Menasinahadya residents speak well of ‘encounter’ victims

[Ajay]

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Menasinahadya residents speak well of 'encounter' victims

Ganesh Prabhu

http://www.hindu.com/2007/07/12/stories/2007071250140100.htm

Police detain more than 100 persons in Malnad region

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Rame Gowda's son is reportedly missing

Resistance to shifting of bodies for post-mortem

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  Megur (Chikmagalur district): The house of Rame Gowda has bullet holes in almost every room. The rice that he and his wife, Kaveri, had stored is strewn all over in one of the rooms. In another room, clothes are scattered on the floor. The tiled roof has bullet holes indicating random firing. Rainwater was seen in the house. In short, the house appears to have been the scene of an ambush.

Residents of Megur and Menasinahadya villages, located in the forests of the Western Ghats, 7 km from the main road, speak well of Rame Gowda, Kaveri, and the two other victims of the July 10 encounter, Parmeshwara and Sunderesh.

Several residents told The Hindu that Rame Gowda and Kaveri were a generous couple. They had two sons, Prashanth (14) and Adarsh (10), who study in Nemar, a village in Sringeri taluk. Prashanth has been reportedly missing since the day of the encounter. Rame Gowda had a small piece of land, which, according to villagers, yielded him two quintals of rice and 50 kg of arecanut a year. During a part of the year, he worked as an agricultural labourer.

The residents say that if the police were suspicious of Rame Gowda's activities, they could have resorted to legal means. There was no need to kill him and his wife. Prashanth, Director of Lamps Society, Koppa, said: "They should not have been shot just because they gave food to naxalites." On the day of the encounter, Parmeshwara and Sunderesh were in the couple's house. Sunderesh was to spray insecticide on Rame Gowda's areca palms, and Parmeshwara was just visiting.

According to Sunderesh's brothers, T.A. Jayakumar and T.A. Gunde, "Neither Sunderesh nor we are connected in any manner to naxalites."

With tears in his eyes, Parmeshwara's father, Sheshe Gowda, said that Parmeshwara never talked about naxalites. Since he was the general secretary of the Kudremukh Rashtriya Udyana Virodhi Samiti, a local Hindutva outfit branded him a naxalite sympathiser, he said. Recalling Tuesday's encounter, he said that it was "like bursting of crackers. He went to Rame Gowda's house as Rame Gowda is our relative."

Pitched battle

There was a pitched battle between the police and people of Megur and Menasinahadya villages on Tuesday night. The villagers had blocked the roads with logs and dug trenches. They even set a government vehicle on fire. The villagers did not want the dead bodies of the five persons killed in the "encounter" to be removed until the Chief Minister arrived on the spot. But the police resorted to lathi-charge around 1.45 a.m. on Wednesday and dispersed the crowd.

Detained

Correspondent reports from Chikmagalur:

Police detained more than 100 persons in the Malnad region of the district on Wednesday as a precautionary measure to prevent them from organising demonstrations to protest against the killing of five persons in the "encounter."

The arrested persons included leaders of various progressive organisations that have been listed by the Government as being sympathisers of the Maoists, including Kalkuli Vittal Hegde, president of the Kudremukh Rashtriya Udhyana Virodhi Okkoota.

The bodies of the slain persons were brought to the government hospital in Chikmagalur for post-mortem under tight security.

Vipul Kumar, Superintendent of Police, denied that the encounter had been staged. Speaking to presspersons, he reiterated that the 'naxalites' had fired first and the police retaliated. He said Paramesh, who was among those killed, was an office-bearer of the Kudremukh Rashtriya Udhyana Virodhi Okkoota and was considered to be a Maoist
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
"Ours is a battle not for wealth or for power.
It is a battle for freedom. It is a battle for the reclamation of human personality."
- Dr BR Ambedkar
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Murali K Warier]

I don't know whether this encounter is a real one or not. Given the history of such encounters, it would be foolish to take what the police says at face value. However, terrorists and mass murderers turning out to be 'nice guys' to their neighbors and acquaintances is nothing new, and is a real phenomenon. And there is a reason for it - in the mental framework of these people, they are completely justified in their acts - they are merely following their ideology faithfully and not indulging in undifferentiated mass murder. Read the following article by the blogger and author Robert Spencer. Though the article dwells more on Islamist extremists, it is equally applicable for people who profess other extreme ideologies.

