People's Democracy

 

‘Maoists’ Kill CPI(M) Zonal

Committee Member at Silda

 

‘Maoist’ criminals killed comrade Ananta Mukherjee, member of the Binpur II zonal committee of the CPI(M) in West Medinipur on 20 September with grisly barbarity.  Comrade Ananta (35) was at the forefront of organising the people’s resistance in the Silda and Belpahari area where the ‘Maoists’ had mounted assault on a camp of the Eastern Frontier Rifles, killed 24 policemen, and looted the arsenal back then.  Even after the police camp was shifted for ‘reasons of safety,’ comrades like Ananta would not bother about the proverbial safety net and carry on regardless, with the pro-poor activities.

 

Indeed such was the measure of raw courage of the mass of the rural poor of the area that they, in their united drive, had managed to make the gutless criminals run for their lives away, far away from the area. It was later learnt that the trained killer squads then regrouped in ones and twos in the urging shelter of the spineless Trinamulis, over the past months.

 

There is another more alarming aspect to the grisly murder of comrade Ananta who was an educational employee at a Silda school and before the horrified students of which he was gunned down.  The SLR-holding killers were all young boys between fourteen and seventeen years of age, and they all wore school uniforms of the school where comrade Ananta earned his keep.  We have said before and we iterate now, that the child soldier is no longer an ugly phenomenon confined to the self-proclaimed ‘colonel’ and villain, Charles Taylor’s rag-tag army in sub-Saharan Africa.  They have spread their wingtips of death elsewhere too.  The Bengal CPI(M) has deeply mourned the martyrdom of comrade Ananta Mukherjee. The people’s marches shall continue to forge ahead, stronger than ever, let the enemy beware.

 

ATTEMPT TO BURN

COLLEGE PRINCIPAL

 

A college principal in south Kolkata was sought to be burnt alive by Trinamool 'students' recently. Kaustav Chatterjee, secretary of the Bengal unit of the SFI said that this incident is portentous as an ominous sign, and that footfalls of the anarchic decade of the 1970s were heard in the city, again.

 

The occurrence was one in a series of vandalism that the Trinamul Congress ‘students’ indulged in, across the colleges, schools, and higher institutions in Bengal in coherent and conscious cooperation with the SUCI, and the urban crypto-‘Maoists.’ On the plea of bringing in ‘students’ for admission to an under-graduate course the college concerned, Heramba Chandra College (formerly south City College), in what is now south-central of the spreading Kolkata metropolis, the goons created a ruckus.  They barged into the office of the principal who was atremble with fear when he saw one of the more seriously inebriated toughs take out a beverage bottle, uncap it, and proceed to pour out what was car-fuel-grade, highly octane, petrol on his shirt front. With a presence of mind borne out of survival instincts, the principal swayed to a side, away from the attacker, and only his sleeve was soaked. The tough was soon overpowered, and the fatal match could not be struck.

 

The act was accompanied by the usual and expected wrecking of computer work stations, telephones, furniture, and official papers, both filed and unfilled.  The principal was heckled, man-handled. He has lodged a compliant with the concerned Lalbazar Police HQ.

 

The signs are not good. The Trinamul chief drones about a change being born, day in and day out.  Her roughneck lieutenants echo her sentiments manifold in terms of abuse and noise, threats and terrorisation, ad nauseum. The people of every strata of the society, even the icons of the ruling classes, have started to develop a fear psychosis, and mob violence may not quite be that far off.  The democratic masses will certainly stay vigilant, but we are afraid that such intimidatory tactics from the Trinamulis and their co-conspirators against democratic norms may well continue.

 

CPI(M)'S NEW

WEBSITE LAUNCHED

 

In a short formal observance, a new website of the Bengal state committee of the CPI(M) was launched by state secretary, Biman Basu at the Muzaffar Ahmed Bhavan on 10 September. He tapped the keyboard of a laptop computer at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan and the Bengal CPI(M) website (accessible at www.cpimwb.org.in) floated into sharp focus on the big screen via video technology. 

 

The website is done up using the matrix of the free software and is written in a language that can be accessed from every form of Gnu and non-Gnu software, including the Microsoft ‘Windows’ OS in its various avatars.

 

Biman Basu said on this occasion that a continuous stream of lies kept on pouring out in an orchestrated manner in the form of slanders and utter untruths about the CPI(M) and the Left Front from the entire gamut of the corporate media, and that a large chunk of it was also polluting the cyber space. The present site, like other sites run by the CPI(M), the various Left parties and by Left mass organisations, would be utilised to counter the lie campaign.

 

The websites are also used to provide information inputs to the present generation of youth who are active on the information highway and surf the web constantly, sending out and receiving every day prodigious numbers of electronic mail.  The site would eventually be made trilingual, to feature English, Hindi, and Bengali.  In attendance on the occasion was Bengal CPI(M) state secretariat member Sridip Bhattacharya.