[News] India - Operation Green Hunt

[Anti-Imperialist News]

India Green Hunt (a second and longer piece follows)

www.icawpi.org


Today the Central and Eastern regions of India 
are witnessing the largest police/paramilitary 
deployment unprecedented in the history of 
independent India or even in the days preceding 
it. All independent sources acknowledge the 
deployment of around 250,000 paramilitary/police 
armed to the teeth in these regions while the 
government comes out with a conservative estimate 
of around 150,000. This military build up is a 
calculated assault on the poorest of the poor of 
the peoples in these regions-the tribals. The 
ostensible intent behind this heavy paramilitary 
build up-with Indian military experts providing 
the technical expertise under the watchful eye of 
‘experts' from US and Israel-is to ‘secure' the 
area from the hold of CPI (Maoist) and then usher 
in development and civil administration, as time 
and again claimed by the Home Minister, P 
Chidambaram in the media. The real intent of this 
war is to facilitate the unbridled loot and 
plunder of the rich resources-forest wealth, 
minerals, water etc-through the MoUs signed with 
the domestic corporates and multinationals.

Starting from the month of September till date 
the mounting information of growing instances of 
killings, disappearances and atrocities on the 
tribals are slowly trickling out in a situation 
where none are allowed access to these areas 
enforced by the lawless paramilitary and other 
vigilante gangs let loose by the government. In 
the meantime while building up the concentration 
of the paramilitary in these areas the home 
minister suddenly denied the occurrence of any 
such thing as ‘Operation Green Hunt'-as it is 
commonly called-and simultaneously asserted his 
government's readiness for talks if the Maoists 
"abjure violence". The recent offer of the CPI 
(Maoist) for a 72-day ceasefire provided the 
government do observe the same and also its call 
for talks has opened up a new dimension.

In this context when the large sections of the 
media is oblivious or is prevailed upon by the 
official propaganda of a war which it is fighting 
for development, prosperity and peace it is 
important to bring the perspective from the 
margins of a continuing sordid tale of 
destruction, destitution, displacement and death. 
Please join the PRESS CONFERENCE to be addressed 
by Ms. Arundhati Roy, writer, Kabir Suman, 
well-known Singer and Member of Parliament and 
other civil rights and people's movement 
activists at the FCC on 5 March 2010, Friday, at 
3 pm dot. Kindly send your reporter and camera person.


Email: 
<mailto:info at fccsouthasia.net>info at fccsouthasia.net 
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Website: www.fccsouthasia.net
For more details contact: G N Saibaba: 
09910499553, Email: 
<mailto:concernedcitizens at gmail.com>concernedcitizens at gmail.com
*******************************************
A Briefing to the International and All-India 
Media based on Press Reports in the Local Languages involved,
Fact-finding Reports of teams of Democratic and 
Civil Rights Organisations and the Statements issued by the CPI (Maoist)

Press Note

(This is a note released to the International 
Press in a Press Conference held in 
Foreign  Correspondents, Club, New Delhi on the 5th March, 2010 at 3 PM)

The last quarter of 2009 has been quite 
significant in the annals of history of the 
Indian subcontinent with the much publicised war, 
euphemistically called as Operation Green Hunt, 
of the Government of India on the Adivasis­the 
poorest of the poor­ of the region ostensibly to 
usher in, what is being time and again termed as 
Progress, Prosperity and Peace. The tragedy 
unfolding behind the smokescreen of this media 
blitz of the Government of India should be 
brought to the notice of one and all for its 
alleged intentions, and the real, concrete 
fallout of this campaign that is taking place 
under the direct guidance of the learned, erudite 
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the 
lawyer/politician/finance minister turned Home Minister P Chidambaram.

