narote. The Gadchiroli Sessions Court, in its 827 page judgment, inadvertently exposes the workings of a national security state which uses the instrument of law to thwart dissent. It is not a coincidence that when retired judges and prominent lawyers have agreed to speak at a convention (proposed for April 22, 2018) condemning the Gadchiroli Sessions Court judgement, the state machinery has used the pretext of the Bhima Koregaon incident to harass Wilson in order to divert the attention of the public and stop their mobilisation against the judgement of Gadchiroli Sessions Court.
The CRPP strongly condemns the arbitrary police raid conducted at the residence of Rona Wilson and other activists from Maharashtra which is nothing but a tactic to intimidate activists and prevent them from mobilising people and raising voice against the violence perpetrated by the state.
Following the call to action of the Anuradha Ghandy Campaign in support of proletarian feminism, we are publishing a short speech written by a supporter of the RAH and given at the International Working Womenʹs Day event hosted by the Stonewall Militant Front in Austin this year. Proletarian feminism was birthed in the class struggle, in Peopleʹs War, and in our modern movement we must honor our martyrs and theorists like Comrade Anuradha Ghandy and carry that struggle onwards. Ten years after her death, the memory and spirit of Comrade Anuradha Ghandy lives on, in the Peopleʹs War in India, and in the international communist struggle. It is this spirit which drives us forward now to build a militant womenʹs movement which can crush the class enemy here in the belly of the imperialist beast.
Long live the struggle of proletarian women for their liberation!
Honor to Comrade Anuradha Ghandy!
Onwards in the development of a proletarian feminist movement in the world!
The oppression of women has existed for so long in our world, and is so pervasive and total in our society, that it appears to be almost natural, undefeatable, something which we can only improve or manage but never fully do away with. The capitalists themselves, when they acknowledge the oppression of women, tell us that it is either natural or that we should seek only to improve the representation of women within the ruling class and their toadies within the state. Both serve the same purpose: to preserve the oppression of women, to continue their subjugation and domestication and to liquidate revolution. The capitalists cannot end the oppression of women, and they do not seek to because they are the only people who benefit from it. But this does not mean it cannot be abolished in its totality. The oppression of women was born at the dawn of class society, as the very first ruling classes emerged. At the very establishment of private property, women became subjects, domestic slaves bound to the home and to reproduction, bound to the most demeaning drudgery, as men established control over production and property. Women have been oppressed since the moment oppression was born into this world, and they cannot be truly freed until private property and class society are demolished and withered away, until all of humanity achieves dignity and freedom at last under communism. The oppression of women has existed for so long in our world, and is so pervasive and total in our society, that it appears to be almost natural, undefeatable, something which we can only improve or manage but never fully do away with. The capitalists themselves, when they acknowledge the oppression of women, tell us that it is either natural or that we should seek only to improve the representation of women within the ruling class and their toadies within the state. Both serve the same purpose: to preserve the oppression of women, to continue their subjugation and domestication and to liquidate revolution. The capitalists cannot end the oppression of women, and they do not seek to because they are the only people who benefit from it. But this does not mean it cannot be abolished in its totality. The oppression of women was born at the dawn of class society, as the very first ruling classes emerged. At the very establishment of private property, women became subjects, domestic slaves bound to the home and to reproduction, bound to the most demeaning drudgery, as men established control over production and property. Women have been oppressed since the moment oppression was born into this world, and they cannot be truly freed until private property and class society are demolished and withered away, until all of humanity achieves dignity and freedom at last under communism.
Though this may seem distant and unreachable, we know that we can achieve this, and that in fact it is the natural progression of class struggle. To bring about this world we must build revolution, and understand that revolution is the violent struggle between classes, and never succumb to any delusions that there can be any kind of peaceful revolution. In building revolution, the role of women must be understood as essential to its success, as strategic and not tactical. As comrade Lenin said ʹThe experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it.ʹ Marxism-Leninism-Maoism teaches us, synthesizing the lessons of a century of class struggle, that protracted peopleʹs war is our universal strategy for the seizure of state power. To better explain the role of women in peopleʹs war and the peopleʹs army, Iʹm going to briefly touch upon these concepts.
