INDIA: Nuevo asesinato de dirigente popular en Telangana

El pasado día 24 de diciembre fue asesinado el camarada Akula Bhoomaiah, profesor y veterano dirigente revolucionario y patriota en Telangana, por esbirros del gobierno reaccionario.  Unimos nuestra enérgica condena y pesar a la de las diversas organizaciones populares de la India y reproducimos los comunicados de condena del FRD y de la UDE:

Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF)
Press Statement
26 December 2013
Senior Telangana people’s leader Akula Bhoomaiah was brutally murdered by the state actors in Hyderabad on Tuesday night (24th of December) at 9:45 pm. Bhoomaiah was returning from the local Press Club at Basheerbagh after a book launch on Telangana when a mysterious Garbage Tipping Van of the Municipal Corporation waiting at Vidyanagar first hit his scooter dislodging him and then ran over him till he died. This was witnessed by the people who live in the vicinity. They then promptly caught the driver who was attempting to flee after ensuring Bhoomaiah’s death. On being taken to the nearby police station and after repeated enquiries by democratic rights activists, it became clear that he was neither the regular driver of that van and nor was he supposed to be in that job.
Perhaps, he was employed solely for the purpose of killing Bhoomaiah and to make it look like an accident. It is clear that not just was it no accident but was a premeditated act of murder of a man who was the President of the Telangana Praja Front (TPF). Akula Bhoomaiah was a longstanding leader of the teacher’s movement in Andhra Pradesh. In fact, he never limited himself to the teacher’s movement and actively participated in all social and revolutionary movements of the people in Telangana since the 1960s. As a student, he participated actively in the first phase of the separate Telangana movement in late 1960s. Why did the coastal Andhra ruling clique choose to assassinate Bhoomaiah now?
Bhoomaiah and his organization, the Telangana People’s Front, not just stood for the separation movement for the statehood of Telangana, but also for the people of all oppressed classes and communities including adivasis, strove for their equal share in land and resources and fought for their democratic rights along with their right to statehood. This is not a stand taken by any other political force in Telangana. Though Telangana People’s Front’s perspective is singularly and deeply democratic in nature, all ruling class parties of Telangana, including Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), failed to adopt this democratic stand despite sometimes working in alliance with the TPF. But it is the ruling class cliques and their exploitative leadership of the coastal Andhra region that have been deeply irked by the slogan of democratic Telangana.
Therefore, most leaders of the people’s organizations in Telangana have openly expressed that Bhoomaiah’s death is not an accident but a premeditated assassination planned and executed by the coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema ruling clique. Akula Bhoomaiah was born in 1948 in the village of Kabapur in Pedapalli block of Karimnagar district of Telangana. When he was studying for his PUC, he was deeply inspired by the people’s movement for Telangana and participated in the first phase of the militant separate Telangana statehood movement in 1969-70. He organized the students of his college in Karimnagar as part of the ‘Andhra Go Back’ movement. He was arrested and sent to jail as part of this struggle. When the separate statehood movement was suppressed, his attention turned to the class struggle in Telangana and he studied Marxist philosophy.
He took up a job as a teacher in 1973 but was arrested soon after that in 1975 during the period of Emergency. When he came out of prison in 1977, he started organizing teachers in Panchayat Raj Teachers Union (PRTU) till 1983. After this, Andhra Pradesh Teachers Federation (APTF) was initiated in Telangana. Along with others, Bhoomaiah played a crucial role as a leader in building a strong and militant teacher’s movement in Telangana. Bhoomaiah was a voracious reader and a prolific writer. As a teacher and leader of the teacher’s movement that involved lakhs of teachers, he was well known as a friend, philosopher and guide to tens of thousands. He wrote numerous documents, articles, books and booklets in his 40 years of tireless struggle for the oppressed people of Telangana.
Through his in-depth study of the most backward regions of the state, he provided the correct direction and perspective to these movements. In December 1997, All India People’s Resistance Forum (AIPRF) organized a two-day convention and a massive rally and public meeting where more than half a million people from all districts of Telangana participated. That was the largest mobilization of people for Telangana and set the stage for the second phase of the separate statehood movement wherein the historic Warangal Declaration was passed by the people. The Warangal Declaration founded the concept of a democratic Telangana and defined the Telangana movement not merely as a regional movement but as a nationality movement notwithstanding the one language spoken across the regions of Andhra Pradesh.
