People's Democracy

TERRORIST CAMPS ISSUE

Tripura Urges Centre To Talk To B’desh

ON December 30, through a letter written to the prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar earnestly urged him to utilise his Islamabad visit, in connection with the ensuing SAARC summit, for mounting pressure on Bangladesh to make it dismantle the terrorist camps operating in its territory.

Sarkar made a special mention of his new year eve letter to the prime minister while addressing a rally at Lachi in Belonia, South Tripura, on  January 1. The rally was organised to felicitate the 53 former militants who had surrendered, returned to the mainstream, joined a year long vocational training programme and passed the course. With their return to the mainstream of life, hope has strengthened that many more misguided militants would surrender in the days to come and thus the north east region, including Tripura, would have a new year free from extremist rampages.

The chief minister’s letter to the prime minister urged him to impress upon Bangladesh leaders the necessity of busting the terrorist camps operating in their territory. They must take a leaf out of Bhutan’s book and launch a drive to flush out the extremists from their territory in order to deal a decisive blow to insurgency throughout the north east, including Tripura.

This is all the more necessary today when, flushed out from Bhutanese territory by the Royal Bhutan Army through a thorough going drive, many surviving militants have reportedly rushed into Myanmar and Bangladesh. Unfortunately, the official position of the Bangladesh government till now is that there exist no militant camps in its territory.

Reiterating his unmistakable message to the misguided militants, Manik Sarkar made it clear once again that his repeated fervent calls to them to return to the mainstream of democracy and development must not be construed as weakness. He warned that in case on a separatist bloodbath, the state government, the centre and the Indian people at large would not remain mute spectators. Rather they would unitedly fight an all out battle to protect the people’s life and property as well as the country’s unity and integrity.

About the existence of about 50 camps of the state’s outlawed extremist organisations in Bangladesh territory, Sarkar said no one is going to be duped by the Bangladesh government’s denial of the existence of such camps. In fact, the coordinated efforts of the state and the centre have generated exact and exhaustive information about the locations of such camps, most of which have bunkers and powerful wireless communication networks. Bangladesh ought to learn a lesson from what Bhutan has done and launch a drive to flush out the outlawed extremists from its territory in order to turn over a new leaf in good-neighbourly relations, he remarked.

On this occasion, Manik Sarkar also referred to the self-sacrificing role India, including Tripura, played in the struggle for liberation of Bangladesh. He recalled the repeated shelling Tripura suffered for having given shelter to the refugees and freedom fighters from the erstwhile East Pakistan. But, voicing deep resentment, he said the same imperialist vested interests whose designs caused a lot of bloodbath in Bangladesh, are now propping up the militants who are shedding the blood of Tripura’s population. He said he had written to the prime minister requesting him to ask the Bangladesh government, either during the deliberations at the SAARC summit or during the bipartite negotiations on its sidelines, to emulate the Bhutan’s example and voluntarily bust the Indian extremists’ camps in Bangladesh.

The chief minister’s letter also urged the prime minister to make use of the summit forum for negotiating the removal of certain barriers and bottlenecks in the way of transit facility between Tripura and Bangladesh. Barriers hampering infrastructure development in the state’s areas adjoining the Indo-Bangladesh border also need to be removed.

At the January 1 rally, the chief minister handed over rehabilitation assistance to the tune of Rs 73.44 lakh to the 53 surrendered tribal youth who had started receiving training in various trades in December 2002.

It will be noted that, with the involvement of the common people, the stepped up ideological and administrative campaign against the militants and their mentors in Tripura during the last one year has yielded spectacular results in two ways. As a direct result of this campaign, many of the extremists have been either captured or killed. At the same time, according to reports received through various sources, this campaign has created a deep sense of demoralisation among the ranks of the terrorist outfits. The result is that while hundreds of misguided militants have already surrendered, laid down arms and returned to the mainstream, many more are reportedly thinking of surrendering themselves to the authorities. (INN)