In The Name Of Allah, The Most Beneficent And Merciful
June 2nd,
2002
Headlines:
·
Two More Muslims Killed in India
(Yahoo News)
·
Dozens Injured in West India Blast
(Yahoo News)
·
Police
ex-chief blames VHP, Bajrang Dal for riots (www.rediff.com)
· Amnesty projects gloomy
picture of rights situation in India (Hindustan Times)
· Maulvi stabbed in Vadodara (Times Of India)
· Congress conventions to split
hairs on Minorities (The Telegraph)
· Gujarat rulers flayed over attacks (BBC)
NEWS HEADLINES
Two
More Muslims Killed in India
Thu May 30,
2:41 AM ET
Yahoo News.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020530/ap_on_re_as/india_rel\
igious_strife_15
AHMADABAD, India
(AP) - A Muslim bus driver was dragged out of his
bus and burned
alive and another Muslim was killed in a bomb blast,
police said
Thursday, as violence resumed in Gujarat state, where
nearly 1,000 people
have died in two months of Hindu-Muslim clashes.
Both men were
killed Wednesday night in Kadi, about 30 miles south of
Ahmadabad, the
commercial capital of western Gujarat.
The bus driver was
dragged out of his bus and burned by a Hindu mob,
said Arun Kumar
Sharma, the superintendent of police in Mesana
district.
The other man was
killed when a bomb went off in the restaurant where
he was eating
dinner. The owner of the restaurant and an auto-
rickshaw driver
were seriously injured.
Sharma said a
funeral procession carrying the two bodies would be
held later in the
day. Four people have been detained in connection
with these
incidents, he said.
"I am
presuming further violence, so we are not relaxing the curfew
till evening,"
Sharma said.
Meanwhile, eight
shops were burned and two vehicles, all owned by
Muslims, were
destroyed Thursday in Bharuch, about 110 miles north of
Ahmadabad, police
said.
Violence was also
reported in the Panigate area of Vadodara district,
about 70 miles
north of Ahmadabad. Four shops were ransacked, said
D.D. Tuteja, the
commissioner of police in Vadodara.
The shops belonged
to both Hindus and Muslims
Copyright © 2002
Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Dozens
Injured in West India Blast
Wed May 29,11:04 AM
ET
Yahoo
News.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=516&e=2&u=/ap/20020529/\
ap_on_re_as/india_religious_strife_10
AHMADABAD, India
(AP) - Three bombs exploded minutes apart Wednesday
in this city in
western India, wounding at least 36 people, officials
said.
Ahmadabad's police
commissioner said the blasts were an attempt to
set off a new round
of religious riots in the western state of
Gujarat. Nearly
1,000 people, most Muslims, have died in Hindu-Muslim
clashes over the
last three months, the worst religious violence in
India in a decade.
Officers at the
state police control room said a bomb exploded in the
busy market area of
the Gurukul neighborhood of Ahmadabad, the
commercial hub of
Gujarat state. The area is predominantly Hindu.
Five minutes later,
another blast was reported on a bus near a large
bus terminal in the
Geetamandir neighborhood, a mixed Hindu-Muslim
community.
A few minutes
later, a bomb exploded on a bus in Vasana suburb, also
a mixed
Hindu-Muslim neighborhood.
The bombs caused
panic around the busy commercial city, which is
still recovering
from widespread rioting in which Hindu nationalists
attacked and killed
Muslims. Thousands of Muslim homes and businesses
were destroyed and
some 100,000 Muslims are living in squalid relief
camps.
Police officials
said that in the Vasana case, a man came to the
window of a
passenger seat with a tin lunch box and asked the
passenger to hand
it to the driver. The box exploded seconds after
the passenger
obliged.
Police Commissioner
K.R. Kaushik said two other pipe bombs set by
timers in tin lunch
boxes were discovered on buses and defused by
police.
Three police
officers were injured when another lunch box stuffed
with explosives
blew up while they were trying to defuse it.
Police and hospital
officials said at least 36 people were being
treated for
injuries, some of them in critical condition.
"This is an
obvious attempt by some frustrated elements to disrupt
peace in the
city," Kaushik said.
The blasts come a
day after 11 Hindus who allegedly joined mobs that
burned 92 Muslims
to death were arrested and charged with murder.
They included three
leaders of a Hindu nationalist group, the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad, an
affiliate of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's
governing Bharatiya
Janata Party.
Violence in Gujarat
began when a Muslim crowd burned a train car on
Feb. 27, killing 60
Hindus and setting off reprisals by Hindu mobs.
The official death
toll since the fighting began is nearly 1,000, but
human rights groups
and Western diplomats put the number at 2,000 to
3,000. Most of
those killed have been Muslims.
