People of Assam speak out against ULFA

Special Report Vol. 3 Issue No. 42

January 16 -31, 2008

People of Assam speak out against ULFA

Dismayed over the serial insurgent attacks in Assam on the eve of the Magh Bihu festival, common people on Tuesday urged the ULFA leadership to ‘listen to the voice of the public’ with whom they had lost contact.

“The ULFA has to listen to the voice of the people who don’t want violence and insurgency. The ULFA leaders seem to have lost contact with reality and are, therefore, engineering attacks on their own people during Bihu”, Junali Bora, a resident of Guwahati.

“If ULFA care for the people of Assam as they claim, then why are they attacking local people with grenades on the eve of our Magh Bihu festival?”, Junali asked referring to Monday’s grenade attack in the Paltan Bazar area injuring 17 persons, including a child.

Echoing her, businessman Ubedur Latif Saikia from Sibgagar district said, “the ULFA seems to have lost control over their own movement and outside forces like the (Pakistan) ISI and jihadi elements from Bangladesh have taken over.

The businessman from Sibsagar, where the ULFA attacked an army camp, accused ULFA of being insensitive to local sentiments.

“No outfit claiming to be for the local people injure a minor girl and an old woman on the eve of Bihu celebrations,” teacher Khagen Bora of Morigaon district where the ULFA burst a grenade injuring five persons, said in a disturbed tone.

Turning his gun on the police for their ‘failure’ to provide security, despite claims of having intelligence tip-off about the ULFA militants’ attack on a CRPF patrol in Paltan Bazar, student Mihir Bora wondered, “what prevents police from taking measures to make Assam a safer place for its citizens”? Mihir, who arrived here from Chennai on way to his hometown Jorhat to be with his family for Bihu, said “I could not take the night bus immediately as the Paltan Bazar area was cordoned off.”

“Because of the ULFA I could not go home immediately making me lose a precious day of my short vacation,” a distraught Mihir said.

CRPF Director General S I S Ahmed told reporters here yesterday that militancy in the Northeast was agravated by external forces from across the border aiding and abetting militant outfits and ULFA was posing the biggest threat.

His comments were made close on the heels of similar views expressed by Chief minister Tarun Gogoi who had told PTI that neighbouring countries, particularly Bangladesh, were encouraging insurgency and jehadi activities in Assam. Gogoi had also referred to a “third force” with suspected Naxalite links working behind the growing Adivasi uprising.

Your Visit No

Since April 20, 2000