INDIAN MANDALA Chhatisgarh, bombardments against tribes that oppose the mining companies

A Portuguese MEP denounced the events that had taken place in recent weeks in the Bastar district. The Naxalites, the Maoist guerrillas who oppose the Delhi government, have a strong presence in the area. Since 2017, the army has been carrying out the Samadahn-Prahar operation to end the insurgency that is stopping mining activities. But in the past three years, several young men who have been left without work have joined the militia, continuing an endless cycle of violence.

Raipur () – In early April, India shelled Adivasis groups in the Bastar district, in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, to discourage indigenous environmental movements in their fight against the construction of mines in their territories. This was denounced by the Portuguese MEP Marisa Matias when formulating a parliamentary question in Strasbourg a few days ago: India carried out four air strikes in Bastar in the last three years, Matias said, noting that the last of these incidents took place in Bijapur on April 7 , when the Indian government “sent three helicopters to fire heavy machine-gun bursts at the villagers”.

“These attacks – he added – seriously violate the right to life of the indigenous peoples of India and contribute to the widespread destruction of the environment.”

Bastar is an area of ​​India known to be controlled by the Maoists or Naxalites, the fighters who in the 1960s, following the tribal uprising in Naxalbari (West Bengal), under the umbrella of the Communist Party of India-Maoist, founded a violent movement against the economic and environmental exploitation of the central government, which, according to them, was intended to protect the adivasis, the indigenous tribes. However, incidents of violence by the Maoists against civilians, including women and children, used as human shields or enlisted in the guerrillas, were also documented. The Indian government banned the organization (including its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army, or PLGA) as “left-wing extremism,” but has (at least so far) failed to stamp it out entirely.

Delhi has launched a real battle against the Maoists for control of tribal lands, rich in natural resources and precious minerals coveted by various companies, especially those of the Adani group.

The Indian government, led by the Hindu ultranationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), launched in 2017 the Samadahn–Prahar operation, which had dealt a heavy blow to the Naxalites before the pandemic. However, in the last three years, a number of youths left without work have joined the Maoists, continuing an endless cycle of violence: in December 2020, the BJP’s Central Military Commission had admitted killing some 3,000 policemen, 222 politicians and more than 1,100 police informers, and that it had lost some 4,500 of its fighters since 2001.

It should be remembered that the defense of the rights of the Adivasi people had also been the battle of Fr. Stan Swamy, the Indian Jesuit who died in 2021 at the age of 84 after nine months of detention in a Bombay jail precisely for having been falsely accused of having ties to the Maoist guerrilla. It is not uncommon for the New Delhi government to associate anyone working for tribal rights with the Naxalites, as Father Swami Stan did in Jarkhand.

After the alleged bombing, the indian newspaper scroll went to verify the facts: residents of four villages confirmed that they witnessed the airstrikes and heard gunshots in the forest, while security forces denied the accusations. However, Inspector General Saket Kumar Singh, the local head of the Central Reserve Police Force (a section of the police that deals with counter-insurgency operations) admitted that his men fired in “self-defense” during one of the attacks.

journalists from scroll they also recovered various metal and plastic debris and some electronic equipment on the hills where the shelling had apparently taken place on 7 April. The experts could not identify them precisely, but hypothesized that they could be explosive projectiles designed to hit a specific target.

According to the PCI-M communiqué from January this year, on the occasion of another bombardment, government troops cannot penetrate into the interior of the tribal states due to the hostility of the local population, so they limit themselves to bombarding villages in an attempt to weaken resistance. In its statement, the PCI-M insists on the need to prevent the government from selling indigenous lands and granting new concessions for the construction of mines.

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