Restore the right to life with human dignity Fulfill the demands of Political Prisoners

We, on behalf of Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP)
express our support and solidarity, to the Political Prisoners who are on hunger strike for a day. These Political Prisoners are languishing in jails all over the state and they are demanding the State to accept their just and legal demands.

The Political Prisoners throughout the Andhra Pradesh state have been fighting for the just demands for more than a decade. But the state government is silent on many of their long standing demands. The CRPP strongly condemns the undemocratic attitude of the Government and appeal to all democrats and rights organizations, various people’s organizations and all opposition parties, in the state, to support the struggle of the prisoners. It should be noted that the relentless struggle of the Political Prisoners in the jails of Andhra Pradesh in the 90s had made possible the achievement of many rights. But the state government is—slowly but steadily—nullifying those rights day by day. For example, the state government has issued a G.O facilitating the release of certain class of prisoners like lifers. An advocate had filed a SLP in the Supreme Court against the G.O. The state government had been silent on the SLP till date. As a result many prisoners are languishing in jails even though they come under the purview of the said GO. Similarly, non-lifers also are in thousands. According to the rules in force, many of them should be released if the state government grants them remission of sentence.

According to the rules followed, there must be an advisory board in each jail, but the state government has not yet constituted them. Of late, for want of proper medical assistance prisoners are dying in hundreds in prisons all over Andhra Pradesh. Some prisoners are even committing suicide. There are quite a good number of prisoners in our jails who are 60 or above in age. In addition to these, many prisoners are incarcerated by the arbitrary sentence imposed by jail authorities, without any enquiry or trial what so ever. In this background, the Political Prisoners in the prisons of A.P. have resorted to protest by sitting on hunger strike for a day.

Today, on the 15th November 2008, Political Prisoners in the jails of Andhra Pradesh have taken a decision to observe hunger strike and protest against the anti-people policy of the State. In many cases, there is no nominal enquiry even. The political prisoners are expressing their protest against all these criminal irregularities and negligence like insufficient supply of ration, non-observance of rules in the jail manual. When a prisoner is convicted in more then one case, all the sentences should run concurrently. But this rule grossly violated so as to ensure that the prisoner will never see the light of the day throughout his/her life. Similarly, if a Political Prisoner is accused in cases in two or three states, the P.T. warrants received from those courts are not even informed to the prisoners nor their counsel.

We at the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners once again appeal to all the Democrats, Rights organizations, people’s organizations and all the opposition parties in Andhra Pradesh to stand with the just struggle of the Political Prisoners in the state. CRPP demands:

1. Release the political prisoners unconditionally.
2. Restore right to life with human dignity of prisoners
3. Fulfill the demands of Political Prisoners
4. Political parties should clear their stand on political prisoners, on the state of human rights and these issues must be in their election manifestoes.

Lateef Mohd khan V.V.Bala Krishna BSA.Satya narayana
Secretary CRPP Secretary .CRPP Advocate and E.C member

B.Ravindra Nath Advocate
E.C.member of CRPP

Maoists open fire at Indian Air Force (IAF) chopper, killing officer

NEW DELHI: In keeping with their promise to expand peoples war in Chhattisgarh and throughout India, Maoists opened heavy fire at an IAF helicopter killing an officer. The Mi-8 helicopter, ferrying three injured paramilitary jawans, election officials and electronic voting machines, came under fire from different directions soon after it lifted off from the helipad at Pedia on way to Bijapur, around 5pm. “The helicopter was barely 30 metres up in the air when it came under fire from automatic weapons like light machine guns… This means the Maoists were close by and the police had not bothered to sanitize the helipad,” said a senior IAF officer. The bullets ripped through the helicopter, with one of them hitting flight the engineer, Sergeant Mustafa Ali, on the head. Though no other person was hit by bullets, some suffered heavy bruises because of the “hard manoeuvring’ ‘ by the pilots. “The engine, rotor blades and airframe were all hit by the bullets. The multi-utility Mi-8s, which have a service ceiling of 14,760 feet and maximum speed of 275 kmph, are also armed with a 12.7mm machine gun in the chin as well as four rocket pods.

3 Naxals killed in Karnataka

Stephen David Bangalore, November 19, 2008
source
The Western Ghats are one of the world’s hottest biodiversity spots. In Karnataka, though, they are one of the most well-trenched lairs of Naxalites, three of whom were shot dead in a three-hour gun battle ending around 4 am Wednesday morning.

The Anti-Naxal Force (ANF), a separate force to stamp out Naxal presence in the state, zeroed in on the separatists in the Mavinhalla forests near the coffee-rich Chikmagalur district in the Western Ghats region.

ANF, which lost 28-year-old police official Guruprasad in the crossfire, has been combing the forests to look for a few more Naxals who escaped from the battle scene, including a woman Naxal who the police believe is Kanya Kumari.

Inspector General of Police (Mangalore) Asit Mohan Prasad’s team confiscated a sten-gun and two country-made pistols from the spot. Guruprasad, who was single and hailed from warrior-strong Kodagu district that gave India its first commander-in-chief Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa among other defence stars, had also fought against Veerappan with the STF in his nine-year-long association with the police.

Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa has called for a Cabinet meeting to strategise an operation to stamp out Naxals in the state and will take cues from the way forest brigand Koose Muniswamy Veerappan and his associates were eliminated in the jungles near Dharmapuri along the state border in October 2004 by the Special Task Force, the forerunner to the ANF.

Mysore’s Saketh Rajan, an Indian Institute of Mass Communication-trained writer who embraced the ideals of Peoples War Group in Andhra Pradesh before setting up base in his home state Karnataka, was the first major Naxalite killed by police in Menasinahadya forests in Chikamagalur three years ago in February 2005.

Naxals come from a small West Bengal village Naxalbari, where a section of Communist Party of India (Marxist) workers led by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal led a violent uprising in 1967, trying to develop a “revolutionary opposition” in opposition to the CPI(M) leadership. The insurrection started on May 25, 1967 in Naxalbari when hired hands attacked farmers over a land dispute. The peasants attacked the landlords and violence escalated. Majumdar, an admirer of China’s Mao Zedong, preached that Indian peasants and the depressed sections must fight to overthrow the alleged perpetrators, the government and upper classes.

Veerappan used to operate along the Karnataka border with Tamil Nadu but after his elimination the police force began bracing up to battle the challenges from the members of the growing Naxal movement.

Most of the casualties from 2007 onwards – eight dead this year, including six people police claim were Naxals shot dead in July 2007 in the same Chikmagalur district and one policeman and a civilian – are far less than the numbers thrown up for say Chhattisgarh (208 dead, including 123 policemen) and Andhra Pradesh (59 dead) as of last year.

The Naxal movement has been quite strong in the three districts of Chikmagalur, known for its coffee plantations, Sringeri, home to one of the biggest Hindu temples, and Kudremukh, which housed one of the biggest iron ore mines now ordered closed by the Supreme Court over environmental concerns. Supporters of the Naxal movement say that the police have been indiscriminately killing intellectuals who are fighting for the tribal and adivasis.

Former Karnataka-cadre IAS officer Chiranjeev Singh, who studied the Naxal-infested districts, gave a report to the government asking it to spend more money on developmental projects in the region and create jobs for the youth. The state government had earmarked Rs 3 crore each for the three Naxal-infested districts of the state.