Best regards,
Murali.

Why's a Nice Guy Like You Doing a Terrorist Act Like This?

By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 18, 2007 According to former Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Eddie Green, Kifah Jayyousi is "a great guy, one of the nicest people I've ever met." While Green was superintendent, Jayyousi oversaw the Detroit school district's capital improvement program, which had a $1.5 billion budget.

Jayyousi is now charged, according to the Detroit Free Press, with "conspiring to kidnap, maim and murder by providing money, recruits and equipment for Islamic struggles in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya from 1993 to 2001." He could get life in prison.

 

Christopher Paul, a martial arts instructor at a mosque in Columbus , Ohio, is also a terrific guy. Ahmad Al-Akhras, vice chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter in Columbus , said: "From the things I know, he is a loving husband and he has a wife and parents in town. They are a good family together."

 

Yet now Paul, a Muslim, has been charged, according to Associated Press, with "providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction." He is accused of training with Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s, training people for violent jihad attacks on targets in Europe and the United States, and more.

 

But another one of Paul's friends, Hisham Jenhawi, was skeptical: "I don't think it's even close to his personality to act upon something like that. He's a very kind person. You would meet him on the street and he would want to hug you with the heart that he has." One of his neighbors, Mike James, added: "He seemed like a nice guy, always waving…"

 

This kind of thing is nothing new. A friend remembered Gokhan Elaltuntas, a Muslim who carried out a suicide bombing on a synagogue in Istanbul in 2003: "We went partridge hunting together. I still cannot believe how such a quiet person could have been involved in an incident like this." A friend of Naveed Haq, the jihadist killer who murdered one and wounded five at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in July 2006, described him as "pretty much just a normal guy….He was the kind of guy when you talked to him he was always laughing."

 

According to a Southern California friend of Raed Albanna, who killed 132 people in a suicide attack outside a medical clinic in Iraq in 2005, "He was into partying. We hit some pretty wild clubs in Hollywood." Frank Lindh, the father of John Walker Lindh, a.k.a. Suleyman Al-Faris, the convert to Islam from Marin County who joined the Taliban and was captured in Afghanistan fighting against American troops, has said: "In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man embarked on a spiritual quest."

 

Great guys all. Some partied and some embarked on a spiritual search, but they all ended up in the same place, committing acts dedicated to furthering the cause of jihad, or facing charges of having done so.

 

One clue to this phenomenon may come from jazz musician Tarek Shah, who recently pled guilty to providing martial arts and hand-to-hand combat with weapons training to Al-Qaeda operatives. In 2004 Shah told a man he thought was a fellow jihadist but who turned out to be an undercover agent, "I could be joking and smiling and then cutting their throats in the next second."

 

Or they may be genuinely decent fellows. It was the Nazi genocide mastermind Heinrich Himmler who told a group of SS leaders: "Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet -- apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written…"

 

Were these SS mass murderers really decent fellows? To their friends and family, they probably were. After all, they weren't interested in undifferentiated mayhem. They were adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that convinced them that the murders they were committing were for a good purpose. As far as they were concerned, their goals were rational and good, and the murders were a means to that goal. It was not just a noteworthy achievement, but a necessity, for them to remain "decent fellows," for they were busy trying to build what they saw as a decent society. That their vision of a decent society included genocide and torture did not trouble them, for it was all for – in their view – a goal that remained good.

 

Today's jihad terrorists are likewise the adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that teaches them that murders committed under certain circumstances are a good thing. And those murders, here again, are not committed for their own sake, but for the sake of a societal vision hardly less draconian and evil than that of Hitler, but one also that portrays itself as the exponent of all that is good – as the Taliban showed us. But the continued reference to such people as "terrorists" pure and simple, and the refusal of the media and most law enforcement officials to examine their ideology at all, only reinforces the idea that these people are raving maniacs, interested solely in chaos for its own sake. The society they want to build, and the means besides guns and bombs that they are using to build it, so far remain below the radar screen of most analysts. These people are just "terrorists," interested only in "terror." And so we're continually surprised when they turn out to be nice guys after all. Decent fellows. Like the SS.