The peopleʹs army is an army of a new type. It is utterly unlike the bourgeois military forces we associate with the word ʹarmyʹ. It is in short a political army with a military face, which is always lead by the party and its guiding ideology, never letting the gun take command over its decisions. While it has officers and soldiers, their relationships is nothing like that of the bourgeois forces. The soldiers are able to criticize their officers and the officers receive no medals, no special privileges. The way it engages the enemy is also completely different: its actions are political attacks given military form. It relies on the enemy as their quartermaster, stealing arms and ammunition from them, and captives are treated fairly and every attempt is made to win them over to revolution. In peopleʹs war the warfare is also of guerrilla and not a conventional nature. But the greatest difference between a peopleʹs army and a bourgeois army is in its relationship to the people. A peopleʹs army is not one which takes from the people, it is not one which relies parasitically upon the society in which it operates. A peopleʹs army seeks to be as fish among the ocean of the masses, seeking to unite with them fully, meeting their needs, and producing its own supplies, paying fairly for whatever they need from the people. A peopleʹs soldier is a true servant of the people. To be absolutely clear: the peopleʹs army and the soldiers within it carry out the majority of the mass work during peopleʹs war. They produce infrastructure and agriculture for the people within the base areas and defend them from the forces of the state.
The role of women in peopleʹs war and the peopleʹs army is one of strategic importance. Peopleʹs war brings about transformation in women, and women bring about transformation to the peopleʹs army. They not only double the potential pool of fighters, they improve the quality of the work of the peopleʹs army and themselves often prove the better of male fighters. Women in fact have been active participants in every attempt at socialist revolution, from the first blows of the Paris commune, to the victory of the October revolution, to the long wars of the Chinese revolution, and every peopleʹs war since. Among any segment of the masses, women are the most oppressed, and this oppression is turned into fury in peopleʹs war, which is unleashed upon the bourgeois and their running dogs. In Peru, the PCP paid special attention to the condition of women, who would make up almost half of the peopleʹs army and eventually 60% of the central committee, the highest amount of women to be represented on the central committee of any communist party. They became soldiers and indeed commanders and officers, and terrified the bourgeois forces, who made many observations that they were more furious fighters than their male counterparts. The influence of such women within both the army and the party cannot be understated. Because women understand fully that the forces of reaction will only bring them back into subjugation, that their freedom lies only at the end of the road from socialism to communism, they fight all the more ferociously both for the socialist revolution and to safeguard its gains against capitalist revisionism.
mfp
In Nepal a large amount of women joined the peopleʹs army, and were both an asset to it as soldiers and had a great role in transforming its nature to that of a true peoples army. In their documents they note that women played an important role in giving the army its mass character, ensuring it was not only active in fighting but also in organizing the masses and in engaging in productive labor. Women were able to go among the masses more easily, better integrating themselves in the families in the areas the peoples army was in or moving into. They took away the masculine image from the army, showing the people it was truly an egalitarian force and making it more approachable. In the theater of fighting itself, women were no less valuable. They were found to be more tenacious fighters, more eager to go on the offensive, and more resistant to torture. It was found that where men lay down arms and gave up, women would continue to fight. They were less prone to big-headedness after victories and skulking after defeats, being more patient and retaining their composure. Despite facing conservative thinking among some men in the party and in the army, they proved that they were not less physically able than their male counterparts, and as in Peru they were decisive force in the successes of their peopleʹs war.
Not only were women of benefit to the peopleʹs army, they were drawn to it in large numbers from other organizations. In Nepal, an internal survey of women in the movement found that between the army, the party, and the united front, women most sought to be within the army (about 40% identifying it as the field they were most drawn to). In Peru we can also see that women joined the people’s army through the movimiento femenino popular in large numbers, and there are also large numbers of women within the new peoples army of the Philippines right this moment. Why are women so drawn to peopleʹs war, to the peopleʹs armies? There are many aspects of peopleʹs war which appeal to women. It’s productive and compassionate nature to the people, itʹs egalitarian nature which allows women the chance to advance, and the opportunity to turn their righteous fury upon their class enemy are some examples. The base area itself, the ability to begin to nurture the fruits of the revolution and build a more just and free world where they themselves can taste the beginnings of their liberation, has great appeal to women struggling for revolution. Of greater appeal, however, is the affect the peopleʹs army and peopleʹs war has on women inside and outside of it.
