West Bengal Left Front’s pro-investor land grab results in deadly clashes

Situated in East Midnapore District, Nandigram has been designated by the Left Front government as the site of a 14,500-acre Special Economic Zone (SEZ) that is to be given over to the Salim Group, an Indonesian conglomerate notorious for its close ties to the former Suharto dictatorship. There are also plans for infrastructure projects and a second Salim Group SEZ that require the state government to commandeer a further 12-15,000 acres in East Midnapore.

Villagers in Nandigram rose up in protest in early January after the local Haldia Development Authority served notice that it was beginning the process of expropriating land for the proposed SEZ. Some local cadres of Left Front-affiliated parties joined the protest movement, which quickly assumed a mass character. Villagers blockaded roads and bridges and clashed with police, who mounted lathi-charges and opened fire with live ammunition. (The lathi is a long wooden stick, usually made of bamboo, used as a weapon.)

There were also angry altercations between villagers and local officials of the Communist Party of India Marxist [CPI (M)]—the dominant partner in the Left Front—and many of the latter fled the area. On January 4 the local CPI (M) office was torched.

The violence climaxed on the night of January 6-7, when, according to press reports and villagers’ accounts, 250 CPI (M) toughs, some of them dressed in police uniforms, organized a counterattack aimed at reasserting the governing party’s authority in the area. The attack ended around 7:30 a.m. on the 7th, when a crowd of 10,000 villagers gathered and chased the CPI (M) cadres away. However, the violence of the previous night had left six opponents of the government land-seizure scheme dead and more than two dozen injured.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/beng-j26.shtml