Kerala tribal stir: CM, activists trade charges

One week after violent clashes between tribals and the police in Kerala's Muthanga wildlife forest reserve, a different battle is being fought between Chief Minister A K Antony and social activists.

The government claims a tribal and a policeman was killed, while the activists say 16 tribals were shot dead by the Kerala police when the tribals resisted the attempts of eviction in the forests last week.

Antony said the local media is spreading inflated figures of the killings to generate public sympathy. "The government would like to reiterate that only one tribal was killed that too when the police were forced to fire when the tribals attacked them with arms."

"The Kerala government will lodge a complaint about the prejudiced media coverage of the police firing at tribespersons with the Press Council in New Delhi,” the chief minister's office said even as the National Human Rights Commission asked the state government for details on the number of killings.

The social activists, led by novelist Arundhati Roy, Gandhian Nirmala Deshpandey, human rights activists Syeda Hamid, Prakash Lewis and Souparna Lahiri have complained before the NHRC that the Antony government is covering up the incident.

Tribal leader C K Janu, who heads the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha and charged with a series of criminal offences including perpetration of violence and killing of a policeman, said that if she is freed from police custody, she can show dead bodies of the killed tribals.

With the opposition parties in Kerala staging daily walkouts from the state assembly on this issue and activists launching a public campaign against him, Antony is faced with a series of difficult tasks in the coming days.

“Many Congress politicians in Kerala and New Delhi have opposed the manner in which Antony has misused the police forces against the innocent tribals. It is better for the chief minister now to resign and order an impartial judicial enquiry,” V S Achuthanandan, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and leader of the opposition in Kerala said.

The Catholic Priests' Conference of Kerala, the official body of the clergy in the state, demanded Antony's immediate resignation. "Antony owes moral responsibility for killing the poor tribals in Muthanga. The firing and attacks on the tribals were the results of a conspiracy between politicians, the police and the forest departments," CPCI president Father Joseph Kochuthazham said.

The CPCI president said no government in the state has so far taken any action against those who have illegally encroached forestland and are still holding it. "While the government supports the rich landlords who have usurped the lands, it is killing the landless tribals," he said.

The priest said the Antony government has completely failed to honour the promises that it made to the tribal leaders last year, which included provision of five acres of land to all landless Adivasi families, a special economic scheme to support the tribals till their land become fully productive, a new health-education-sanitation scheme for them and enactment of special laws to protect tribal women from all types of exploitation.