Violence and struggle are the only ways change occurs in this world. This is true for everything from physics to society. War has an immediate effect upon those taking part, and the nature of the peopleʹs army and peopleʹs war makes these effects into positive transformation. Women are changed by peopleʹs war both in essence and also in form. Where she lacked confidence, where she was made meek and told to focus on her appearance over her physical and ideological development, she is now given leadership, she is trained into a soldier who is upright and armed, able to fight for long periods of time or in quick succession. She is given a political education and the equal place to argue with the men around her both over matters of class struggle as well as gender. Where before her spirit was quashed and she was made to be quiet, now she is rebellious, furious and armed. Long have women endured quietly the private and public violence of men, made powerless against this predation and humiliation by the forces of the bourgeois state. During peopleʹs war womanizers, abusers and rapists fear maoist women, and those who commit acts of violence against women are swiftly punished by the peopleʹs courts. In Nepal especially it was noted that women who had been oppressed by the feudal system transformed wholly and completely. Previously women had worked dawn till dusk on land they had no rights to, which was owned completely by their husbands and would only be passed to their sons, they were not even permitted to remarry after their husbands death. After the initiation of peopleʹs war these same women learned how to plant time bombs, listen for enemy intelligence, and plan complicated attacks against reactionary forces. Women who had previously been illiterate and confined to the home now argued complicated matters of philosophy. Before they faced the endless drudgery of feudal life, the only escape being urban life, which itself offered only trafficking into prostitution or enslavement in sweatshops. Prostitutes who had previously known only the gravest indignities, deepest humiliation and most grotesque violence were freed and became dignified and powerful fighters, able to attack the very state that had forced them into such destitution and earning a dignified death in service to the people, for which they would be celebrated both by their comrades and the people. Peopleʹs war offered freedom, an exciting new avenue for young women to challenge themselves alongside men on equal terms, to prove themselves physically and mentally. Women were, for the first time, given an opportunity for a dignified life and a dignified death in service to the people and indeed to the whole world revolution.
nepal women
This change however swept far beyond the women directly involved in the peopleʹs war. The peopleʹs war had dramatic affect upon the women within the base areas as well. A base area is in short an area in which the party has seized full control and from which it attempts to build the embryo of a new socialist state. These conditions within the base areas create fertile ground for women to assert themselves and act in ways that feudal and capitalist oppression never allow. In Nepal it was found that women began plowing agricultural fields which was not religiously permitted and tiling roofs which was not culturally permitted. When their husbands were killed by police they would shun traditional widowhood ceremonies and instead would print in newspapers resolutions to avenge their husbands in revolutionary struggle. The shame and stigma around remarrying after widowing was also eroded away, and women began to marry for the first time based on love and ideological commitment, and also divorce men who were found to be traitors to and enemies of the revolution. Women were no longer having children until they had sons, and were infact limiting the number of children they had such that they could continue their revolutionary activities. Where before they had no options against polygamy, cheating husbands, and sexual violence they could now find dignity through the peopleʹs courts, and began to speak out against their abusers. Before rape victims were stigmatize, but as the state engaged in organized rape campaigns, this shame gave way to a deep class hatred and a burning desire for rebellion. Women were able to take an active role in shaping the new state, both in infrastructure and in policy, and the absence of men lead to women being more cooperative and alongside the leadership of the party they engaged in many collective works, collective farming being one such example which both improved the lives of the people and brought many families, including those whose male leaders were reactionaries, to the side of the revolution. In the base areas, women began at last to grasp dignity.
Outside of the base areas in Nepal peopleʹs war radically changed the nature of womenʹs lives and womenʹs organizing. Before peopleʹs war the backwards, reformist feminist movement found itself scarcely able to do anything. After the initiation of peopleʹs war, women’s organizations began to abandon the struggle for reforms and began to take action, and likewise the reactionary nature of NGOs and their sham activists were exposed. No longer did feminist organizations discuss the representation of women in parliament or amongst the bourgeois. The fraudulent nature of such struggles was exposed as counter revolutionary, and instead violent demonstrations against beauty pageants were organized, and organizations came together to protest the rape torture and murder of revolutionary women. In urban areas where the peopleʹs war had not touched, women began to become more class conscious and the womenʹs movement began to see class as the key link to their oppression. Likewise was the failure of reform and charity laid bare in Peru, as NGO activists were exposed as snitches selling revolutionaries to the state, and as reformists called for the end of armed struggle in favor of participation in elections even as the state engaged in horrific campaigns of violence and slaughter against the people. Such reformism is the betrayal of the womenʹs struggle, of the struggle for true and final liberation. It liquidates the fury of women into that domesticated meekness the bourgeois seeks in all its subjects but especially among women. A sugar coated bullet is still a bullet, and in the face of peopleʹs war, it is plain to the masses and especially to women that such capitulation can lead them no where but back into shackles.