An unprecedented military offensive

If the total number of government forces 
presently engaged in this operation is taken in 
its entirety (including the paramilitary forces 
and the state elite police) it comes close to a 
quarter of a million. This is more than double 
the US forces presently deployed in the 
occupation of Iraq­approximately 120 thousand in 
September 2009­and bigger than the armies of 
Australia, Netherlands and South Africa put 
together. The preparations speak volumes about 
the real intentions of the government as Indian 
Air Force helicopters turned into gun ships are 
being used against adivasis, airstrips 
constructed in Raipur and Jagdalpur, 
jungle-warfare schools opened to train the forces 
in special operations, new barracks and bases to 
station armed forces are established all over the 
war zone, public buildings including schools and 
panchayat houses are converted to paramilitary 
and police camps and torture chambers. To top it 
all, army commanders are overseeing the war 
operations while US is providing ‘advisors’, 
military intelligence, satellite surveillance and 
‘guidance’­in one word called logistic support.

Contrary to the claims of the government, to 
secure the land against “the single largest 
internal security threat”­Naxalism­to this 
country, what is unfolding to the concern and 
anguish of every democratic and progressive mind 
is the calculated assault on the tribal people 
inhabiting the forests of Jharkhand, West Bengal 
stretching from Paschimi Midnapur-Bankura-Purulia 
in West Bengal to 
Srikakulam-Vishakhapatnam-Vizianagaram-East 
Godavari in North Andhra Pradesh and 
Khammam-Warangal-Adilabad in North Telangana as 
well as the eastern districts of Maharashtra – 
Gadchiroli and Chandrapur. The war zone under the 
blue-print of the Operation Green Hunt slated by 
the Government of India includes the Southern 
districts of Orissa – Koraput, Gajapati, Ganjam and Mulkangiri.

This has added yet another sordid chapter to the 
continuing assault on the tribals of the 
subcontinent in the form of Destruction, 
Destitution, Displacement and Death (four dreaded 
Ds of the Indian state’s policy). Thus the 
campaign for Prosperity, Progress and Peace by 
the Government of India under the UPA government 
is bringing in untold miseries to the adivasis in 
the form of Destruction of their lives and 
livelihoods, growing Destitution among them, 
massive Displacement running into hundreds of 
thousands due to increasing atrocities of 
barbaric dimensions by the paramilitary and 
security personnel, and last but not the least 
Deaths and Disappearances of tribals who have 
refused to leave the forest areas which are their 
natural habitats. Thousands of paramilitary, 
CoBRA, Greyhounds, C-60 and other elite armed 
police forces reared for this purpose by the 
state governments are being deployed in each and 
every part of Dandakaranya and other regions 
under this operation. These forces are entering 
forests, hills and village settlements unleashing 
immense brutality on unarmed and defenceless adivasis.

Adding intrigue to this murderous exercise, the 
Home Minister, who has been, and is still 
travelling the length and breadth of this 
country, announcing the various facets of this US 
inspired war on the poorest of the poor of this 
land, is the sudden and audacious denial by the 
minister himself about the presence of any such 
operation termed as the Operation Green Hunt. 
What provokes any discerning mind into 
consternation is the total blackout in the media 
of continuing atrocities on the tribals while P 
Chidambaram who had earlier graphically explained 
the various manifests of the Operation goes on a 
denial mode of such a massive military 
exercise­with the paramilitary belonging to the 
CRPF, BSF, CoBRA, Grey Hounds, C-60, SPOs and 
what not deployed in the forest tracts of Central 
and East India­unheard or untold in the history of this region.

The terror of development

While this massive operation is taking place in 
the rural interiors of Central and Eastern India, 
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke with a forked 
tongue at the Chief Minister’s Conference on 
Implementation of the Forest Rights Act 2006, on 
4 November 2009 in New Delhi. To quote: "There 
has been a systemic failure in giving the tribals 
a stake in the modern economic processes that 
inexorably intrude into their living spaces. The 
alienation built over decades is now taking a 
dangerous turn in some parts of our country. The 
systematic exploitation and social and economic 
abuse of our tribal communities can no longer be 
tolerated." But the Prime Minister was quick to 
add while stressing the need to make tribals “the 
primary beneficiaries of the development 
process”, the need to win the “the battle for their hearts and their minds".

