By Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay
The Modi regime in India and the Marcos Jr. regime in the Philippines have much in common. They both have ambitions of crushing local insurgencies by the end of 2024, and in the process are militarizing vast areas of the countryside and perpetrating human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law on a massive scale.
In India, the US-supported Operation Kagaar, envisioned by the Modi regime as the endgame in its counter-insurgency drive, is targeting Abujhmaad, a mountainous area in Chhattisgarh, Central India, long considered a bastion of the Maoist movement. Up to 10,000 paramilitary troops have been unleashed in the area, equivalent to almost half of the Abujhmaad’s population. Since January, the Modi regime has been escalating bombings and other fascist attacks against the area’s peasant and Adivasi indigenous communities.
In a pattern disturbingly familiar to Filipinos, massacres of civilians have been perpetrated in the area by the Indian Armed Forces and paramilitaries, with the victims labeled as armed rebels killed in encounters or civilians killed in the crossfire.
The Filipino and Indian people, united in suffering at the hands of fascist regimes, are also one in struggling for their liberation.
Karapatan joins the Filipino people in declaring solidarity with the Indian people and calling for a stop to the brutal Operation Kagaar, in demanding justice for the victims and accountability for the Modi regime’s abominable war crimes.