A long stretch of road lined by trees leads to an abrupt bald patch. The transition tells you something: when the enemy is lurking in the forests, clearing the land of vegetation is the only way to stymie the enemy and keep death at a distance.
The road leads you to Dornapal, the biggest relief camp in Chhattisgarh, where victims of Naxal violence and members of Salwa Judum, the civil militia set up by the state government to counter the Maoist rebels, are taking shelter. Thousands of villagers have been living in the camp for nearly three years, wondering if they will ever get back to their homes.
They could return to their villages without informing anyone but that would be choosing certain death. For waiting in the forests are the Naxalites, angry that the villagers, instead of being on their side in their battle against the state, opted to live in camps managed by the government.
Fear stalks the camp at night but recedes with the morning. Living in the camp for nearly three years has somewhat blunted the fear. There is instead a conflicting mix of normality and desperation.
“We are in the middle of nowhere,” says Savlam Aayetu, a 45-year-old Salwa Judum activist. “We have not covered new areas in the last few months because the state Government and the police have stopped backing us. The Government is neither talking to the extremists nor taking the movement forward,” he says.
One of the Salwa Judum’s tactics involved emptying villages in troubled areas in a bid to isolate the Naxalites. Displaced villagers have taken shelter in camps where the Government provides food rations and the security is taken care of by special police officers (SPOs) and official agencies. SPOs are victims of Naxal violence and have been trained and armed by the state to protect these camps.
... contd.
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