The Communist Ghadar Party of India condemns the unprovoked massacre of peasants at Nandigram by the West Bengal police on March 14, 2007.

As we go to press, reports are coming in of the brutal killings, in which well over a dozen people have been shot dead, while protesting the takeover of their land by the State.

While government officials put the death toll at 14, independent sources suggest the casualties could number more than forty. Hundreds are reported injured. The dead include women and children and the aged.

Farmers in Nandigram, opposed to the State acquiring their land — to be handed over to an Indonesian multinational, Salim, for a Special Economic Zone — have been locked in battle both with police officials and cadre of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) for the past several months.

For the past two and a half months, farmers here had barricaded the area marked out for takeover, and had not allowed government officials access to their land.

According to reports in a leading Bengali newspaper, a large police force descended on Nandigram on the night of March 13, 2007, encircling the contested area. This followed the decision of the West Bengal administration two days back to restore the “rule of law” in the Nandigram area, wherein state officials could not enter for the past two and half months. At dawn, they tried to forcibly enter the area, breaking the barricades put up by the people. The police resorted to lathi charge, tear gas, and then, unable to break the resistance of the fighting farmers, opened fire indiscriminately.

Footage caught by television channels shows the police ruthlessly beating up unarmed women and children, their guns not sparing even those trying to pick up bodies of the wounded or dead.