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Indian militia is accused of atrocities

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Times Staff Writer

The Indian government, locked in a deadly struggle with Maoist rebels, should stop supporting an anti-insurgency militia whose members have intimidated, beaten, raped and killed civilians while authorities looked the other way, Human Rights Watch said today.

The group accused the Salwa Judum militia of routinely abusing poor villagers in Chattisgarh state, thousands of whom have fled or been uprooted from their homes and ancestral lands because of the armed conflict pitting government forces and the militia against the Maoists, known as Naxalites. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called the Naxalites, whose insurgency covers a large swath of eastern India, the No. 1 internal security threat facing the country.

Members of the Salwa Judum, sometimes in collusion with the police, have burned down hamlets to force residents to leave, extorted money to fund their activities, stolen food, sexually assaulted women, carried out summary executions and recruited children into their ranks, according to a Human Rights Watch report released today.

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The organization said the Naxalites had committed similar abuses in their 41-year uprising against the state. The two sides have fostered an us-or-them atmosphere that has escalated the bloodletting, putting residents under threat from all directions, the report says.

“People were forced to take sides. Neutrality was not even an option,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, one of the researchers of the 182-page report, which is based on dozens of witness accounts collected late last year and early this year in Chattisgarh.

The violence has triggered a massive wave of internal refugees. As many as 100,000 people have been displaced, ending up in squalid roadside Salwa Judum camps or seeking refuge in neighboring states, bereft of land and jobs.

Most are poor rural folk who belong to historically marginalized communities such as tribal groups and those previously known as “untouchables” under the ancient Hindu caste system.

The Naxalites claim to be fighting on behalf of the downtrodden, and are strong in the dirt-poor but mineral-rich states in the east, whose natural resources officials and multinational corporations are eager to exploit to keep India’s economy booming.

Plenty of critics, not just the Naxalites, contend that the area’s residents have received few of the benefits of such ventures and that the environment has been despoiled by large-scale mining.

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Government forces have found themselves outmaneuvered by guerrillas, who use the thick forests to their advantage. In one of the biggest attacks in recent memory, hundreds of rebels laid siege last year to a police outpost in southern Chattisgarh, killing more than 50 officers and Salwa Judum members in a shower of gunfire, grenades and gasoline bombs.

Last week, suspected Maoists gunned down a lawmaker in the neighboring state of Jharkhand at a school function.

The Salwa Judum emerged in 2005 as what supporters insist was a spontaneous grass-roots response to Naxalite violence. But critics say the state has encouraged the group and helped turn it into a vigilante force that operates with impunity against people and villages merely suspected of harboring Maoist sympathies.

“The government actually arms them,” said Suhas Chakma, director of the Asian Center for Human Rights in New Delhi. “There is full involvement by the state. The Salwa Judum camps are maintained by the government.”

Residents who refused to join the militia or to move to Salwa Judum camps have found themselves the victims of brutal reprisals.

“There were around 50 huts in my village, and all were burned by Salwa Judum members and police,” one resident of Kamarguda village recounted to Human Rights Watch. “They also killed three people -- slit open their throats.”

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In the Salwa Judum camps, Chattisgarh state police recruited underage youths as auxiliary police officers, the report said. Although the state government says that all minors have now been removed from police ranks, it has not introduced any systematic way of identifying the teens and demobilizing them.

The Naxalites too are accused of pressing children into service, putting youngsters between ages 6 and 12 through indoctrination classes and assigning some to armed squads once they are older.

So far, the state government has resisted calls to rein in the Salwa Judum.

“This is a people’s movement against the Naxalites,” Ramvichar Netam, the state’s home minister, said by telephone from Chattisgarh. “The choice is between supporting the Naxalites or opposing them, and very naturally we oppose the Naxalites and support all those who are against the Naxalites.”

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court in April ordered the National Human Rights Commission to investigate allegations of abuses by the militia.

There are signs that some officials may be rethinking their support of the militia. Its chief patron, state legislator Mahendra Karma, recently acknowledged that the group had become difficult to control. And Ganguly of Human Rights Watch said that many police deployed in the state told the group that “there had to be a political solution. There was no military or police solution to this.”

Both sides of the conflict, she added, must respect the rights of the civilians who have found themselves caught up in the crossfire and who long to return to their homes in peace.

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“The most heart-rending thing that they’ve said to us is, ‘Just leave us alone. We don’t want any of you. We don’t want Salwa Judum. We don’t want Naxalites. We don’t even want the state,’ ” Ganguly said.

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henry.chu@latimes.com

Times staff writer Shankhadeep Choudhury contributed to this report.

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