Defend The Adivasis Of Central India. Ceasefire And Peace Talks Now

It is not just Palestine that is under siege. Central India is also embroiled in an all-out-war that is killing the Indigenous Adivasi people.

Like Israel, the Indian state has also committed countless harrowing violations to the international humanitarian law – but toward its own people, in order to seize the mineral-rich land of the region for its neoliberal agenda. To open Central India to foreign investments and corporate plunder, the government launched its military campaign against Naxals (Maoist rebels). However, this campaign has mainly targeted the civilian Adivasi communities and their advocates.

Recently, the government intensified its attacks through routine harassment, extrajudicial killings, mass sexual violence, illegal arrests and detention in security camps, and aerial bombings, especially in the region of Bastar, Chhattisgarh and the Karegatta Hills, Telangana. Many of the state-perpetrated killings are covered up as deaths from fake encounters. In Bastar alone, over 400 of these killings were reported since January 2024, which included elderly and children casualties. This year, hundreds of cases of rape, unlawful arrests of activists, and the burning of over 300 villages in Bastar have been documented.

All this brutal violence is justified under the pretense of counter-insurgency, which has reinforced the land grabbing and forcible displacement of communities already legitimized by deceptive policies such as the Scheduled Tribes and Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act (FRA). The constitutional rights granted to Adivasis for self-governance are blatantly ignored and violated to favor exploitation of natural resources through the rapid expansion of infrastructure for intensive extractive industries, which in turn threaten the lives and livelihoods of the Adivasis, attack their food systems, and destroy the environment.

The People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty expresses its grave concern over the situation, particularly the employment of state militarization that is pushing the Adivasi population into starvation and destitution. Moreover, we strongly condemn the violations to human rights and the international humanitarian law committed by the Indian state and its forces in the name of counter-insurgency to acquire Adivasi lands and plunder their communities' resources.

We call out the India government for its war crimes, including the extrajudicial killings of Naxal combatants – even the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) – that have been seeking deescalation through their unilateral ceasefire declaration. We urge to heed the appeals for ceasefire and peace talks and immediately suspend the national and regional counter-insurgency programs behind Central India's militarization that are killing the Adivasis (such as Operation Kagar in Bastar and Operation Black Forest in Karegatta Hills).

The root causes of armed conflict will never be addressed by the further escalation of wars and military offensives that only contribute to people's hunger and impoverishment. There would never be a need for the people to take up arms in the first place if their socio-economic demands and civil liberties – especially concerning the right to food and land – are met and pro-people development is prioritized over profit.

Ceasefire now! Peace talks now!
Stop Operation Kagar! Stop Operation Black Forest!
Stop the killings of Adivasis!
Address the root causes of armed conflict in Central India!

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