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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Salwa stares at bleak future-GS Radhakrishna

Salwa stares at bleak future-GS Radhakrishna

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published Published on May 27, 2013   modified Modified on May 27, 2013
-The Telegraph


Hyderabad: As rights groups accused the anti-Maoist militia Salwa Judum of atrocities on Chhattisgarh's villagers, its founder Mahendra Karma kept insisting his only aim was to "liberate" the tribals from the rebels' tyranny and propaganda.

The future of the government-backed vigilante group, which still survives unofficially despite a Supreme Court order to disband it, now looks bleak after the Maoists killed Congress tribal leader Karma yesterday.

The Salwa Judum (whose name means "peace march") has witnessed its strength fall from 50,000 in 2008 to about 20,000 now, thanks to the Maoists' intimidation of villagers and attacks on the force's members.

"My fight is not against the Maoists per se; my battle is to rescue the Adivasis of Bastar from the false notions of security, peace and social justice preached by the Left extremists," Karma had told this correspondent in 2007.

He alleged the Maoists merely intended to use the tribals as human shields. "I am campaigning to convince the Adivasis that democratically elected governments are better suited to give them schools, hospitals and markets."

The Salwa Judum was founded in 2006 as a loosely knit organisation of tribal youths whom the state government trained to shoot rifles and provided with arms. They were designated special police officers (SPOs) and given uniforms and a monthly salary of Rs 1,500.

It was Karma's second attempt to marshal the tribals against the Maoists after the failure of his first attempt, the Jan Jagran Abhiyan (Public Awareness Campaign), launched in 1991.

The Salwa Judum was born in the remote village of Ambajipet in Bijapur district. It soon spread to Dantewada, Sukma and other districts, covering 6,000 villages.

Its members became the eyes and ears of the government in the Maoist zone and helped police and paramilitary counter-insurgency operations with their knowledge of the terrain and local culture.

Bijapur and Dantewada alone had 23 Salwa Judum camps, where the government provided subsidised food and medicare to women and children.

But rights bodies sympathetic to the Maoists accused the Salwa Judum of extorting money from local tribals. The militia was accused of attacks on 644 villages, rapes, and the displacement of three lakh tribals who apparently fled to Andhra Pradesh.

In July 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the militia was an unconstitutional body and barred the state from arming "unskilled and illiterate" tribals and using them as "cannon fodder" before the better-armed Maoists.

The Chhattisgarh government claimed it would form an "auxiliary" police force to absorb the vigilantes. But the militia has yet not been disbanded. In the villages, many still hang out in the Salwa Judum uniform, extorting money from people. Since 2006, the Maoists have killed some 800 SPOs.

The Centre last month spoke of plans to recruit tribal youths from Maoist-hit districts into the paramilitary.


The Telegraph, 27 May, 2013, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130527/jsp/nation/story_16941348.jsp#.UaLsjdjcjco


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