The Hindu : Kerala News : Political peace

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 21, 2005

Kerala

Kerala

Political peace

It is still too early to be pessimistic about the political peace that Kannur has been experiencing over the past four years, isolated cases of violence notwithstanding. Recent incidents, however, have made the people to contemplate on the unstable nature of that peace, which majority of them have chosen to believe permanent.

Political peace in Kannur district is never stable if one views the recent incidents of murder and violence, especially after the election. One cannot be blamed for that view if it is built on the responses of political leaders of rival parties to such incidents. Shrill voices of the leaders are once again being heard and they betray trouble looming large.

The killing of CPI(M) worker Rijith at Kannapuram three weeks ago was the latest of the fatal attacks inspired by political rivalry. Though it was stopped by the police, the scheduled visit of BJP-RSS leaders on October 19 to houses of BJP-RSS workers at Kannapuram damaged in attacks in the aftermath of the killing exposed a growing mood among rival political parties here to vitiate tension.

The CPI(M) leadership's allegation of police torture of 11 CPI(M) workers arrested from a country bomb making unit near Panur also exemplified this mood. The UDF, for its part, continues to declare Kannur a `terror district'. The total effect of all this is a growing public sense that something bad is imminent.

Mohamed Nazeer

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