People's Democracy

CITU CONFERENCE RESOLUTIONS

Against Attacks on Trade Union Movement and Democratic Rights in West Bengal

THIS 14th conference of the CITU, being held at Kannur from April 4 to 8, 2013, condemns the attacks on the trade union movement and democratic rights of the people in West Bengal by the TMC-led government and the ruling party goons.

Violent physical attacks are perpetrated on trade unions, particularly targeting CITU, on the organisations of peasants, students, youths and women, on Left supporters, and on democratic institutions and expressions of the people by the armed TMC hoodlums creating a reign of terror. Till date, 88 leading functionaries of the democratic movement, including six from the trade unions, have been killed. Hundreds of people have been injured. The police either remain silent spectators or act at the behest of the ruling party.

Around 400 union offices have been forcibly captured, hundreds were burnt and ransacked. Workers are being terrorised to desert the CITU and join TMC unions. Contract workers are being thrown out of jobs and replaced by new workers with reduced wages in connivance with the contractors.

During the last two general strikes, on February 28, 2012 and February 20-21, 2013, the police, administration and TMC goons were mobilised to break the strike. The chief minister personally supervised the strike breaking operations moving around on the streets encouraging TMC hoodlums who continued the attacks on workers even after the strike. They went on slapping senior teachers, cutting the limbs of an employee, ransacking the BSNL office for remaining closed on the strike days.

This conference welcomes the united move of all the central trade unions in West Bengal in condemning such attacks, submitting joint memorandum to the chief secretary of the state government and in staging joint demonstration on March 7, 2013.

In many places, tenant peasants are forced to leave their land and the former landlords and jotedars are trying to gain control over the land with the help of the TMC goons and the administration. Peasants are being deprived of minimum support price and remunerative prices forcing several peasants to commit suicide, which never happened during the Left Front rule. The state government is procuring rice through the rice mill owners and private agencies, compelling the farmers to make distress sale.

A university professor was arrested and tortured for forwarding a cartoon. The number of atrocities against women, including rape, is rapidly increasing. Houses of poor are burnt; they are evicted from their houses and lands.

The pro-people changes in the economic, democratic, administrative, social, educational, cultural institutions during the 34 years of Left Front rule are now under attack in West Bengal. Elections to the college students’ unions, school-committees, and cooperative societies are being rigged in most of the places through violence by TMC goons with the backing of the police and the administration. The benefits and rights of the people are sought to be reversed. Such attacks on the Left forces, trade unions, Kisan Sabha and other class and mass organisations are designed for such right wing reversal. These will have a bearing on the rights of the toiling people in the entire country. Such a situation bears ominous portent for democracy.

This conference congratulates the trade union and democratic movements of West Bengal for their heroic resistance to such onslaughts braving all atrocities and making immense sacrifices.  The conference also calls upon the working class of the country to raise their voice to vociferously condemn such attacks on the trade union movement, on the democratic institutions and on the rights of the people in West Bengal. It calls upon them to build resistance through broader class mobilisation and in alliance with other mass organisations and democratic sections.