GJM condemns witchunting of our leaders including Shri Bimal Gurung

The GJM condemns witchunting of our leaders including Shri Bimal Gurung. The West Bengal Police are making arbitrary arrests of our supporters, raiding our party offices and threatening peaceful protesters. Today's raid is another intimidation tactic used by the West Bengal Government though the Police force to put fears into local psyche and suppress the Gorkhaland movement that has gained widespread support yet again from all the political parties in the Hill region. The collective political unity displayed by the Gorkha's is what has rankled and shaken the Bengal Government to its core, and todays raid is a direct retaliation against our Gorkha unity.

Today the West Bengal Police in heavy numbers raided the residence of our President and have claimed to recover "heavy arms and explosives" that are being repeatedly shown on Kolkata based vernacular news channels. All that they have found are a few bows and couple of dozen arrows, few rusted spades, a rusted axe, a rusted sickle, and a couple of boxes of fire cracker.

I want to remind the National Press that the Hill people are predominantly tribals and all these tools are found in almost every local households. As for the bows and arrows, we were in the process of organizing our traditional archery competition. The Kolkata based media is parroting West Bengal Governments lines that these domestic, agricultural and traditional tools are "dangerous weapons and explosives". The truth is that those two boxes of fire crackers were left over from our recent Municipal Elections Wins celebrations. We are deeply hurt that the Bengal Government is portraying our traditional equipments as weapons. We strongly feel that this insensitivity and blatant misrepresentation and misinterpretation of our cultural and traditional tools by the West Bengal Government is indicative of why we need Gorkhaland - our rights, our culture, our heritage, our traditions have been disregarded, trampled upon and tarnished amounting to almost non-recognition of our cultural and traditional ways of living.

We want to reiterate that GJM is a registered political party and it is not illegal to hold some funds in cash. If we cannot give an account of the cash, then the Govt is free to file a case against us but this arbitrary bullying of a registered political party that has the mandate of the people is a threat to our democracy. On one hand Mamata Banerjee keeps on harping the tune of "federal structure" of our governance system, while on the other, she has imposed a virtual emergency in the proposed Gorkhaland region. She has ordered the sealing of our Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Offices, arrested elected representatives on drummed up charges and created an atmosphere of state-sponsored violence and unnecessary provocation.

Given all these, we want to let the Nation know through all of you how democracy is being scuttled and dictatorship is gradually being imposed here in the Gorkhaland region. We are fearful that the Government which can stoop so low,  can also plant fake evidences including "real" arms, ammunitions and explosives. We refuse to accept findings from any such state-sponsored raids unless they are accompanied by the Army, Media and representatives from the Human Rights Organisations, Lawyers with video evidence of the raids.

We feel in these precarious times, where truth is being so blatantly manipulated,our voices will never be heard. Therefore, the urgent need of the hour is to request the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi to impose Presidents Rule in Bengal.

Binoy Tamang
Gorkha Janmukti Morcha

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