Bhoomaiah participated and enriched the debate during the convention and public meeting and also took the spirit of the movement ahead and founded the Telangana Janasabha. From then on the Telangana Janasabha stood as the guiding star of the movement and brought it to its present stage, fighting all deviations brought in by various political parties. Bhoomaiah was elected as the convener of the Telangana Janasabha. He traveled across the ten districts of Telangana and built the Janasabha amidst the worst phases of repression faced by all the people’s organizations in Andhra Pradesh under the regime of Chandrababu Naidu.
At this time, Telangana cultural activists like Belli Lalita in Nalgonda district and Ravinder Reddy in Karimnagar were brutally murdered by the state government. The Chandrababu Naidu government forced an undeclared ban on the Telangana Janasabha by killing its activists like Kanakachari, who was Bhoomaiah’s fellow teacher and crusader for the statehood of Telangana, in Mahboobnagar district. In these circumstances, Bhoomaiah started a broad united front on Telangana called Telangana Aikya Karyacharana Committee (Telangana United Activities Committee). He wanted the support of the CPI (Maoist) in this movement. In this effort, two of the activists close to Bhoomaiah were killed in a fake encounter after being captured by the police while Bhoomaiah narrowly escaped.
In October 2010, along with Gaddar, Bhoomaiah forged Telangana Praja Front which has spearheaded the people’s movement for separate statehood of Telangana till date. The last four years have been a tumultuous period for the people of Telangana as it saw betrayal after betrayal by the all ruling class parties even as the whole of Telangana was turned into a battlefield and captured by the state police forces. It is during this crucial period that Telangana People’s Front played a crucial role under the leadership of Bhoomaiah thwarting every betrayal and awakening the people against all conspiracies and Chanakya like intrigues of the ruling parties to permanently suppress the idea of Telangana.
However, Bhoomaiah’s role as a leader, activist and thinker was not limited to Telangana. He played a crucial role in an all India anti-imperialist movement by joining all India fronts like anti-WTO forum called JAFIF – an anti-imperialist movement, Forum Against Imperialist Globalisation (FAIG) and later in Mumbai Resistance in 2004 and People’s Democratic Front of India. He traveled across many states and participated, guided and spoke in innumerous public meetings, seminars and struggles. In the last one decade, Bhoomaiah was under the shadow of threat of murder by the state forces. He received such threats and calls several times and was even kidnapped once from his Adikmet office of Telangana Janasabha.
Each time Bhoomaiah faced these state sponsored attacks, he boldly confronted them and even succeeded in evading attacks with deft tactics. This time, the marauding killers came in a la Latin American style in the shape of the city municipality garbage van driver. This is a new style increasingly followed in the last two decades to assassinate people’s leaders and activists by passing it off as accidental deaths or deaths by private actors. The remotest possible link in the chain was used to assassinate Bhoomaiah at a time when the state government ceased to function after the Central cabinets decision to form Telangana State.
All the ministers, including the Chief Minister, have stopped the business of governance and are now indulging in Mafia like elimination of the voices of the people to thwart the formation of the Telangana state. In the ensuing anarchy, the ruling class clique of politicians and bureaucrats of Coastal Andhra saw an opportunity to take everything into their own hands and have focused their targets on people’s leaders like Ganti Prasadam on the 4th of June and now Akula Bhoomaiah on 24th of December. Ganti Prasadam, our all India Vice-President who hailed from North Andhra – a region purposefully kept backward by the coastal Andhra comprador-feudal classes, was brutally killed by the same state forces who have now taken the life of Bhoomaiah as part of their effort to spread fear among the people and rake up the anti-Telangana movement.
It is no coincidence that within 6 months of Ganti Prasadam’s killing another people’s leader was assassinated at a time when the parameters – form and shape of politics is being decided for Telangana. It is a great loss for the people of Telangana that they have lost a leader who guided them throughout the second phase and the concluding period of the Telangana struggle. There are still many forces to be defeated and a long road ahead to realize the dream of democratic Telangana envisioned by the people over many decades. The assassination of Bhoomaiah is not only a loss for this vision of democratic Telangana, but for all revolutionary and democratic people everywhere in the subcontinent.