Sadly enough, the communist party of Nepal itself capitulated to capitalist ideology emerging within the movement, which we call revisionism, and liquidated the peopleʹs war to engage in parliamentary struggle. When the party laid down itʹs weapons, the condition of women immediately became worse. In their own propaganda they admitted that women became less involved in the party, that the womenʹs struggle went backwards, and these phony ʹMaoistsʹ began to talk of the representation within parliament and of reform that they had railed against just a few years prior. When the peopleʹs army was taken from women, they lost everything they had fought and died for. In this defeat we find stark lessons: firstly, that we must guard against revisionism within our movement. Revisionism turns our struggle into its opposite, it turns the party of the proletariat into the party of the bourgeois, and the peopleʹs army into the lapdogs of the capitalists, the struggle for revolution into one for reform. The other lesson we can take from this and from other failures and defeats is that women can only be emancipated through the armed struggle. Truly, without the peopleʹs army, the people (and women especially) have nothing.
In our present movement, we must begin to build for this struggle here and now. We cannot be deceived by those who tell us that the path to our freedom as women lies in reforms, in representation, in community healing. The only way forward for women is revolutionary violence. Our whole lives as women we are cowed, domesticated, made meek and demure. Our bodies are not our own, and any concerns of physical health or physically ability seconded to aesthetic and sexual appeal, particularly to men. We are assaulted by friends, by lovers, by family and by strangers, and we are never truly allowed the means to defend ourselves and to strike out against those who prey upon us. Our bodies are viewed as things to be consumed, to be used by others, to be bought and sold in advertisements, or often as prostitutes, sugar babies, and in nudes over snapchat. We are denied access to much of the workforce, and those areas we are expected to exist within are devalued. When we do share work spaces with men we are valued and payed less than them, and we are often sexually harassed and assaulted by our bosses and male coworkers. Women who are of oppressed nations or who are LGBT face a triple oppression, subject to further violence and indignities, pushed further into prostitution and out of the workforce. We are butchered in our streets, in our homes, and even alongside our families. How many black women must vanish, how many lesbians must be found butchered in their homes, how many girls must be assaulted before we discard the vulgar lies of reformism? Despite the supposed successes of bourgeois feminism we are still largely confined to the domestic sphere, we still lack in dignity and in autonomy. Our president is a fucking rapist. Nothing these phony ʹresistersʹ and #bossbabes offer us can lift us out of this indignity. But there is a way forward for women. Reclaiming revolutionary violence can give us our dignity, peopleʹs war can give us a correct direction for our violence to destroy this corrupt, bastard world and birth a new one. Socialism towards communism is the only road to freedom for us. Womenʹs participation in revolution is a condition of itʹs success, and the condition for the emancipation of women is our participation in revolution, in peopleʹs war.
npa women 1
There is more to draw on than historical examples, even more recent than the people’s war in Nepal which continued into the early 2000ʹs. In the Philippines today women make up a large portion of the New Peopleʹs Army and indeed have place within the party as well. Women are celebrated within the NPA, and simply checking twitter or facebook you can see smiling women in battle dress, determined women training with stolen AKʹs and ARʹs, and videos women holding philosophical and political discussions. A recent tweet illustrates quite clearly the view of women in the NPA: ʹWomen who chose the revolutionary path – the new women – have already emancipated themselves. They are no longer beholden to any repressive authority and, in fact, gained the freedom to smash them.ʹ It is accompanied by a picture of woman of the NPA with an AK standing alongside a man with an AR. As of IWWD, this was tweeted a scant 6 days ago. But we do not even need to look so far as that! Within our own budding movement we can see this struggle begin to take shape. In Kansas city, the Proletarian Feminist Committee has, for about a year now, organized self defense classes for everyone but specifically aimed towards women. The organizers have themselves said that women take these more seriously than men, and fight in them more viciously and train more regularly. In Los Angeles, today, the same day that I deliver this presentation, Red Guards Los Angeles announced the formation of their own ʹWomenʹs Guerrilla Defense Unitsʹ in an absolutely inspiring statement. To quote them quite directly:
ʹWith the participation of the Ovarian Psyco-Cycles we will be starting a Boyle Heights proletarian Womenʹs Guerrilla Defense Unit open to all genders but with a principal focus on proletarian oppressed nationality women.
