DSU condemns the arrest of Anthony Shimray & reiterates the demand for his immediate release.

[caption id="attachment_8993" align="alignleft" width="204"] Anthony Shimray[/caption]

On 27^th September, 2010, National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) leader and ambassador of the ongoing Peace talks between the Nagas and the Indian state, Anthony Shimray was arrested by the Indian state. it’s been three years that he has been kept behind bars in Tihar jail. The arrest of Anthony Shimray and scores of other Naga freedom fighters are all instances of the Indian state’s efforts to suppress the historic struggle of the Naga people for a separate nation: Nagalim. Reaffirming our unflinching solidarity with the right to self-determination of the Naga people, DSU condemns the arrest of Anthony Shimray & reiterates the demand for his immediate & release.

The Naga aspiration for a separate nationhood has a long and heroic history of resistance ever since colonial times. They not only effectively resisted subjugation to the British imperial might but also through the founding of Naga Club in 1918 demanded the exclusion of the Nagas from any constitutional framework of India. The Naga Club later became the Naga National Council (NNC) in 1946, the precursor of the NSCN as the voice for Naga freedom. The NNC under Angami Zapu Phizo's leadership declared Independence of Nagaland on the 14th of August 1947 and was greeted with great euphoria which echoed all over the Naga hills. Phizo thereafter was arrested in 1948 by the Indian state on charges of “rebellion” and the Indian army was sent in to suppress the Naga liberation struggle that dared to take on the military might of India. When a section of the Naga leadership signed the Shillong Accord betraying the cause for Naga freedom, it led to the formation of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland or the NSCN in the late 1970s which till date carries forward the flames of national liberation despite extreme repression and hunting down of its leadership by the Indian intelligence. A peace talk was initiated with a cease-fire between the Indian state and the Naga national leadership since 1997. But the continuance of the arrests and fascist witch hunt, for instance of Anthony Shimray, who himself has been an ambassador in the peace-talks multiple times, only serves to prove that in the garb of ‘peace’, the Indian state is desperate to liquidate the Naga struggle. Such age old shrewd maneuvers, its policies of divide and rule, its rampant brutalities, rapes, torture with impunity, or the farce of ‘national integration’ and cultural/hegemonic dominance as practiced by the Indian state – nothing however has historically been successful in suppressing the genuine aspirations for freedom of the people of Nagalim, of Kashmir or of other oppressed nationalities.

So, while Anthony Shimray stands charged with the usual bogus accusations of “waging war against the state” and “procuring arms”, it is imperative to assert that it is the Indian state that has declared war against the Naga people and unleashed its armed might to subjugate them. It is the same armed forces of the Indian state that have been unleashed even on the genuine democratic people’s struggles within India starting from Telangana, Srikakulam, Naxalbari to its present form in Operation Green Hunt in the central and eastern adivasi heartland of India. And hence the need today today of a larger solidarity between these various democratic struggles of the people against the oppressive Indian state. While the pseudo-Left only talk conveniently about the reform or repeal of AFSPA, it is imperative to assert that laws like AFSPA are a manifestation of an unjust army occupation. So while demanding the repeal of AFSPA, our primary task is to stand with the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed nationalities. DSU demands the immediate and unconditional release of Anthony Shimray and all other political prisoners.