The Communist Ghadar Party of India condemns the dastardly terrorist massacre of people of the Kasimnagar Basti of Jammu city on July 13, 2002.
This latest massacre, in the heart of Jammu town, just two months after the Kaluchak massacre, reveals that all the talk of the Union government of "restoring normalcy" in Jammu & Kashmir through its "war against terrorism" is nothing but hot air.
Following the massacre, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister LK Advani lost no time in declaring in parliament that the Kasimnagar Basti massacre is an act of "cross-border terrorism" and the hand of Pakistan lies behind this massacre. This is in line with the Government of India's game plan to blame every terrorist massacre on Indian soil on Pakistan. However, increasingly the Indian people are refusing to buy this propaganda. This was starkly revealed when Advani visited Jammu a day after the massacre. He was greeted by a powerful demonstration of over a thousand slum dwellers of the Kasimnagar Basti who blocked Advani's cavalcade and raised angry slogans accusing the BJP government in Delhi and Farooq Abdullah's government in the state for the massacre. According to agency reports, the police and army were deployed to disperse the protestors.
While in Jammu, Lal Kishan Advani said he had come to survey "ground reality". Advani's statements are like rubbing salt on raw wounds. As far as "ground reality" goes, the people of Jammu & Kashmir are living at gun-point-of the Indian Army and of numerous terrorist groups set up and controlled by the intelligence agencies of India, Pakistan, US and Britain. The government's declaration that it will step up the "war against terrorism" is extremely diabolical and portends ill for a people who are trampled every day under the jackboots of the armed forces and have been living under the shadow of bullets and bayonets for so long.
It is widely known that the armed forces in Kashmir have been given a free hand to organise encounter killings, to target the civilian population, etc. Just the day after the Kasimnagar Basti massacre, the government has been forced to admit that the 5 people who were shot dead by the Armed Forces after the Chattisingpura massacre of March 2000 were innocent villagers. The Armed Forces had, with full knowledge that they were innocent, deliberately killed them and then declared them to be "cross border terrorists". This means, over two years after the Chattisingpura massacre, the Indian state has not bothered to investigate and identify and punish the real perpetrators of the massacre. Why is this the case, when it has been clearly established that the highest officials of the state were fully aware all along that those killed as "cross-border terrorists" were actually innocent villagers picked up from their homes and shot dead cold-bloodedly? Is it not possible that the Indian State wanted to cover up the real hand behind the massacre? It cannot be dismissed as improbable that the Chattisingpura massacre of Sikhs, timed with Clinton's visit to India, was the handiwork of the Indian state itself. What happened in Chattisingpura is certainly not an isolated incident or an aberration. On the contrary the tragedy of Kashmir is that it is more likely the rule.
The reality of Jammu & Kashmir is that India's central intelligence agencies have organised their own terrorist outfits to kill political opponents as well as to spread mayhem and terrorise the population. It is also known in political circles that for decades, apart from Pakistan, the current allies of the Indian state in its global coalition against "cross-border terrorism", namely the US and Britain, have been arming and financing various terrorist outfits and fishing in the troubled waters of Kashmir, to advance their geopolitical interests in this strategic region.
The root of terrorism is the capitalist-imperialist system and the capitalist and imperialist states. This system and these states thrive on fascist and terrorist violence against the working class and peoples of their own countries as well of other countries. State terrorism is the preferred weapon of such states to avoid political solutions to political problems. They use state terrorism to advance their diabolical aims. It would be laughable if it were not so tragic that the very same Anglo-American imperialists and the Indian and Pakistani states, which have been the chief sponsors of terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir, are shouting from the rooftops, each louder than the other, that they are the biggest fighters against terrorism. They are doing so to cover up their blood-soaked hands and to prepare for further massacres.
The people of Jammu & Kashmir have been fighting to exercise the right to self-determination ever since 1947. They have been fighting to reunite their homeland, which has been partitioned as well as annexed against their will by India and Pakistan. Anglo-American imperialism and the ruling class of India and Pakistan are opposed to fulfilling the legitimate aspirations of the people of Jammu & Kashmir. Instead, they have turned the state into a prison house and a mass graveyard for the people. Terrorism has been a favoured weapon in the hands of the Anglo-American imperialists and the rulers of India and Pakistan to prevent a political solution to the Kashmir question. People cannot expect protection from state terrorism from the sponsors of state terrorism.
The problem in Jammu & Kashmir is a political problem. Its solution can only be a political solution. This political solution is that the people of Jammu & Kashmir, on both sides of the Line of Control, become masters of their homeland and begin to chart their own destiny free from the political and military interference of India, Pakistan as well as the Anglo-American imperialists. Neither the Anglo-American imperialists, nor the rulers of India or Pakistan want this political solution. Whether they fight amongst each other to carve up the state, or unite to despoil Kashmir and its people through state terrorism, it is the people of Jammu & Kashmir who are footing the bill. The working class and peoples of India and Pakistan must take up the cause of the people of Jammu & Kashmir as their own cause. The need to extend full and unstinted support to the right of the people of Jammu & Kashmir to self-determination.
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