CPI(Maoist) 9th Congress - Resolution on Prisoners’ Struggles

Resolution on Prisoners’ Struggles

A movement of various classes and sections is breaking out against the imperialist-dictated policies of globalization, liberalization and privatization and other anti-people policies being implemented by the ruling classes of India. In a bid to suppress these movements, the Indian Government has increasingly carried out repressive policies and become increasingly fascist. Several draconian laws have come about and are already in force. The main target of this repression campaign has been the struggles being waged against imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucrat capitalism under communist revolutionary leadership. Among these revolutionaries, particularly the leadership comrades, those who escape the inevitable fake encounters somehow or the other, find themselves thrown behind bars with numerous false charges heaped upon them.

Six comrades in AP, 26 in Tamil Nadu are detained under POTA, and 16 in Karnataka, and about 25 comrades in North Chhattisgarh have been languishing in jails. In many other states also the situation is not different. Hundreds of women comrades have also been incarcerated in different jails in the country. Besides them, thousands of other comrades and people have also been thrown into jails. Arrested comrades are not produced in court for days on end in stark violation of civil rights; any kind of protest by prison inmates is prohibited while depriving them of all their rights; lathi-charges are conducted to suppress any organized protest; leadership comrades are banished to distant jails; locked up in cells or harassed in other ways; visitors are denied permission to meet the inmates; they are not provided with medical treatment; bribes are extracted too often than not; false charges are framed against imprisoned comrades in instalments; “fast-track trials” are conducted to serve sentences without much ado even by the dint of false supporting evidence. These and other nefarious means have become common occurrence.

Besides comrade Tapas, Central Committee member of our Party and another important comrade Pratul, five comrades from Asagarh area, five from Bhamragarh and five from Tipragarh areas in of Gadchiroli division and five peasants of Gondia division (Maharashtra), five comrades from Chhattisgarh, four comrades each from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, and some comrades from Bihar and Jharkhand have been served with life imprisonment. Some ordinary villagers from Bihar, languishing in jail on charges related to Bara (Gaya) and Meral (Garhwa) incidents, have been served life sentences.

In spite of tremendous torture, our comrades languishing behind bars have kept alive the ever-inspiring revolutionary legacy of resistance and struggle against repression and oppression in jails. The struggle of 1995 that broke out in various AP jails all at once and the solidarity struggle from outside were indeed historic in terms of their impact and spread. Our comrades in West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu jails have also launched movements in demand of the rights of political prisoners and against various repressive measures of the authorities. We earnestly believe that even while bearing with the most inhuman, tough and hapless conditions in these torture chambers, our comrades shall leave no stone unturned to forge unyielding unity among themselves and to carry ahead the revolutionary legacy of roaring aloud, as caged lions would do.

The Congress urges you to:

· Form secret Party units even in prison and carry on the task of running them regularly through secret methods.

· Build action committees such as ‘Jail Bandi Sanghursh Samiti’ behind bars. In case comrades are kept in separate prison barracks, then form barrack committees, and press with demands to keep all revolutionaries in the same barrack depending upon the concrete situation. Such action committees are quite helpful in further enhancement of the spirit of unity and sacrifice, and in identifying vacillators and coverts.

· Transform the prisons into political universities.

· In order to enhance your own theoretical-ideological and political levels, continue holding a series of study and political classes as far as possible.

· Arouse and mobilize common prison inmates, forming cultural teams, aid committees and various types of organizations.

· Develop the prisons as centres of struggle against the ongoing widespread extortion, corruption and atrocities as well as against the attacks on democratic rights. At the same time, unite and create a huge outcry in support of the revolutionary struggles being waged on the world scale, and against the repression campaigns aimed at them.

This Congress hereby adopts a resolution to take up every possible programme so as to express solidarity with the ‘struggles of prison inmates;’ to lend strength to their struggles; and to form suitable organizations. The Congress resolves to:

· Form organizations, such as ‘Committee to Release Prisoners’ along with intellectuals, democracy-lovers and members of the families of imprisoned comrades, in solidarity with prisoners’ struggles and to lend them strength. Such an organization shall conduct struggles on various demands related to the jail by establishing coordination between various Prisoners’ Action Committees. Employing different means, such committees shall help create public opinion about the assault upon the civil rights of the prison inmates. In this direction efforts are already underway.

· Organize progressive lawyers to provide legal support to the prisoners. Some efforts have been made in this direction. Yet we shall lay stress upon forming such organizations in different cities. These organizations shall provide legal support to imprisoned comrades as well as generate public opinion against draconian laws.

· Mobilize ‘Committees to Release Prisoners,’ lawyers organizations, civil liberty organizations and the common masses against ‘Fast Track Trials’ and such other outright anti-people provisions.

· Pay special attention to raise protest against and organize resistance to atrocities perpetrated upon women prisoners.

· Rope in various means of propaganda in order to highlight the inhuman conditions in prisons.

· Conduct signature campaigns on various demands of the prisoners and in support of their struggles issues in order to arouse and mobilize the masses.

· Strive to punish the prison officials who carry out atrocities upon the prisoners.

· Constitute a Prisoners’ Fund to help secure their release.

This Congress resolves to strive to carry out every possible means to free our comrades from the jails besides waging different forms of struggle within constitutional limits. With support from the masses, we had carried out historic actions such as the Jehanabad and R Udaigiri Jailbreaks. The Congress calls upon the entire Party ranks and the mass organization rank and file to prepare in this direction and educate the masses.