Nearly 3,200 Hindus
have been arrested on charges ranging from
rioting and arson
to murder, a capital offense. Nearly 800 Muslims
have been arrested
on rioting charges.
Sixty-two Muslims
have been charged with murder in connection with
the train attack.
Human rights groups
have accused the state government of condoning
Hindu reprisal
killings and of siding with the Hindus. Photographers
have reported
seeing police aiming at Muslims when they fired shots
to disperse crowds.
Copyright © 2002
The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
rediff.com,
June 02,
2002.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jun/01train.htm
Bureaucratic
circles in Gandhinagar have been stunned
by a letter written
by P C Pande, Ahmedabad's former
commissioner of
police, blaming the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad and the
Bajrang Dal for the riots in
Gujarat's premier
city.
Pande had been
severely criticised for his and the
police force's
inaction when Ahmedabad witnessed the
worst riots in a
decade, resulting in the death of
more than 300
persons.
Pande was largely blamed
for the carnage in Naroda
Patia precinct of
Ahmedabad and in Gulmarg Society
where more than 130
people were burnt alive in two
separate incidents
on March 1.
The controversial
letter dated April 22 (Ref:
M/456/02) is
addressed to Gujarat Home Secretary Ashok
Narayan and is
nothing less than a charge sheet
against the two
organisations affiliated to the ruling
Bharatiya Janata
Party.
The commissioner
wrote the letter before he was
transferred out of
the office by K P S Gill, security
adviser to Chief
Minister Narendra Modi.
Pande, in the
letter written in Gujarati, said the
supporting parties
of the government were carrying out
"vikrut"
(perverted) activities, which were "adding
fuel to the
fire". He went on to list four such
activities, which are
classified as criminal offences
under the Indian
Penal Code.
Pande wrote that
the VHP and the Bajrang Dal were
extorting money
with promises of protection against
possible attacks by
Muslims and people were paying
under duress.
He also alleged
that the two groups were putting
pressure on
businessmen to not employ Muslims.
The third serious
charge the former commissioner made
was that VHP and
Bajrang Dal workers were not allowing
Muslim daily wagers
to earn their livelihood in
Hindu-dominated
areas.
The fourth charge
he made relates to the damaged
assets and
properties of Muslims. Pande said Muslims
were not even being
allowed to inspect their shops in
Hindu-dominated
areas and feared that these properties
would ultimately be
usurped.
Pande warned the
government that such activities would
not help in the
restoration of law and order and said
there was an urgent
need to control them.
Ashok Narayan was
not available for comment, but
sources in
Gandhinagar said the government did not
initiate any action
on receipt of the letter. The
state's home
minister, Gordhan Zadaphiya, said he had
not even heard of
such a letter.
© 2002
rediff.com.
Amnesty
projects gloomy picture of rights situation in India
PTI
New Delhi, May 28
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/290502/dlnat03.asp
The Amnesty
International on Tuesday projected a gloomy picture of
the human rights
situation in India accusing armed groups, security
forces and police
of abuses in Kashmir and charging the state and
some Hindu
political groups with victimisation of Muslims in the
aftermath of the
September 11 terrorist strikes in USA.
In Kashmir, human
rights abuses continued to be committed both by
armed groups,
police and security forces on a large scale, the London-
based rights group
said in its annual report released here by eminent
jurist A G Noorani.
Without making any
direct reference to Gujarat, it said the Muslim
community in India
became increasingly vulnerable to victimisation
after the September
11 strikes and the December 13 attack on
Parliament.
The victimisation,
it alleged, was carried out "by both the state and
some Hindu
political groups".
"Tension
between police and Muslim groups erupted into rioting in
different parts of
the country. Tension also escalated when Hindu
activists began
implementing plans to rebuild a temple at a disputed
site at
Ayodhya," it said.
Amnesty also
expressed serious concern over the continued reports of
abuses by armed
groups in many states "including torture and
deliberate killing
of civilians."
"In areas of
conflict, such as Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East,
hundreds of
non-combatants, including children, were killed in
indiscriminate
violence," it said.
©Hindustan Times
Ltd. 1997. Reproduction in any form is prohibited
without prior
Times
Of India,
June
02, 2002.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=11611375
VADODARA/AHMEDABAD:
Communal tension returned to haunt
Vadodara following
the stabbing of a person,
reportedly the Pesh
Imam of a mosque in Memon Colony,
in the Panigate
area on Friday afternoon.
A crude bomb was
also found under a bus in the same
area in the
morning.
According to
sources, the person injured in stabbing
was travelling back
to the Memon Colony on a bicycle.
The person
allegedly ran into a scooter near a petrol
pump resulting in a
tiff.