What is worth mentioning here is that the 
geographical terrain, where the government’s 
military offensive is planned, is very 
well-endowed with natural resources like 
minerals, forest wealth, biodiversity and water 
resources, and has been the target of systematic 
usurpation by several large, both Indian and 
foreign, corporations. So far, the resistance of 
the local indigenous people against their 
displacement and dispossession has prevented the 
government-backed corporates from exploiting the 
natural resources for their own profits and 
without regard to ecological and social concerns. 
As hundreds of MoUs have been signed by the 
various state governments under the auspices of 
the Central Government and the foreign and 
domestic corporations the government is 
deliberately hiding the truth behind this 
unprecedented military offensive as an attempt to 
crush democratic and popular resistance against 
dispossession and impoverishment. Significantly 
the Prime Minister himself is on record talking 
about the need to make way for the vast mineral 
and other forest wealth in these forest lands to 
be exploited to facilitate the march to progress. 
This is corroborated by the statement of the Home 
Minister about the need to ‘secure the whole 
area’ first so as to usher in ‘development’. 
Operation Green Hunt thus is unequivocally a 
calculated move towards facilitating the entry 
and operation of these large corporations and 
paving the way for unbridled exploitation of the 
natural resources and people of these regions.

Operation Green Hunt­a euphemism for genocide of the tribals

Of significance is the number of killings that 
has happened ever since the commencement of the 
Operation Green Hunt, say from the third week of 
September under the gaze of the ‘Reality Show’ 
driven sensation hungry media wherein more than 
4000 CRPF and 600 anti-Naxal CoBRA commandos 
entered Dantewada’s Chintagufa area. People 
resisted this intrusion by the government’s armed 
forces, and in the battles six soldiers, 
including two commanding officers were killed.

To avenge the death of the armed forces, the 
troops ‘managed’ a massacre of adivasis while 
resorting to arson of their villages, in which at 
least nine villagers were murdered in cold blood 
and four villages got totally gutted leaving 
nothing behind. The government claimed that all 
those killed were Maoists, while the eye-witness 
accounts, local media reports and independent 
fact-finding visits have confirmed that it was 
yet another stage-managed genocide of adivasi 
villagers, who were picked up and killed. 
Starting from the incident of 9 August 2009 in 
Vechhapal under Bhairamgarh police station 
(Bijapur district) to the one near Kistaram 
(Dantewada district) on 10 November 2009, all 
have been fake-encounters. Seventy adivasis in 
total have been killed in these fake encounters 
in this period. It should be noted that not a 
single one among them was a Maoist!

The government’s claim of killing 7 ‘Naxals’ in 
an encounter on the 10th of November 2009 near 
Kistaram is   incorrect as the CPI (Maoist) 
issued a statement stating that none of their 
cadres died in the incident. It must be 
registered here that even if one of their cadres 
get killed, the CPI (Maoist) declares it openly 
apropos the normal conduct of CPI (Maoist) is 
observed. On 9 December, more than 500 
paramilitary and policemen entered the area under 
Kistaram police station from Cherla Dommaguda 
police station area in Khammam district of Andhra 
Pradesh. They reached Tetemadgu village through 
Dokpad and Kurigundam, and encircled it. From 
morning to evening of that day, the police burnt 
down houses, women were particularly targeted 
through sexual violence while the rest of the 
villagers got brutally tortured. They took away 
four persons from the village. Two more villagers 
from Dokpad who came to visit their relatives in 
Tetemadgu were also abducted in this manner. 
After spending the night in the forests, the 
police force reached Palodi village in the 
morning of 10 December; they detained yet another 
adivasi while completely burning down the 
village. The police then took all the seven 
captives near Kistaram and riddled them with 
bullets. The government is quick to claim this to 
be an ‘encounter’ with the Maoists. The police 
took away a few more adivasi villagers with them. 
Till date they are untraceable.

Between 7-9 November hundreds of CRPF, CoBRA, 
SPOs and police forces unleashed a reign of 
terror in the adivasi villages under Chintagufa 
police station. They attacked the villagers of 
Burkapal on 7 November, Elma Gonda on 8 November, 
Minpa on 9 November, and forcibly abducted 24 
persons. Their whereabouts or their fate is still 
unknown even after two months. Given the track 
record of the security personnel operating with 
impunity there is every reason to apprehend that 
the police has murdered many of them and disposed of the dead bodies.

