Hyderabad: The Communist Party of India’s (Maoist) central committee has agreed to hold a ceasefire across the left-wing extremism (LWE)-affected states if the central and state governments create a favourable atmosphere for peace talks.
Welcoming the meeting held by the peace talks committee in Hyderabad on 24 March, the Maoist party released an open letter to the public on 28 March.
In the letter, written by the party’s central committee spokesperson Abhay, the Maoist party claimed that 400 Maoist party leaders and members, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) commanders, and innocent people had been killed by the central and state security forces in the last 15 months under ‘Operation Kagaar’, with one-third of them being innocent Adivasis.
During the ‘cordon and kill’ operations, the letter stated that unarmed revolutionaries and those injured in the firing were being brutally tortured and killed, while women comrades were being gang-raped before being killed by the security forces.
“In the guise of commandos, the Centre has been using the military in Operation Kagaar. Local youth have been recruited and are being used to kill their people, the Adivasis. Even without declaring these areas as disturbed areas, using the military to kill its citizens is against the constitution,” the letter read.
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Terming the war ‘a genocide’, Abhay stated that Kagaar was a demonstration of what ‘Viksit Bharat’ and a ‘Hindutva Rashtra’ would look like, where the “Brahmanical, Hindutva fascist, RSS-BJP, central and state governments” would then hand over the lands of poor farmers, natural resources, markets, and public sector undertakings to foreign corporations in the process of creating an ‘autocratic unitary state’.
The Maoists demanded that the central and state governments immediately stop the ‘genocide’ in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra (Gadchiroli), Telangana, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh in the name of Operation Kagaar and stop the central forces from establishing new camps in those areas.
“If the Centre and state governments respond positively to our demands and agree to peace talks after creating a favourable environment, we are ready to hold a ceasefire,” the Maoist party’s central committee stated.
The Maoist party urged the public to put pressure on the central and state governments to hold peace talks and to include journalists, leaders from Adivasi, Dalit and human rights organisations, environmental activists, and youth organisations in the peace talks committee.
They have also announced plans to conduct a massive campaign across the country at mandal and district levels, as well as in educational institutions, to push for peace talks.
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