Maoists training children as guerrillas-India
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
DANTEWADA (Chhattisgarh): Maoists here have ordered pregnant women to deliver only at makeshift camps run by women guerrillas so that the children can dedicate themselves to extreme left ideology.
"Pregnant women have been ordered to deliver only under the guidance of health experts of the Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sangh," said Yelam, a 32-year-old Maoist leader, in the Abujhmad forest in Dantewada district.
The Sangh comprising women guerrillas is one of the frontal organisations of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist).
"The children, boys or girls, will be enrolled as new cadres and will be brought up in a culture that will help fulfil the long-awaited dream of liberating the red zone," he added. Police say the 20,000 armed Maoists who operate in India have formed the 'red zone' from southern India to Nepal's border.
"The decision is intended to keep reminding these children as they grow up that they are born to the cause of Maoist ideology and the creation of the red zone," said Yelam, who belongs to Indravati Dalam, an affiliate of the CPI-Maoist in Chhattisgarh.
The CPI-Maoist, an outfit formed in late 2005 with the merger of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and People's War Group (PWG), has a strong presence and terror network in 13 of India's 29 states.
"Our influence and support base is fast widening as police lack local support and their intelligence set up has entirely collapsed."
The CPI-Maoist has set up several war training camps and explosive units in a forested stretch of Chhattisgarh's southern region of Bastar where they virtually run a parallel government.
The guerrillas have killed hundreds of civilians and policemen and bombed government buildings and establishments since 1967 when they launched an armed movement from a West Bengal village.
The rebels carried out one of the deadliest attacks of their four-decade-old armed struggle March 15 on a police camp in Chhattisgarh, killing 55 policemen.
According to a report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), a total of 749 people were killed in India in 2006 in Maoist violence, with Chhattisgarh accounting for 48 per cent of the casualties.
The ACHR has said in its latest report that the state has reported 101 of the total 144 casualties of Maoist violence in India from January to March this year
The Times of India
Labels: Chhatisgadh, NEWS
posted by Resistance 4/25/2007 07:02:00 PM,
