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Rage of the reds

Rage of the reds

Author: Binoy P. Jacob/Kozhikode
Publication: The Week
Date: August 8, 2004
URL: http://www.the-week.com/24aug08/currentevents_article4.htm

Introduction: Left activists in Kerala targetMalayala Manorama yet again

As the skies opened up over Kerala, the last week of July saw the state's political weather turn stormy. The Left student and youth organisations took to the streets to protest the government's education policy that allegedly forced engineering student Rajani S. Anand to commit suicide on July 22. Arrests and police action led to violence and arson. And not just against government property.

On July 28, members of the Left's Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) attacked the Kozhikode office of the Malayala Manorama, the leading Malayalam newspaper. The attack started soon after Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI(M) state secretary, inaugurated a DYFI march in front of the office of the Inspector General of Police less than half a kilometre from the Manorama office. The march was to protest the alleged excesses of City Police Commissioner T.K. Vinodkumar against DYFI demonstrators during their recent agitation.

Around noon, a group of DYFI activists started throwing stones at the policemen, numbering over 30, in front of the Manorama building. When the attack continued, the police moved forward to disperse the mob. A few minutes later, around 100 agitators rushed to the Manorama office-some entered the adjacent St Mary's Church compound-and started throwing stones at the police, who were soon chased away by a section of the mob. Constable P. Govindan fell down and was seriously hurt.

The others, meanwhile, smashed the glass front and windows of the Manorama office with stones; the telephone and files in the front office were scattered in the impact. Halogen lamps and potted plants too were destroyed. Even a visitor's motorbike was not spared. Six policemen and a Manorama staff were injured in the attack. Only the polycarbonate windows and the wire mesh, installed after an attack last year, survived. The activists also attacked the office of another Malayalam daily, Chandrika.

This is the fourth attack on the Manorama's Kozhikode office; the first was in December 2002. In March last year, Left activists targeted Manorama and other media offices during a protest march to the police commissioner's office. In Palakkad, they attacked a journalist and photographer of the newspaper and torched their van. The daily's delivery van was attacked and bundles of newspaper burnt at Kadalundy near Kozhikode. On August 9, Left activists hurled a petrol bomb at the Manorama's editorial desk in Kozhikode.

The Indian Newspaper Society and the Editors Guild of India condemned the attacks on the two newspapers. The Guild Secretary General Alok Mehta said that DYFI's intolerance of media organisations in Kerala, especially Malayala Manorama, was highly deplorable and asked the Centre and state government to take immediate action against the culprits.
 


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