Howrah News Service -  Latest news and headlines on Howrah,West Bengal and World: Forward Bloc goes international against CPM

Forward Bloc goes international against CPM
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SPECIALCORRESPONDENT on 20 February, 2008 09:23:00
 
KOLKATA, Feb. 19: For the first time in the three decade-long history of the
Left Front, the Forward Bloc has decided to take to the foreign missions of
different countries, including China, Cuba and the USA, in Delhi the
“barbaric” police firing at Dinhata on 5 February killing five of
its supporters.
The propaganda blitzkrieg of the LF junior partner is intended not only to
expose how the state police “even under a Left regime” has become
trigger-happy, but also the high-handedness of the CPI-M which is treating its
junior partners shabbily.
It has brought out a brochure with gory photographs detailing the sequence of
firing and the frantic attempts by its supporters to save their
fellow-demonstrators from police bullets.
The brochure mentions how it gave a call for a state-wide bandh to protest
against the mayhem by the police and how “the people and some other
political parties (the Trinamul Congress and its smaller allies) supported the
bandh”.
What surprised many was that the FB has chosen for its audience the
international community apart from the President, the Prime Minister Governors,
chief ministers and other political parties. Explaining the rationale of the
unprecedented move, Mr Ashoke Ghosh, FB state general secretary, said Dinhata
firing has “blackened Left politics that values so highly democratic
movements.”
“We want the international community to know how the state police opened
fire on a democratic movement throwing to the winds the LF's stated policy of
never to try to silence a democratic protest through the barrel of police
rifles. There are so many other methods of tackling democratic movements. Yet,
the trigger-happy state police resorted to firing on our party supporters who
had followed every democratic procedure to press their demand for, among others,
100 days work as per the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and BPL
cards.”
Obviously, the FB, which has been vocal against the CPI-M's monopoly in running
the state government “hijacking the LF”, is going all out to tarnish
the Big Brother's image both inside the country and abroad as the Marxists never
tire of flaunting their credentials as part of the international Communist
movement.
To dent whatever standing the CPI-M has among its co-travellers in China or
Cuba, the FB brochure seeks “answers” to questions such as
“why the chief minister didn't visit the spot and did go away to
Delhi” without caring to give his reaction to the firing.