At least seven adivasis were murdered by the 
paramilitary-Salwa Judum forces in different 
villages under Kistaram police station between 9 
and 10 November 2009. Of them six were abducted 
from Tetemadgu and Dogpadu villages on 9 November 
while the other was picked up the next day from 
Palodi village. As the recent Tehelka field 
investigation with eyewitness accounts confirms, 
the two villagers from Dogpadu­Madkam Budra and 
Vando Mangdu­were dragged from their villages and 
shot dead. Similarly, eight adivasi villagers 
were killed on a single day on 9 January 2010 to 
be branded later as ‘Maoists’. While four were 
murdered in Sarpanguda under Jegurgonda police 
station in Dantewada, the other four were killed 
in Farasgaon under Benur police station in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh.

The body count of the adivasis is mounting day by 
day with intensification of the Operation Green 
Hunt. According to the government’s own admission 
107 ‘Maoists’ have been killed during the joint 
operations under Green Hunt till mid-January. As 
more and more information pour in from local 
reporters and facts collected by activists 
braving heavy repression and threat to their 
lives, there are reasons to believe that as much 
as four-fifth of them were unarmed and 
defenceless adivasi villagers who have been 
killed in cold blood in fake encounters.

Operation Green Hunt has replaced the Salwa 
Judum­one of the worst murderous campaigns on the 
adivasis­with much more brutality as is evident 
from what is unfolding in the poor tribal hamlets 
in this mineral rich forest tracts. If in Salwa 
Judum more than a thousand adivasis lost their 
lives in Dantewada and Bijapur districts alone, 
in the hands of the 4500 SPOs created by the 
government, the present onslaught reaching 
fascist proportions is adding to those statistics 
of the growing casualties of adivasis. More than 
700 villages were burnt down and close to three 
hundred thousand people were displaced from their 
homes in the worst days of Salwa Judum. In all 
the places where the Operation Green Hunt is on, 
the police, paramilitary and SPOs are resorting 
to large scale arson, rape, torture, illegal 
detention, destruction of property, burning down 
of villages apart from regularly gunning down 
adivasis in so-called encounters claiming them as 
Maoists. The print media has reported that an 
additional two hundred thousand adivasis have 
left their homes and took refuge in the 
neighbouring Andhra Pradesh in the last three 
months fearing atrocities during Operation Green 
Hunt. Moreover, the Chhattisgarh government is 
planning to make strategic hamlets out of the 
displaced population forced to live in 
government-run camps, thereby permanently 
dispossessing them of their ancestral land.

In Maharashtra, Operation Green Hunt was launched 
in the second week of October from the Gadchiroli 
district, in which 10,000 troops took part. M17 
helicopters of the Air Force gave surveillance 
and logistical support. 18 bases have been 
established by the paramilitary forces from where 
they are launching combing operations and 
extermination campaigns. Large scale repression 
of people are reported  from in the eastern 
districts of the state, where the police and 
Anti-Naxal forces like the C-60 have a long 
history of committing atrocities and terror on 
the adivasi people in the name of curbing 
Maoism/Naxalism. In March 2009, policemen from 
the C-60 force gang-raped a 13 year old girl in 
the Pavarvel village in Dhanora tehsil. In the 
Kosimi village of the same tehsil, policemen from 
Gyarapatti police station raped and killed 
Mynaben, a 52 year old adivasi villager in May 
last year. In the latest assault on the people, 
the paramilitary forces are given a license to 
kill and torture by the government.