The unit will be one part internal self-defense training for women, one part external (public) self-defense training for women, one part political development – all united principally under the philosophy that only through revolutionary vengeance/violence is it possible for proletarian women and their allies to be transformed and emancipated from patriarchal capitalism-imperialism.
Patriarchy cannot be simply unlearned. We must literally arm ourselves and go to war with U.S. capitalism.ʹ
In our own locality, the Stonewall Militant Front has reaffirmed its commitment to carrying out revolutionary violence against the forces of capitalist patriarchy. More concretely, our comrades here in the Revolutionary Student Front -ATX have started an absolutely ruthless campaign against the loathsome domestic abuser in the faculty, Morrisette. They have brought great scrutiny and attention to his history of domestic violence and have inspired the masses to carry out multiple graffiti attacks against him and against UT for harboring him. Itʹs militant proletarian feminist leadership has called for revolutionary violence against all abusers and him in particular, expressing their desire to see his throat crush by a militant womenʹs movement in an impassioned speech delivered on campus. These are our first stumbling steps down the road to real proletarian feminism, a feminism that brings violence to the forces of capitalist patriarchy, to abusers and to the capitalists that are, ultimately, responsible for them and who alone benefit from womenʹs subjugation. We must not be meek on this matter: we must begin building for peopleʹs war in everything we do. Proletarian feminism means nothing less, women deserve nothing less, our class deserves nothing less, than the violent overthrow of the capitalists, of patriarchy and national oppression. These forces oppress and exploit us for the benefit of a few, who set us at each others throats like beaten dogs to squabble amongst ourselves for the pathetic morsels of reform they ever so often condescend to toss us. But the fury of women, of working class women, is boundless. Our oppression was born at the dawn of class society and it will die at the birth of communism, with our hands firmly around its throat. Women hold up nothing so little as half of the sky, and we must bring the full force of that down upon the capitalists in violent revolution.
Long live the revolution!
Long live proletarian feminism!
(Source: https://houstonra.wordpress.com/2018/04/12/women-in-peoples-war-past-present-and-future/)
THE SPECTRE OF UAPA AND THE QUESTION OF POLITICAL PRISONERS: DAY LONG CONVENTION
Speakers
Justice Sudarshan Reddy (Retd.)
Justice H Suresh (Retd.)
Rebecca John (Senior Advocate, Supreme Court)
Prof. Kalpana Kannabiran
Prof. Haragopal
Rajvinder Singh Bains (Advocate, Punjab and Haryana High Court),
More than a year has passed since Dr. GN Saibaba got convicted along with Vijay Tirki, Pandu Mahesh Tirki, Hem Mishra and Prashant Rahi by the Gadchiroli Sessions Court. The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court recently rejected the bail application of Vijay Tirki and Prashant Rahi without even considering the merits of the arguments of their lawyers.
A passing reference was made that those arguments may be looked into when the appeal against the conviction is taken up.
It is increasingly becoming evident that the long arm of the executive has made the judiciary indifferent to its purported role of defending the rule of law.
As the public outrage against the incarceration of Saibaba and others is gathering momentum, it is important that we take stock of the emergent issues at hand so that we call out the anti-democratic, anti-people intent of the state with renewed vigour.
The issues that we invite your attention to are also significant in our continuing struggle to ensure justice for all political prisoners.
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), under which Dr. Saibaba and others have been convicted, is undeniably one of the most draconian instruments of law that has been wielded to stifle any kind of political activity that is remotely against the establishment.
It becomes emergent that every campaign for the release of political prisoners has to thoroughly expose the anti-democratic let alone unconstitutional nature of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
The very fundamentals of a democratic polity is being undermined through this act so much so the moment you are charged and convicted under UAPA, you are labeled as you tend to cease as a person on whom law applies on an equal footing as in the case of any other citizen.
The all pervading sweep of this draconian instrument looks at the nomenclature of crime, especially acts of ‘terror’, in a simplistic way to the extent the science of jurisprudence and the need to maintain a scientific temperament become secondary and the moribund logic of the ideology of war on terror takes precedence.
Socially for the prisoner and his/her family a new life starts: of stigma; suspicion; surveillance and a total lack of opportunity to be seen as human beings capable of a meaningful productive existence.
