Left parties condemn Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh

Left parties on Monday condemned the brutal Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh saying they disapproved violent retribution against political opponents, but opposed the killings of and atrocities against innocent tribals there.

"This is the latest and most shocking example of the politics of violence and terror practiced by the Maoists against all their political opponents," the Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo said in a statement.

Accusing the Chhattisgarh government of lack of security arrangements for the Congress yatra, it said, "On the one hand the Bharatiya Janata Party government allows the killing of innocent tribals as happened last week in the name of fighting Maoists and on the other hand it utterly fails to protect legitimate democratic activities in the state." It also demanded firm action to stop Maoist depredations and appealed to all democratic forces to fight the politics of violence by the extremists.

The CPI, in a statement, "disapproved terror and violence against political opponents" and said it was a fact that some of the Congress leaders, who were killed, were the founders of Salwa Judum, a notorious outfit that was "used to divide tribal people and pit one section against the other".

"But that does not give right to the Maoists to resort to violence and terror," the CPI central secretariat said, asking the Centre and the state government to address the genuine concerns of the tribal people.

CPI-ML Liberation, while expressing concern over the spiral of violence including killing of eight tribals in the same area a week ago, said "militaristic actions of this kind by the Maoists, isolated from democratic movements and political assertion, cannot be justified by the logic of retribution, and are counterproductive in developing any mass resistance to the government's policies of corporate plunder. The CPI-ML accused the Chhattisgarh government for pursuing "unconstitutional and anti-democratic" policies, which were responsible for this spiral of violence. It also asked the state and central governments not to use this incident as a pretext to "unleash greater repression on the adivasi people of Bastar".

The party maintained that the private armed outfit Salwa Judum "continued by the backdoor" despite a Supreme Court order declaring it completely unconstitutional and ordering it to be disbanded.

The CPI-ML said the outfit, formed by Congress leader Mahendra Karma who was killed in the latest attack, had "unleashed massacres, rapes and mass eviction of adivasis".