According to the
police, the scooterist pulled out a
razor and attacked
the victim on his neck. At the SSG
hospital, where the
victim was admitted, doctors
reported that he
was out of danger.
The incident
triggered tension in the area, which had
witnessed heavy
rioting on Wednesday night. Residents
of Memon Colony
were in an irate mood as this was the
third consecutive
day that tension prevailed in the area.
© 2002
Times Internet limited. All rights reserved.
CONGRESS
CONVENTION TO SPLIT HAIRS ON MINORITIES
The Telegraph,
FROM SUCHANDANA
GUPTA
Bhopal, May 31.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1020601/index.htm
More than 750
Congress delegates will converge here
for a three-day
national training camp on secularism
starting tomorrow
as part of the party’s efforts to
shake off
allegations of being “anti-Hindu”.
Sources said the
delegates and a handful of
commentators from
across the country would speak on
the party’s pro-Muslim
policies and the attitude of
the minority
communities. All uncomfortable questions
the Congress has so
far skirted will be dealt with.
Twenty-six BJP
allegations have been chosen as topics
of discussion. Some
of them are queries like why
Indian Muslims
burst crackers when India loses to
Pakistan in a
cricket match or why Article 370 should
not be scrapped for
a permanent solution to the
Kashmir issue?
Other tricky issues
deal with Islam and terrorism;
Godhra and the
Prime Minister’s comment that if the
train massacre had
not happened there would have been
no riots; birth
rate among Muslims, the government’s
spending of crores
of rupees on Haj pilgrims every
year; and
conversions carried out by Christian
missionaries.
The K.C. Niyogi
committee, after thorough
investigation, had
submitted a detailed report to the
Madhya Pradesh
government confirming that Christian
missionaries were
indulging in anti-Hindu propoganda
in tribal areas.
The BJP had
questioned if the state’s Congress
government had
taken any action so far?
“There is an
increasing communal atmosphere in the
country. After
Godhra, the whole country seems to have
been divided into
communities. This was one of our
serious concerns,
discussed at the AICC meet on May 24
in New Delhi,” said
state Congress chief Radha Kishan
Malviya, explaining
the need for the camp.
“Chief minister
Digvijay Singh suggested the idea that
the party should
discuss the BJP’s accusations on the
Congress about
minority appeasement and those
questions that the
party has so far ducked need to be
answered now.”
Malviya said party
chief Sonia Gandhi agreed that a
national meet
should be held to discuss “secularism”.
Bhopal, he added,
was selected to host the event as it
was home to both
Hindus and Muslims.
Senior Congress leaders
will hold discussions and
interact on the
topics lined up. Non-political experts
have been chosen
from the minority communities so that
they can explain
the psychology of minority-
behaviour.
Among those who
would deliver speeches are Prof.
Mushirul Hasan of
Jamia Milia University, Prof. Imtiaz
Ahmed from JNU,
former Chief Justice of India A.M.
Ahmadi, A.J.
Phillip, editor, Indian Express, Urdu
critic Gopichand
Narang, academic Arjun Dev and
Congress leader
Salman Khurshid. AICC member in-charge
of training
programmes Mani Shankar Aiyar will be
present. Chief
minister Digvijay Singh will inaugurate
the event at 9 am
tomorrow.
© 2002 The Telegraph.
Gujarat
rulers flayed over attacks
June 02, 2002.
By Rajyasri Rao
BBC reporter in Delhi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_2019000/2019529.stm
India's National Human Rights Commission has once
again rounded on the Gujarat state government for
its
alleged complicity in the recent bout of religious
violence.
In its final report released here, the NHRC charged
the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party state
government
with "comprehensive failure" in both
preventing the
violence from erupting and in failing to stem its
rapid spread.
"The facts indicate that the response was
often
abysmal, or even non-existent, pointing to gross
negligence (and) in certain instances a complicity
that was tacit if not explicit", the report
says.
Homes and vehicles were set alight
More than 900 people - mostly Muslims - have died
in a
spate of religious clashes since late February,
when a
Muslim mob attacked a train carrying Hindu
activists
returning from the northern city of Ayodhya.
Voluntary agencies and some international watchdogs
say the number could easily be close to 2,000.
Punishment demanded
The NHRC also expressed its displeasure over the
Gujarat government's failure to respond to a
confidential report by one of its teams despite
repeatedly being granted more time for a considered
reply.
While acknowledging a relative lull in violent
incidents in the past three weeks, the report
however
said it was imperative to recognise that peace
could
return only when all those responsible for having
violated the law are punished.
The NHRC has given the state government and the
central home ministry a month to respond to its
observations.
It remains to be seen whether their responses will
persuade the national body that the rights of
Gujarat's people are now being justly protected.
© 2002 BBC UK.