This logic extends within the prison and the word UAPA/naxalite/terrorist becomes the markers that defines what they are and hence are bodies that can /should be kept under constant watch. Admittedly, every campaign for the release of political prisoners has to thoroughly expose the anti-democratic, not to say unconstitutional, nature of UAPA.
The all-pervading reach of an anti-terror Act like UAPA has made the judge more than convinced that the Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act (henceforth the Disabilities Act) which India has enacted with much fanfare in 2016 ceases to exist for a 90 percent disabled who has been convicted under UAPA.
In the specific context of Dr. GN Saibaba, who is perhaps the only person in his condition forced to live under the harshest form of solitary confinement in a prison cell, the label of a prisoner convicted under UAPA is a double jeopardy.
As a person with 90 percent disabilities, everyday life as a human being is next to impossible for him without specific care and support that factors in the severe physical constraints.
We need to address the question of what the naming of Saibaba as a UAPA prisoner does to his specific rights as a severely disabled person with multiple ailments that have consistently deteriorated in confinement.
Can we expect any sensitivity to a prisoner with severe disabilities from a judicial system when the Sessions Court judge laments about the inability to hand over a much more rigorous punishment than provided by the statute as he is constrained by law?
Or from a judge who wants to punish Saibaba for having a strong and active mind inside a disabled body? The more banal and protracted the incarceration of Dr. GN Saibaba the more specific is the message for those—intellectuals, rights defenders, activists—who would dare say a word against the wisdom of a model of governance that is violently, unabashedly pro-corporate while the adivasis, dalits and muslims have become dispensable entities.
While we are organising this convention, a bail application has been moved in the Nagpur bench of the Mumbai High Court. The court ordered on the 20 March 2018 for a medical report to be filed within two weeks. As we write this the prosecution if yet to file a medical report. The life partner of Dr. Saibaba, A. S. Vasantha is not even allowed to visit him when he is being taken to the hospital. The lawlessness of the extraordinary law UAPA is such that the high court has asked the prosecution if there is any provision to allow the spouse or relative to be with the prisoner while undergoing medical care.
The Disabilities Act ratifies the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2007) of which the Indian government is a signatory, which requires signatories to guarantee equality and all human rights to the disabled.Particularly, this equality can be attained only by ensuring that persons with disability can exercise their bodily integrity and individual autonomy with “inherent dignity”with “independence and accessibility”, that is, their right to life as stated under the 2016 Act.
In the case of Saibaba, it is his very life that has been put under serious peril by his conviction under UAPA.
Moreover, despicable living conditions and lack of basic facilities in prisons even for those who are not disabled in Indian prisons makes it utterly impossible for persons with disabilities to live a dignified existence and thus denies their right to equality by forcing them to live an inhuman and precarious existence in custodial confinement.
In such a scenario, the life imprisonment awarded to a 90% disabled man is not merely a violation of the 2016 Disabilities Act, but it demonstrates the brutality and deliberate attempt by the state to execute his murder for the apparent “crime” of speaking about the wretched conditions of the oppressed people of this land.
At a time when convicted prisoners with incriminating evidence against them like Babu Bajrangi(who was instrumental in the Naroda Patiya massacre during the Gujarat pogrom) is granted bail 14 times on the basis of flailing health grounds, the denial of bail and incarceration of Saibaba and 5 others exposes a capitulated judiciary and false claims of democracy wherein the rights of citizens are blatantly violated and suspended under a draconian law like the UAPA.
KalpanaKannabiran has succinctly summed up this dehumanization of GN Saibaba in the light of the recent Supreme Court judgement on privacy. To quote her:
The privacy Bench reiterated the words of Justice Krishna Iyer in the Prem Shankar Shukla case: “The guarantee of human dignity, which forms part of our constitutional culture, and the positive provisions of Articles 14, 19 and 21 spring into action when we realise that to manacle man is more than to mortify him; it is to dehumanise him and, therefore, to violate his very personhood, too often using the mask of ‘dangerousness’ and security…” and that the right to life cannot be restricted to mere “animal existence”.
How do we begin to understand the sanctity of life, dignity and bodily integrity for a person with disabilities? If handcuffing is an extraordinary and excessive restraint on an ordinary prisoner, what constitutes excessive restraint beyond the writ of law for a person with disabilities?
To deliberate more on such pressing questions we would wish your participation in the convention which would be addressed by renowned judges (retd) of the Supreme Court and High Court, Senior advocates, prominent civil libertarians.
Please do attend and pass on the message.
Committee for the Defence and Release of GN Saibaba.
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