People’s Voice angrily condemns the state organized violence unleashed against the Christian community and its institutions, in Kandhamal district of Orissa, on December 24-25, 2007.

From all media accounts, it is clear that these brutal attacks were part of a well planned, calculated move. According to official reports and reports of various fact-finding teams, at least 35 churches including parish churches at Baliguda, Pobingia, Brahmanigaon, Padangi and Sankarakhol were attacked and destroyed. Houses of the priests and nuns were attacked and destroyed in Baliguda, Pobingia, Sankarakhol, Phulbani and Brahmanigaon. In Barakhama, more than 400 houses of Christians were torched. An orphanage in Phulbani, run by an organization of the Christian community, which houses more than 300 destitute children, was also attacked. As many as 632 houses have been damaged, according to a preliminary estimate. Most of the victims, including women and small children, are currently in relief camps at Baliguda, Barkhama and Brahmanigaon, battling the bitter cold, with meagre provisions that the state government agencies are doling out. Relief and rehabilitation operations of the state government are reported to be extremely slow and callous, thus intensifying the tragedy and suffering of the affected people.

While activists of the VHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal are reported to have been leading the attacks, the state police turned a blind eye and in some cases are reported to have been even egging on the attackers. Several citizens’ committees and political activists investigating the events have reported that the attackers were given full freedom by the state security forces to carry out such heinous crimes, while the pleas of the victims for protection went unheeded. They have squarely blamed the state government for failing in its duty to provide security to the people.

The Indian state has perfected the method of organizing communal violence and massacre against definite communities, in order to crush the united resistance of the people to the unjust and oppressive rule of the bourgeoisie. Deliberately, as a matter of preferred policy, the state supervises the spread of communal hate propaganda against this or that community. The toiling people are deliberately divided on religious lines. Political parties and communal organizations are given full licence by the state and its police and security forces, to attack, burn, loot, rape and kill people of a targeted community, for a calculated period of time. After the damage has been done, the same state agencies come forward as the ‘defenders of peace and harmony’; to further victimize the victims, in the name of ‘maintaining law and order’. Those guilty of these crimes against the people, particularly the political leaders and state forces, are never punished. This is the method that our rulers have learnt and inherited from the British colonial rulers and this is the method that is followed, time and again, with uncanny similarity, whichever community it might be targeted against.

People’s Voice expresses its deepest sympathy for the victims of the state organized communal violence in Orissa and reaffirms its resolve to continue the struggle to ensure that the guilty are punished!