[Reader-list] JOINT STATEMENT ON FORCIBLE EVICTION AND POLICE BRUTALITIES IN KOLKATA

[asit das]

*JOINT STATEMENT ON FORCIBLE EVICTION AND POLICE BRUTALITIES IN KOLKATA*

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*Condemn the Eviction Drive in Nonadanga, Kolkata!*

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*Demand Immediate Release of Arrested Activists!*

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The Trinamool Congress-led Government of West Bengal is daily showing its
anti-people character. Its Police and the bulldozers of the KMDA (Kolkata
Metropolitan Development Authority) razed to the ground and burnt the slums
and homes of more than 800 people in Nonadanga, Kolkata on 30th March 2012.
These are the same people who were resettled after evictions from various
canal banks across Kolkata, and from the dispossessed from the hurricane
Aila in 2009. A protest march called against the forceful eviction by
residents and progressive organisations and individuals on 4th April was
also brutally lathicharged by the Police, critically injuring many.
Yesterday on 8th April, a sit-in demonstration was violently broken and 67
people were arrested, with false cases pressed on seven activists of
various democratic mass organisations supporting the struggle.



They have been remanded in police custody till 12th April, and there is an
attempt by the state to frame these democratic rights activists, falsely
alleging that arms and   munitions have been found on them. Also on
9thApril, 114 demonstrators who were protesting against these moves by
the
government were arrested from College Street. On 10th April, a huge
consignment of police has cordoned off the entire area and the threat of
imminent demolition even of the temporary tents and community kitchen looms
large, reminding us of the situation in Singur in 2006.



The government had earlier refused to provide even basic amenities like
water, school, drainage system and proper housing in these resettlement
colonies and pushed them into an ‘illegal’ existence, and made them
dependent on the networks of local Trinamool and CPI(M) goons. And now in
the name of beautification, this violent eviction drive is set on the roll
on these supposed ‘illegal encroachers’ whose cheap labour is ‘legally
exploited’ to run the city’s economy. Anyone opposing this kind of violent
‘development’ of the

ruling classes, has been declared to be ‘Maoists’ and ‘inciting outsiders’
conveniently by the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee again in her press
statements to delegitimize the struggle, while the common lands of Kolkata
are handed over to the corporate land sharks in the best traditions set up
by the previous CPI(M)-led government.



*WE, the undersigned organisations, condemn the arrests made on 8th April
of protestors sitting in a demonstration in Ruby Junction, and demand that
the 7 activists of various mass organisations who continue to be arrested
be released and the false charges against them be dropped immediately, as
the government is acting against the democratic right to organize and
dissent.*

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*We condemn the action of the Trinamool-led West Bengal Government and the
brutal lathicharge on 4th April, and continued harassment by the Kolkata
Police on the residents of Nonadanga and those protesting against the
ongoing eviction process in the name of ‘beautification’ of the city, and
demand action against the police officers involved. *

*We stand with the struggle of the residents of Nonadanga and demand an
immediate halt to the eviction drive in the city and the anti-people
development, and proper compensation and rehabilitation for all the slum
dwellers and hawkers in Nonadanga and in the evictions all over Kolkata.*