Even if making "their existence" in slums "slightly more bearable" were all religious organizations would do, that would be still far more than what most Marxist organizations would do in most countries in the world. State socialists in power used repression, sometimes against true enemies of socialism, sometimes against rival socialists, sometimes against the merely disobedient, for the purpose of socialist development. The situation is worse today. Nowadays, some Zombie Marxists go so far as to repress peasants and workers in the name of plain and simple capitalist development, appalling remaining Marxists true to the spirit of Marx and new alterglobalization leftists. I have yet to see any global Marxist census, but I'm afraid that Zombie Marxists may now outnumber living Marxists in the world overall.
<http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36960> POLITICS-INDIA: 'Neo-Liberal' Left Behind Peasants' Massacre Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI, Mar 16 (IPS) - By ordering police to open fire on peasants trying to protect their land from being acquired for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the communist government of West Bengal state has indicated the crumbling away of the last bulwark in India against neo-liberal and free market policies.
At least 15 people died and over 50 were injured by police firing on Wednesday in Nandigram leading to serious rifts within the Left Front coalition that is supposed to rule West Bengal but where power is monopolised by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).
Since the firing, Nandigram has witnessed unceasing confrontation between the state police and CPI-M cadres, on the one hand, and local residents organised under the banners of various political parties and non-party groupings, on the other.
After the initial shock and fear that sent them fleeing, people belonging to five villages in the Nandigram area, about 150 km from West Bengal's capital Kolkata, have regrouped and are now fighting the police and demanding to know the whereabouts of their missing relatives.
"The people claim that the number of those killed is much higher than the official figure of 15, and that the police and CPI-M cadres are burying bodies under rubble and building roads and culverts over them," said Aditi Chowdhury, a Kolkata-based social activist who has been following developments in the area, where trouble first erupted two-and-a-half months ago over the acquisition of land for the construction of an SEZ.
Speaking with IPS over telephone Chowdhury said: "Thousands of armed policemen surrounded the villages, and on many occasions they fired at eye-level to kill. TV footage showed trucks carrying bodies with their legs dangling out. The brutality was chilling.'' She added that state Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's brazen defence of the firing, as part of an attempt to restore law and order in the area, has only occasioned more public anger.
The Nandigram events, in particular the police firing, have seriously dented the image of the Left Front, which has ruled the state for an uninterrupted three decades -- considered a global record in democracy and electoral politics.
The CPI-M's main partners in the Left Front -- which includes the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Forward Bloc, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) -- are livid and have publicly deplored the resort to repression. They are alarmed at the blatant contradiction between what the Left preaches at the national level, and what it practises in the states where it is in power -- West Bengal and to a lesser extent in southern Kerala.
<http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36939> RIGHTS-INDIA: Massacre of Peasants May Slow SEZ Plans Analysis by Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Mar 15 (IPS) - It took the gruesome massacre of 15 peasants in police firing for the provincial government of West Bengal to suspend the forcible acquisition of farming land it wants to hand over to an Indonesian conglomerate for development into a Special Economic Zone (SEZ).
Trouble has been brewing in Nandigram, 150 km south of Kolkata, the state capital, since well before Feb. 22, when the Salim Group, Indonesia's largest conglomerate, was given approval for a 500 million dollar investment proposal that included the SEZ in West Bengal, which is ruled by a left-wing coalition led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).
Clashes broke out between CPI-M cadres and the villagers on Jan. 7 when it became known that the government had plans to acquire 22,000 acres of land, leaving six people dead.
In a statement issued on Jan. 9, a group of leading intellectuals and rights activists warned: ''We are deeply concerned about the escalating levels of violence being reported from Nandigram in West Bengal, as a consequence of the state government's policy of land acquisition for industrial use.''
Signatories to the statement included campaigners for people displaced by mega-projects, internationally-known author Arundhati Roy and prominent rights lawyer Colin Gonsalvez. It urged the formation of a peace committee in West Bengal to ensure the cessation of hostilities against the villagers.
''While industrial development is necessary in many parts of the country, detailed, democratically accountable and transparent discussions about the categories of land to be allocated for acquisition are equally necessary prior to making a decision," the statement said.
"The International Economic Covenant, which India has ratified, makes prior consultation and resettlement mandatory in all cases of displacement. The violation of human rights in the process of land acquisition that we have recently seen in West Bengal (and a number of other states) is completely unacceptable,'' it added.
But such sage advice was cast to the winds by the state's Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who, bent on rapidly industrialising West Bengal, kept insisting that the villagers were being misled by the CPI-M's political opponents.
After Wednesday's tragic massacre, a visibly shaken Bhattacharya announced that he had withdrawn the notification for acquisition of land in Nandigram. -- Yoshie