In Jharkhand too, the initial rhetoric of peace 
talks and negotiations by the newly-elected chief 
minister Shibu Soren has now taken a u-turn for 
support to the Operation Green Hunt. The 
government has stepped up the mobilisation of its 
armed forces by bringing in CRPF battalions from 
Asom and Tripura. The unleashing of state terror 
on the people of Jharkhand is not new, 
particularly on those sections who have resisted 
the state-sponsored corporate attack on 
jal-jangal-jameen. In fact, the police and 
paramilitary forces along with the vigilante 
gangs propped up by them like the Nagarik 
Suraksha Samiti, Tritiya Prastuti Committee, 
Sunlight Sena etc. have long been a byname for 
repression, torture, rape and murder. Like Andhra 
Pradesh and Maharashtra, Jharkhand too has 
recently raised a special ‘anti-Naxal’ force 
called the Jharkhand Jaguars in order to crush 
any voice of dissent against the government’s 
policy of destruction in the name of development. 
Anyone and everyone who dares to stand up against 
the attack on the lives and livelihood of the 
oppressed, is branded as a Maoist or a Maoist 
sympathiser, and persecuted. Various people’s 
movements against the displacement of adivasis, 
civil rights organisations, etc. are facing state 
repression for a long time in Jharkhand, the 
scale and brutality of which is going to go up 
during the fascist extermination campaign of 
Operation Green Hunt. We can already see the 
inevitable fallouts of this war on people as 
exemplified by the murder of Rajendra Yadav who 
was picked up on the night of 31st December 2009 
by Jharkhand police, tortured in the name of 
interrogation, and killed in custody. Similarly 
in Orissa there are several cases of rape, arson 
and killing reported from Narayanpatna ever since 
the commencement of the operation. In fact the 
president of the Chhasi Adivasi Muliya Sangha was 
shot dead while in a demonstration before the police and the paramilitary.

Draconian Laws and blanket ban on any form of dissent

Despite the rhetoric of the battle for the hearts 
and minds from none other than the Prime Minister 
the manner in which the security and paramilitary 
forces have wreaked havoc in the lives of the 
adivasis stand testimony to the utter disregard 
for the laws and procedures of the land. In fact 
several laws like the UAPA and the Chhattisgarh 
Special Areas Act are being conveniently used on 
anyone and everyone who dares to raise the voice 
against the policies of the government. The 
recent arrest and booking of KN Pandit, veteran 
trade unionist and anti-displacement activist in 
Ranchi and Gananath Patra, former professor and 
veteran communist leader who is also the official 
advisor of Chhasi Adivasi Muliya Sangha of 
Narayanpatna at Bhubaneswar are fresh examples of 
the increasing lawlessness of the police and 
paramilitary in their desperate attempts to 
browbeat the people into submission. In fact any 
effort to make independent fact findings into 
these areas have become next to impossible with 
the police and the murderous goons of the local 
parties join hands to humiliate and assault the 
civil rights activists and intellectuals who took 
care to visit these areas. The recent case of the 
humiliation and assault on the all women fact 
finding team that went to the villages in 
Narayanpatna to record the testimonies of the 
rape victims in the police stations let alone in 
public by the police and the goons speaks volumes 
of how the Government of India would want to 
browbeat the hearts and minds of the people into 
submission. Another case was the detention of the 
30 member fact finding team that was trying to 
visit the areas of atrocities in Dantewada and Bijapur districts.

What is evident from the increasing arrests, 
incarceration of activists of people’s movements 
fighting for the rights to lives and livelihoods 
is a clear cut case of the government bringing in 
‘development’ through the barrel of the gun. As 
is evident from the protests and various 
submissions made to the governments at the Centre 
and the states it is evident that these talk 
about development is nothing but a total loot and 
plunder of the local people and their resources. 
The fact that all these areas that are under the 
cross hairs of the war machine of the government 
come under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution 
has hardly deterred the local administration, 
police and the paramilitary to break laws and 
provisions with impunity.

Despite the heavy militarisation and the terror 
unleashed by the governments the protests from 
the people against such anti-people 
pro-corporate/multinational policies of sell-out 
have only increased. The efforts of the centre 
and the states to handle the situation as a pure 
‘law and order question’ have further 
deteriorated the situation. The Indian 
government’s proposed military offensive will 
repeat that story all over again. Instead of 
addressing the source of the conflict, instead of 
addressing the genuine grievances of the 
marginalized people the Indian state seems to 
have decided to opt for the extremely myopic 
option of launching a military offensive. As 
conscious citizens of this country and sensitive 
to the questions of inclusive growth, justice and 
equality for all we strongly demand the 
government at the centre and the states to 
immediately stop this extermination of the 
adivasis reminiscent to the days of the US genocide of the Red Indians.




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