On 7/12/07, Ajay <ajay...@gmail.com> wrote:

Front Page     

Menasinahadya residents speak well of 'encounter' victims

Ganesh Prabhu

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
- Joseph Stalin

To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary.
These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a
revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing
machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy
of the paredon (The Wall)!
- Che Guevara
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Santhosh Kumar]

it may true that the thesis, all people with extreme ideologies turns out be nice people since they completely believe in their ideologies. so they could be dangerous and killed in encounters. but why only 'muslims' and 'naxals'(new term Maoists) are always killed in 'encounter' by police in India. Not any RSS pracharaks or Savarna Hindus who also have extreme ideologies????

Santhosh

On 7/12/07, Murali K Warier <war...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't know whether this encounter is a real one or not. Given the history of such encounters, it would be foolish to take what the police says at face value. However, terrorists and mass murderers turning out to be 'nice guys' to their neighbors and acquaintances is nothing new, and is a real phenomenon. And there is a reason for it - in the mental framework of these people, they are completely justified in their acts - they are merely following their ideology faithfully and not indulging in undifferentiated mass murder. Read the following article by the blogger and author Robert Spencer. Though the article dwells more on Islamist extremists, it is equally applicable for people who profess other extreme ideologies.

Best regards,
Murali.

Why's a Nice Guy Like You Doing a Terrorist Act Like This?

By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 18, 2007 According to former Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Eddie Green, Kifah Jayyousi is "a great guy, one of the nicest people I've ever met." While Green was superintendent, Jayyousi oversaw the Detroit school district's capital improvement program, which had a $1.5 billion budget.

Jayyousi is now charged, according to the Detroit Free Press, with "conspiring to kidnap, maim and murder by providing money, recruits and equipment for Islamic struggles in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya from 1993 to 2001." He could get life in prison.

 

Christopher Paul, a martial arts instructor at a mosque in Columbus , Ohio, is also a terrific guy. Ahmad Al-Akhras, vice chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter in Columbus , said: "From the things I know, he is a loving husband and he has a wife and parents in town. They are a good family together."

 

Yet now Paul, a Muslim, has been charged, according to Associated Press, with "providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction." He is accused of training with Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s, training people for violent jihad attacks on targets in Europe and the United States, and more.

 

But another one of Paul's friends, Hisham Jenhawi, was skeptical: "I don't think it's even close to his personality to act upon something like that. He's a very kind person. You would meet him on the street and he would want to hug you with the heart that he has." One of his neighbors, Mike James, added: "He seemed like a nice guy, always waving..."

 

This kind of thing is nothing new. A friend remembered Gokhan Elaltuntas, a Muslim who carried out a suicide bombing on a synagogue in Istanbul in 2003: "We went partridge hunting together. I still cannot believe how such a quiet person could have been involved in an incident like this." A friend of Naveed Haq, the jihadist killer who murdered one and wounded five at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in July 2006, described him as "pretty much just a normal guy....He was the kind of guy when you talked to him he was always laughing."

 

According to a Southern California friend of Raed Albanna, who killed 132 people in a suicide attack outside a medical clinic in Iraq in 2005, "He was into partying. We hit some pretty wild clubs in Hollywood." Frank Lindh, the father of John Walker Lindh, a.k.a. Suleyman Al-Faris, the convert to Islam from Marin County who joined the Taliban and was captured in Afghanistan fighting against American troops, has said: "In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man embarked on a spiritual quest."

 

Great guys all. Some partied and some embarked on a spiritual search, but they all ended up in the same place, committing acts dedicated to furthering the cause of jihad, or facing charges of having done so.

 

One clue to this phenomenon may come from jazz musician Tarek Shah, who recently pled guilty to providing martial arts and hand-to-hand combat with weapons training to Al-Qaeda operatives. In 2004 Shah told a man he thought was a fellow jihadist but who turned out to be an undercover agent, "I could be joking and smiling and then cutting their throats in the next second."

 

Or they may be genuinely decent fellows. It was the Nazi genocide mastermind Heinrich Himmler who told a group of SS leaders: "Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet -- apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written..."