Democratic Students Union

Condemn the political assassination of Akula Bhoomaiah, a tireless voice of the resistance of the people of Telangana! The dastardly killings by the Andhra ruling classes & state repression can never suppress people’s aspirations for a democratic Telangana!

Akula Bhoomaiah, a senior Telangana people’s leader and the president of Telangana Praja Front was brutally murdered by the state and the Andhra ruling classes in Hyderabad on the night of 24^th December. He was on his way back from the local Press Club after a book launch on Telangana when a mysterious Garbage Tipping Van of the Municipal Corporation waiting at Vidyanagar first hit his scooter and then mowed him down. After persistent enquiries by democratic rights activists, it was found out that the driver, who initially attempted to flee from the spot, was neither the regular driver of that van and nor was he supposed to be in that job. He was clearly employed by the state solely for the purpose of killing Bhoomaiah and to make it look like an “accident”.

      Akula Bhoomaiah has been an active part of the people’s movement of Telangana and the demand for separate statehood since for several decades. Alongside, he has also been a part of the fight for the democratic rights of the people of all oppressed classes and communities including adivasis, striving for their equal share in land and resources. Active in politics since the 1960s, he was drawn to both the movement for a separate Telangana as well as the emerging Naxalite movement during his college days. After completing his education, he took up a job as a college teacher but was arrested soon after during the period of Emergency. After his release, he headed several teachers’ organizations painstakingly striving to raise the political consciousness of those he worked with. Amidst heavy repression, he was instrumental in organizing many seminars which developed and sharpened the critique of the policies of globalization and imperialist plunder. In 1996, he became a part of the international seminar on the nationality question held in Delhi in 1996 and next year a conclave in Warangal. He was one of the strongest advocates of the vision of a democratic Telangana that was adopted through the historic Warangal Declaration in 1997 in the presence of over half a million people in an AIPRF rally marking the beginning of the second wave of struggle for separate statehood. The Telangana Jansabha (TJS) was the outcome of these programmes and it spearheaded the movement for a separate Telangana. Bhoomiah himself as the convener of the TJS travelled across the length and breadth of the region, in the midst of heavy repression, and built the organization in several places. The TJS was brutally suppressed by the fascist Chandrababu Naidu government and many of its leading activists were similarly assassinated. 

The ruling classes of coastal Andhra were deeply irked by this slogan of democratic Telangana & hence began the cold-blooded murder of its most vocal proponents. Telangana cultural activists like Belli Lalita and Ravinder Reddy were thereby brutally murdered by the state government. Two of Bhoomaih’s close asscociates were also killed in a fake-encounter earlier while he narrowly escaped. The Chandrababu Naidu government orchestrated the murder of pro-Telangana activists like Kanakachari, who again was Bhoomaiah’s fellow teacher and crusader for the statehood of Telangana. Boomaiah as a tireless voice of this struggle therefore has always been under the shadow of threat. He received such threats and calls several times and was even kidnapped once from his office. He had a very narrow escape in 2004 when in the period of the peace-talks between the Andhra Pradesh government and the erstwhile CPI(ML) People’s War, the TJS leaders came under heavy police fire of the police when their delegation was having discussions with the People’s War leaders. At that time, the TJS co-convener Sudharshan and another activist Vasanth were kidpnapped by the police and then shot point blank, while Bhoomiah narrowly escaped. Undaunted by the any of these, Boomaiah along with Gaddar formed the Telangana Praja Front in 2010 which spearheaded the people’s movement for separate statehood of Telangana thwarting every betrayal and conspiracies by the parliamentary ruling class parties. The last four years particularly have been a tumultuous period for the people of Telangana amidst severe repression by the state forces and the resurgent people’s resistance. Desperate to curtail this movement and its most vocal advocates, the marauding killers came in the shape of the city municipality garbage van driver. This is a new style borrowed from the tactics employed by the imperialist forces and their local puppets several times in different parts of Latin American to assassinate people’s leaders and activists by passing it off as “accidental deaths” or deaths by private actors. As the state government has ceased to function after the Central cabinet’s decision to form Telangana State, the ruling class clique of Coastal Andhra have now begun the Mafia-like elimination of those who champion the vision of a democratic Telangana.

The tactics of assassinating revolutionary leaders, civil libertarians and democratic rights activists are a part of the much touted ‘Andhra Model’ of fighting Naxalites. With the region chosen to experiment all the anti-people policies of the World Bank & the IMF, the state has come down brutally on each and every dissenting voice. APCLC stalwarts such as Dr. Ramandham, Nara Prabhakar Reddy and T. Purshottam were murdered in broad day light by the hired goons of the state for their tireless work in bringing to light the human rights violations by the state forces. Just six months back, the same tactic was used once again to eliminate the All-India Vice President of RDF, Com. Ganti Prasadam when he was organizing a meeting to commemorate those martyred by the fascist AP government in the past few decades. Threatened by the intensification of the revolutionary movement that has deep roots in the region and has militantly challenged the state's attempts at plunder of the region's resources, several revolutionary leaders too have been eliminated in cold-blooded fake encounters in a bid by the state to make the masses leaderless. Bhoomaiah’s death is certainly a great loss for the people of Telangana in the way of actualizing the dream of democratic Telangana envisioned by the people over the decades. It is also a great loss for all revolutionary and democratic people across the subcontinent. The history of resistance of the people of Telangana is, however, as old as the history of repression. Such attacks and killings have never been able to subdue people’s struggles.