AIDWA LETTER TO MRS SONIA GANDHI

Congress Aligns With Tripura Women’s Killers

Below we publish the text of a letter, which is self-explanatory, written by the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) to Congress president Mrs Sonia Gandhi on January 21. The letter assumes significance in view of the killing of numerous AIDWA activists in Tripura because of their courageous refusal to accept the terrorists’ dictates. Their sacrifices are unique in the history of the fight against terrorism, the AIDWA said. While the BJP-led NDA government at the centre plays partisan politics and refuses to send adequate security forces to Tripura, the Congress party is strengthening the terrorists by having an electoral alliance with the INPT, the political wing of NLFT terrorists.

YOU have often spoken on a personal note in public, of the supreme sacrifices made by members of your family, leaders of the nation, who were struck down by terrorists. You struck a chord with many women who could understand and identify with the pain and trauma involved. Today we write to you about the pain and trauma of other women, made worse by the politics of opportunism. We refer to the experience of the women of Tripura, unsung heroines in the battle against terrorism. On January 12, in the village of Jamircharra in the district of Dhalai, a young tribal woman, just 19 or 20 years old, Premila Tripura was kidnapped from her home by a group of terrorists belonging to the NLFT. She was gangraped and killed. Her only crime was that she had refused to work with the terrorist group who had threatened her because of her known sympathies for our association. Two days later, on January 14, a young woman, Anjali Pal, disabled because of her total visual impairment, was shot dead in the Assambasti in Fatikroy, North Tripura, by an NLFT squad. Anjali had overcome her difficulties and had, with extraordinary courage, joined our association, fighting for women’s rights. On that dreadful day, the terrorists had attacked her home. They first shot and killed her father because of his consistent support to the Left. Hearing the shots but unable to see, Anjali rushed out calling to her father. She too fell to the terrorists’ bullets. What of the woman, the wife, the mother, condemned by her grief to a living death? These are only a few examples. There are numerous more such incidents when women, particularly tribal women, have faced the brunt of terrorist attacks because they refused to accept the separatist divisive agenda.

It is with the political front of this banned terrorist group responsible for the most inhuman savagery, Mrs Gandhi, that your party in Tripura has now formed an alliance for the forthcoming assembly polls. Can there be any justification at all for this? It is well known that these groups are backed by foreign agencies and have their base camps in Bangladesh. Whatever the local and state level efforts, without the united will of all political forces against terrorism can the terrorist groups be successfully fought? What is the message sent to the people if a national party like the Congress openly allies with such a political force? Women of Tripura and women all over the country have collected lakhs of signatures demanding that the central NDA government fulfil its minimum national duty and ensure that sufficient numbers of security forces are posted in the porous border areas to prevent the movements of terrorist groups. But, instead of supporting such a demand, the Congress party in Tripura has an electoral alliance with such forces.

We write to you about these issues because the current political alliance of your party in Tripura strengthens the terrorist groups and emboldens them in their terrorist attacks, affecting directly the lives and security of thousands of women, tribal women in particular. We hope it is not unrealistic to expect you to give consideration to these issues.

The letter was signed by AIDWA general secretary Brinda Karat, its Tripura state unit president Anjali Debbarma and secretary Rama Das.