 

Were these SS mass murderers really decent fellows? To their friends and family, they probably were. After all, they weren't interested in undifferentiated mayhem. They were adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that convinced them that the murders they were committing were for a good purpose. As far as they were concerned, their goals were rational and good, and the murders were a means to that goal. It was not just a noteworthy achievement, but a necessity, for them to remain "decent fellows," for they were busy trying to build what they saw as a decent society. That their vision of a decent society included genocide and torture did not trouble them, for it was all for - in their view - a goal that remained good.

 

Today's jihad terrorists are likewise the adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that teaches them that murders committed under certain circumstances are a good thing. And those murders, here again, are not committed for their own sake, but for the sake of a societal vision hardly less draconian and evil than that of Hitler, but one also that portrays itself as the exponent of all that is good - as the Taliban showed us. But the continued reference to such people as "terrorists" pure and simple, and the refusal of the media and most law enforcement officials to examine their ideology at all, only reinforces the idea that these people are raving maniacs, interested solely in chaos for its own sake. The society they want to build, and the means besides guns and bombs that they are using to build it, so far remain below the radar screen of most analysts. These people are just "terrorists," interested only in "terror." And so we're continually surprised when they turn out to be nice guys after all. Decent fellows. Like the SS.

[Ranjit Ranjit]

hi

 

santhosh raises a very pertinent question. RSS has the history of extremism/terrorism and yet it's given clean chit in the name of cultural organisation.

As 'islamic/naxal extremism' is a stereotyped term, one should be able to read btn the lines of these narratives of terror.

Only muslim/subaltern convicts are sentenced

In Nandigram the women raped were all dalits

whenever such heinous acts of cultural/social/political atrocities occur muslim/dalit becomes the victims in India... why?

As S Anand recently wrote in Tehelka, the Indian intelligentia rallied behind Prof Shivji Panikkar and his student Chandramohan, the same never happened in the case of dalit doctors of AIIMS , new delhi, who are fighting against the caste atrocities of Director, Dr Venugopal and other "upper" caste faculty members of AIIMS...

Some feminists (of coourse "upper" caste, as Indian feminism is a brahmin woemn 's movement) while discussing abt to arrange protest march agaunst the arrest one activist doctor (forgot name) in chattisgarh, suggestd protest in front of AIIMS

the same feminists were not seen when dalit/OBC doctors came out and protested against caste atrocities in AIIMS....

this is our civil society....then what else can we expect from State???

regards

[Murali K Warier]

>but why only 'muslims' and 'naxals'(new term Maoists) are always killed in 'encounter' by police in India. Not any RSS pracharaks or Savarna Hindus who also have extreme ideologies????

As far as I know, the RSS doesn't indulge in organized, armed terrorist activities of the kind practiced by organizations like the Maoists or the LeT. As for upper caste Hindus, the ULFA largely consists of upper caste Hindus, and we hear ULFA cadres being killed in encounters quite often.

Best regards,
Murali.

On 7/12/07, Santhosh Kumar <santhosh....@gmail.com> wrote:

it may true that the thesis, all people with extreme ideologies turns out be nice people since they completely believe in their ideologies. so they could be dangerous and killed in encounters. but why only 'muslims' and 'naxals'(new term Maoists) are always killed in 'encounter' by police in India. Not any RSS pracharaks or Savarna Hindus who also have extreme ideologies????

Santhosh

[Ranjit Ranjit]

hi

 

RSS is involved in subtle terror which is more dangerous

it's pity that there are people to endorse such "terror" organisations

 

--
Ranjit

[Santhosh Kumar]

RSS and other organisations related to definitely indulge in organised terror.But that never comes out or never addressed by the mainstream the way so called 'Muslim' or 'Maoists. This you can see the way Gujarat genocide was dealt and contnued to dealt by the indian mainstream.

But the question here I was trying to address was the stereo typing; violence = naxals or muslims or dalits.

[Murali K Warier]

I do agree that the RSS is an organization with an extreme ideology.
But confusing RSS activities with genuine terrorism will not help
either in analyzing terror nor finding ways to deal with it. There is
a tendency in intellectual circles to equate communal violence with
terrorism. However, dealing with either calls for totally different
strategies. The question is not which is 'better', but what strategies
we have to deal with them.

Best regards,
Murali.

