{"id":363079,"date":"2018-05-28T02:36:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T01:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-tuticorin-massacre-and-modis-india\/"},"modified":"2018-05-28T02:36:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T01:36:55","slug":"the-tuticorin-massacre-and-modis-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-tuticorin-massacre-and-modis-india\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tuticorin massacre and Modi\u2019s India"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>The Tuticorin massacre and Modi\u2019s India<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    26 May 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>On Saturday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the rest of the leadership of the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) celebrated the fourth anniversary of their assuming office with speeches hailing India\u2019s \u201cprogress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Progress for whom? The barbarity of social life and class relations in contemporary India were laid bare in Tuesday\u2019s police massacre of working people demanding the closure of a copper smelter that has long befouled Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, polluting its groundwater and environs with toxic chemicals.<\/p>\n<p>The massacre, which left 12 people dead and more than 60 others injured, had all the hallmarks of a state provocation. Tamil Nadu authorities criminalized the protest days in advance, claiming it represented a threat to \u201cpublic order.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They deployed 1,500 police officers who quickly set upon the \u201cillegal\u201d demonstration, then resorted to deadly force when the bigger-than-anticipated crowd of 20,000 fought back. Violating their own procedures, police fired no warning shots and targeted those at the head of the protest for death. As video and eyewitness evidence and, most tellingly, the victims\u2019 bodies attest, police snipers aimed for protesters\u2019 heads and torsos, not their legs.<\/p>\n<p>While people in Tamil Nadu and across India voiced outrage over the police\u2019s actions, the Modi regime and Tamil Nadu\u2019s AIADMK state government, a close ally of the BJP, quickly proclaimed the Tuticorin atrocity a necessary and proportionate use of force and plotted further repression and violence. This included: cutting off all access to social media and the Internet for five days in the state\u2019s three southernmost districts, placing the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force on standby for&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/05\/26\/pers-m26.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 The Tuticorin massacre and Modi\u2019s India 26 May 2018 On Saturday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the rest of the leadership of the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) celebrated the fourth anniversary of their assuming office with speeches hailing India\u2019s \u201cprogress.\u201d Progress for whom? The barbarity of social life and class relations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-363079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}