Collectors of some districts have begun visiting settlements in Khammam to assess just how many people have been displaced. “We will be making more field visits and we will try to gather data so that the forest land rights due to these people can be granted,” adds the official.
Activists claim the government has no idea of the extent of displacement. “Some abandoned villages are not recognized by the government. The displacement has happened in 800 villages out of the 1,354 villages in Dantewada and Bijapur districts, while the government claims that displacement has happened in only 644 villages,” says Himanshu Kumar of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, an activist group that works with tribals.
Government officials admit that there isn’t enough data on new settlements in Andhra Pradesh, spread mainly across Khammam, Warangal, Adilabad and Karimnagar districts. Shashi Bhushan Kumar, the district collector of Khammam says there are around 20,000 internally displaced people in his area but P. Janardhan Reddy, the district collector of Warangal, has no clue on how many there are in his. Other local officials contacted in Andhra Pradesh declined to comment.
Forced migration
The tribals who have moved out of Chhattisgarh to Andhra Pradesh live a hard life but it is better than what they faced back home.
A fact-finding mission headed by the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, a government body, that visited the new settlement areas, says: “Each testimony included a narrative of extreme violence committed against them, families and property—by the Maoists, Salwa Judum and the security forces. Many people shared accounts of family members being killed and women raped.”
And a report by the International Association of People’s Lawyers, or IAPL, an organization of human rights lawyers based in the Netherlands, released in October 2007, says: “The Salwa Judum campaign intends to concentrate tribal people in Dantewada in so- called ‘relief camps’ with the acquiescence and even blessings of the Chhattisgarh state. Only a few villagers reportedly moved voluntarily to the camps. Those that refused to leave their villages have apparently been forced by Special Police Officers, or SPO, militias from the Salwa Judum campaign that did not hesitate to use coercion, threats, intimidation, deception and violence for this purpose. Serious atrocities have been reportedly committed by these forces...”
Andhra Pradesh is the default destination for some tribals from Chhattisgarh because in the past many have worked in the state that borders their own.
Sodi Sammaya, a farmer, ran into Deva, who uses only one name and his family at a border post between Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. “They were sitting under a tree and crying. The forest guard had brought them to the police, who were asking them to go back to Chhattisgarh. They were pleading that they be permitted to stay in Andhra. So I brought them with me, as labourers in my fields and gave them a piece of land to build their houses.”
Life in Sammaya’s farm isn’t bad. A nun visits the place thrice a week and puts Deva’s children through their letters. “It is not too bad here. We earn Rs50 a day. But it was better at home before all this began,” says Deva.