Word: maoists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Maoist insurgency gripping India's heartland has been blamed for more than 800 violent deaths this year, and will soon be a target of a major counter-offensive by Indian security forces. But the so-called Naxalite movement - as well as the fight against it - has a hidden cost: the education of thousands of India's most vulnerable children, whose schools have been blasted by rebels, occupied by security forces, or both...
...insurgents, too, insist that they only attack schools that are being used as "police camps." In the November 2008 bulletin of a banned Maoist political party, an unsigned editorial states, "You cannot show a single instance where we had destroyed a school that was really meant for education purposes." HRW researchers contradict that claim, and say the Naxals attack schools as a way of intimidating the local population to keep them from cooperating with the military, who badly need better local intelligence...
...with Indian central government officials about the issue this week. In the meantime, thousands of students in the affected areas are missing yet another year's exams. "The government says it is in the interest of the children that the security forces stay in the schools to guard against Maoist activities," Bhattacharjee says. "The Maoists say they blow up schools because they are less educational institutions and more security camps. So, ultimately the villagers get caught in the crossfire...
More than 12,000 civilians died during the decade of guerilla fighting instigated by the Maoist party in the 1990s, and Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, a Tibetan and Himalayan studies professor who previously lived in Nepal, said the country continues to struggle with “abject poverty and incredible state corruption on every level...
...establish a minimum police presence in all Naxal regions, and little attention was paid to increasing the size of the ranks or improving the meager force's fighting abilities. But without strength in numbers or combat skills, the police have been unable to curb the spread of Maoist violence and defend the state's isolated police outposts. At the Indian Economic Summit in New Delhi on Nov. 10, Chidambaram said all heavily affected states would completely reassert control over their Naxal-dominated areas within two or three years. Director general of police Ranjan thinks four years is a more realistic...