On 7/13/07, Ranjit Ranjit <ranjit...@gmail.com> wrote:

> hi
>
> RSS is involved in subtle terror which is more dangerous
> it's pity that there are people to endorse such "terror" organisations

--

[Murali K Warier]

Such a stereotyping is unfortunate, but is quite understandable
(though I don't know of any association of violence with Dalits). But
the stereotyping is about 'terrorism', not violence in any form -
violence, especially goonda violence, reminds one of the 'bhaiyya log'
of UP than anything else. There was a time when 'terrorism' was
equated with 'Sikh', in India that is. At this point in time, the
foremost proponents of terrorism as a strategy are the Islamists. Not
only that, only Islamist organizations like al Quaeda have the
capability to strike any target of their choice across the globe. They
are the ones that get more press, simply because they are the most
active. Among Islamist organizations, terror is more associated with
al Qaueda and the LeT than some other obscure outfit. Same goes for
the Maoists.

Best regards,
Murali.

> But the question here I was trying to address was the stereo typing;
> violence = naxals or muslims or dalits.
>

--

[Ranjit Ranjit]

sorry to differ with u murali...

in UP once naxals meant dalit and were tortured both by "upper" castes under RSS's philosophical guidance and the state machinary... dalit activists fighting against "upper" caste atrocities and for the rights of dalits are labelled as naxals/maostists and tortured. this happened in Khailranji..it's happening in kerala, tamilnadu, andhra, et etc

It's wrong to attache the terror tag with 'Islam'

If Hindus cant be called terrorists, muslims can never be called so

 

and regarding RSS, it's not only involved in inciting communcal violence but also in cultural terrorism in subtle ways which was made evident by some its secret circulars (refer Braj Ranjan MAni's Debrahmanising History, published by Manohar)
regards
 

On 13/07/07, Murali K Warier <war...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Murali K Warier]

No need to be sorry about 'differing', Ranjit :) That's the spirit of
debate. It's pretty much boring to 'debate' with people who have the
same opinion :)

Maybe you are right in saying that Dalits are sometime tortured by
labeling them as 'Naxalite'. But still, there is no 'stereotyping' of
Dalits as violent, right? That's why they needed to label them as
'Naxalites' in the first place.

By the way, the killers of Dalits in Khailranji were not upper castes
but OBCs. Here is a real stereotype - all upper castes are thought to
be Dalit oppressors (by the 'intelligentsia', at least) and all Dalit
tormentors are upper castes. This is not true in many places, a
classic example is our neighboring state Tamilnadu.

Best regards,
Murali.

On 7/13/07, Ranjit Ranjit <ranjit...@gmail.com> wrote:

> sorry to differ with u murali...
> in UP once naxals meant dalit and were tortured both by "upper" castes under
> RSS's philosophical guidance and the state machinary... dalit activists
> fighting against "upper" caste atrocities and for the rights of dalits are
> labelled as naxals/maostists and tortured. this happened in Khailranji..it's
> happening in kerala, tamilnadu, andhra, et etc
> It's wrong to attache the terror tag with 'Islam'
> If Hindus cant be called terrorists, muslims can never be called so
>
> and regarding RSS, it's not only involved in inciting communcal violence but
> also in cultural terrorism in subtle ways which was made evident by some its
> secret circulars (refer Braj Ranjan MAni's Debrahmanising History, published
> by Manohar)
> regards
>

[Santhosh Kumar]

the outward violence could b addressed once we come to know the resentment or reasons. but the slow poisoning of minds and culture, governance and society is what RSS and its parivar does. which are more heinous than anything else. and difficult to know and tackle.

the oppression need not be direct, as murali argues. the framework of caste built by brahmins is the justification for the oppression by others who are forced to b in it. thus an obc, will oppress the one below since he is oppressed by the higher caste. it need be physical violence or killings. the brahmins and people of power knows better ways.

On 7/13/07, Ranjit Ranjit <ranjit...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Ranjit Ranjit]

hi

as the physical violence btn OBCs and dalits are evident, we forget that it's the 'upper' caste brahmincal legacy which allows such heinous acts. the brahmincal philosophy of violence is more dangerous than physical assault.

it's wrong to assume that dalits are not stereotyped. they are stereotyped in multiple ways both by "upper" caastes and thier ruled state machinaries...OBCs play intothe hands of this phylosophical trap is a reality, thnks to the  RSS and sangh...which i dont consider a lesser terrorist activity

 

On 13/07/07, Murali K Warier <war...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Ranjit