Indian state 'backing vigilantes'

by Sanjay Jha | July 15, 2008 at 03:31 am

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Leading human Rights Organisation HRW has accused Indian provincial government of Chattisgarh of promoting state backed armed activists to deal with Maoists rebels. HRW has also said that the violence has displaced tens of thousands of people who are stranded in government camps in Chhattisgarh or in the forestlands of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh state.

India should take action against state-backed vigilantes active in the central state of Chhattisgarh, US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.
Since 2005, security forces and members of the Salwa Judum militia group have killed and raped villagers, HRW says.
Salwa Judum was launched in 2005 to fight the Maoist rebels in the area.
HRW also says the Maoists have kidnapped and executed civilians and targeted people suspected of supporting Salwa Judum.
About 6,000 people have been killed in violence linked to the Maoist rebels in India over the past 20 years.

Eyewitness accounts
Chhattisgarh officials deny supporting Salwa Judum and describe it as a "spontaneous citizen's anti-Maoist movement".

"Human Rights Watch has found that since mid-2005 government security forces and members of the Salwa Judum attacked villages, killed and raped villagers, and burned down huts to force people into government camps," a new report released by HRW in Raipur, capital of Chhattisgarh state, says.
The group says it has collected more than 50 eyewitness accounts of attacks involving government security forces in 18 different villages in Dantewada and Bijapur districts in Chhattisgarh.
"Judum and police came to our village... They beat the village official and the priest. They beat others also," the report quotes a villager who fled his village in Dantewada district as saying.
"The people who came to our village had bows and arrows, sticks, and the police had rifles. From our village they also raped a 20-year-old woman. They raped her and left her in the village itself," he said.