Bengal Stands By Tripura

B Prasant

THE people of Bengal have rejoiced with the people of Tripura in hours of rejoice.  They have strained in sympathy and rose in solidarity during difficult times. The massive rally that was held under the aegis of the Left Front on the evening of August 25 to express solidarity with Tripura was demonstrative of the strong feelings the people of Bengal nurture about the masses of the small and hilly state now being bled by assassins’ bullets.

On the same day, rallies, conventions, and marches were held all over Bengal as part of the statewide Tripura Solidarity Day programme.

The Kolkata rally was held the Rani Rashmoni Road crossing, a stone’s throw from the busy Esplanade area, and the assemblage spilled well over the venue onto the streets around and about.

The speakers expressed solidarity with Tripura and called upon the BJP-led central government to assume responsibility of security, as it is obliged to do so, against terrorist attacks, the most recent of which left 30 dead and several others wounded.

In his address, Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee declared that he would accompany Manik Sarkar, chief minister Tripura to Srinagar where a meeting of the inter-state council would be held and strongly press for a positive role of the union government about the maintenance of security in Tripura.

Tripura chief minister and Polit Bureau member of the CPI (M), Manik Sarkar said that the strong mass movement that “exists in Bengal has always inspired us over in Tripura to stand firm against the dastardly attacks of the terrorist groups.”

Sarkar said that the terrorists were long engaged in the nefarious task of breaking apart the long-standing unity between the tribal and non-tribal people of Tripura and that was why the victims of the terrorist attacks were always one section of the population or the other.  The terrorist outfits like the NLFT and the ATTF received help of every sort from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence  (ISI), and from extremist outfits of the six northeastern states of the country.

Over two-and-a-half decades, the extremists have been engaged in bringing death and terror to the people of Tripura in the remote hill regions, in particular.  The terrorists do not abide by the Indian Constitution.  They aim at slicing away Tripura from the rest of India.  Thus, said Manik Sarkar, the problem of terrorism in Tripura must not be regarded as a headache of the Left Front of Tripura alone.  The issue was a national problem, and the terrorist attacks aimed at putting a question mark on the national integrity of India as such.

The terrorists have consistently used the cross-border stretches of neighbouring Bangladesh to organise breeding grounds for the armed groups of extremists.  Training camps are running Bangladesh in the jungle mahal of which the attackers melt away following their hit-and-run armed raids in Tripura’s hilly stretches and remote village areas.  In Bangladesh, assured Manik Sarkar, the terrorists ran 47 camps and ‘headquarters.’  Of these, among others, NLFT ran thirty-one with the help another terrorist outfit, and the ATTF, sixteen.  The Inter-Services Intelligence supplies these outfits with arms as well as arms training quite openly—there is nothing covert in the operations.   The terrorist recruits are provided ‘on-the-job’ training when they are sent to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to hone their murderous skills.

Manik Sarkar demanded that a line of barbed wire fencing should be erected along the Tripura-Bangladesh border.  At least three Army battalions should be sent to reinforce the security at the border.  The strength of the Border Security Force (BSF), too, should increased, and early.

Flaying the role of the Congress in Tripura, Sarkar said that the Congress went in for an electoral alliance with the INPT, which was the political mask of the terrorist outfit, NLFT.  The Congress also left for the INPT sixteen seats that were reserved for scheduled tribes.  The people of Tripura saw through the Congress game and the latter ended up poor losers in the assembly elections that were subsequently held. 

Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said that the ISI and the US imperialists had a hand in the ongoing conspiracy to bring about secession of six northeast states from the rest of the country. 

He recounted how the same agencies were active in encouraging such separatist outfits as the KPP and the KLO to operate in Bengal’s northern districts.  After Bhutan, Bangladesh in the other place where the extremists are found engaged in running training camps of their death squads.

The close links that the ISI has with the extremist outfits operating in India was made clear when intelligence sources reported that the ISI had organised a meeting in Bangladesh with the two warring factions of the ULFA to try and find amelioration between the two.

Bhattacharjee was sharply critical of the rise of religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh and he called upon the union government to speak to Bangladesh in order to dissuade the latter from providing safe havens for terrorists in that country’s soil.

Left front chairman, Biman Basu who presided over the meeting said that there was a clear evidence of various national and international outfits in the continuous attempt to foment conflict and violence in Tripura.  Every democratic-minded person must come forward to ensure that Tripura was not allowed to become victim of conspiracies.  Also addressing the meeting was Shyamal Roy of the Tripura unit of the forward Block, as well as Khshiti Goswami of RSP, and Dhiren Dasgupta of the CPI.