IMAC Digest - April 30 2002

April 30^th, 2002:

Headlines:

· 3 killed in police firing in Ahmedabad, Baroda ( Times Of India )

· US group nails Modi on Gujarat riots ( Deccan Chronicle )

· Gujarat riots pre-planned by BJP men: US rights group( www.sify.com )

· Govt shielding Modi, alliance crumbling: Opposition ( www.rediff.com )

· Rights Group Censures Gujarat ( BBC UK )

· Indian Parliament Defeats Motion ( New York Times )

· India Government Faces Crucial Vote Over Violence ( New York Times )

· Indian PM Says Underestimated Religious Violence ( New York Times )
NEWS HEADLINES

3 killed in police firing in Ahmedabad, Baroda

PTI [ TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2002 11:03:59 AM ]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=8446923

AHMEDABAD: Three persons were killed and three others injured in
police firing in curfew-bound areas in the city and in Baroda as
violence escalated in the two major cities of Gujarat late on Monday
night, police said on Tuesday.

Two persons were killed when police opened fire to scare away a
violent mob setting fire to houses and shops and pelting stones at
each other in curfew-bound Vadi police station area in Baroda late on
Monday night.

The mobs also hurled petrol and crude bombs at each other, police
said.

In Ahmedabad city, one person was killed and three others injured
when police opened fire to scatter the mob trying to set shops afire
in Ranip area around midnight.

The mob set ablaze a godown of plastic materials and firewood in the
same localty under Sabarmati police station area, police said.

One person was injured when a petrol bomb, he was making, exploded in
curfew-bound Kalupur area, police said.

In Vatva area, police burst teargas shells to disperse stone pelting
crowd late last night, they added.

Meanwhile, indefinite curfew continued in Kalupur and Gomtipur areas
of the city, which witnessed a spate of fresh violence since April 21.

Rapid Action Force was deployed in six most sensitive areas - city
police station, Vadi, Panigate, Raopura, Karelibag and Navapura
police station area, police said adding these areas are under
indefinite curfew since last Saturday.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited

US group nails Modi on Gujarat riots
Deccan Chronicle
April 30, 2002

http://www.deccan.com/headlines/lead4.shtml

New York, April 30: Charging Gujarat government with
complicity in the attacks in which “hundreds” of
Muslims were killed, a US-based human rights group has
asked international community to put “pressure” on the
Indian government to end violence against minorities.

The Human Rights Watch said the government should
“comply with International Human Rights and Indian
constitutional law” to end the “orchestrated
violence.”

In a report released on Tuesday, it also urged the
Indian government to “actively seek the assistance of
international agencies and to invite UN Human Rights
experts to investigate State and police participation
in the violence in Gujarat.”

In the highly critical report, the Human Rights Watch
alleged that State officials in Gujarat were directly
involved in the killings of “hundreds of Muslims”
since February 27 and were engineering a massive
cover-up. What happened, it says, was not a
“spontaneous uprising.” It was a “carefully
orchestrated” attack against Muslims planned in
advance and organised with “extensive participation of
police and State officials.”

The 75-page report directly implicates police
officials in all the incidents it documents. It
alleges police personnel as telling Muslims that they
have no order to save them and in many incidents even
leading “murderous mobs,” aiming and firing at
Muslims. “Under the guise of offering assistance,” the
report alleges, “some police officers led the victims
directly into the hands of their killers.”

“Panicked phone calls made to the police, fire
brigades, and even ambulance services generally proved
futile.” The report says its representatives visited
Ahmedabad three weeks after the initial attacks and
spoke to both Hindu and Muslims survivors of the
attacks.

According to the report, three days of “retaliatory
killing spree” by Hindus following attack on a train
in Godhra left “hundreds dead and tens of thousands
homeless and dispossessed. The looting and burning of
Muslim homes, businesses, and places of worship was
also widespread. Muslim girls and women were brutally
raped. Mass graves have been dug throughout the
State,” it says.

The report quotes gravediggers as telling its
representatives that bodies keep arriving, “burnt and
mutilated beyond recognition.” Burnt Muslim shops and
restaurants, the watch says, dot the main roads and
highways in Ahmedabad.

Between February 28 and March 2, it adds, thousands of
attackers “descended on Muslim neighbourhoods, clad in
saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature
uniform of Hindu nationalist groups, and armed with
swords, sophisticated explosives, and gas cylinders.”

They were, it alleged, guided by voter lists and
printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned
properties-information obtained from the local
municipality.

The report alleges that the groups involved in the
violence against Muslims include the VHP, Bajrang Dal,
RSS and the BJP government.

Copyright (C) 2002 Deccan Chronicle. All Rights
Reserved.

Gujarat riots pre-planned by BJP men: US rights group

New Delhi, April 30

http://headlines.sify.com/849news3.html

BJP members were directly involved in the killings of hundreds of people in
Gujarat, which were pre-planned and could spread throughout the country, Human
Rights Watch charged Tuesday.

The New York-based rights group said the state government of Gujarat was
engaged in a "massive cover-up" to hide its role in two months of communal
violence that has left at least 900 people dead.

"What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising; it was a carefully
orchestrated attack," Smita Narula, Human Rights Watch's senior South Asia
researcher, said in the 75-page report.

"The attacks were planned in advance and organized with extensive participation
of the police and state government officials," she said.

Police officials who sought to protect Muslims were removed from their
positions, while some police even led distraught victims directly into the
hands of their killers, the rights group said.

At the height of the riots between February 28 and March 2, thousands of people
descended on Muslim neighborhoods "guided by voter lists and printouts of
addresses of Muslim-owned properties -- information obtained from the local
municipality."

"This is a crisis of impunity," Narula said. "If charges against members of
these groups are not investigated and prosecuted accordingly, violence may
continue to engulf the state and may even spread to other parts of the
country."

The rights body said mass graves have been found around Gujarat and that the
death toll from the riots could be as high as 2,000.

Human Rights Watch quoted a woman at a mass grave in Ahmedabad who washed
female victims' charred and mutilated bodies before burial.

"Some bodies had heads missing, some had hands missing, some were like coal --
you would touch them and they would crumble. I washed 17 bodies on March 2;
only one was completely intact. All had been burned, many had been split down
the middle," the woman said.

Mansoori Abdulbhai, a 53-year-old resident of Ahmedabad's Gulmarg Society
neighborhood, said 19 members of his family were killed.

"First they cut people so they couldn't run and then they set them on fire. One
or two women were taken inside and gang raped. After five hours the police came
and brought us here (to a mass grave site). It was so well-planned," he said.

Citing witnesses and police reports, Human Rights Watch said the BJP was
directly involved in the violence along with several affiliated groups,
including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh.

©AFP 2000.All rights reserved.

Govt shielding Modi, alliance crumbling: Opposition
rediff.com,
Tuesday 30 April 2002.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/apr/30train6.htm

The opposition on Tuesday launched a blistering attack
in the Lok Sabha on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led
ruling coalition on the Gujarat issue charging it with
shielding Chief Minister Narendra Modi who is 'guilty'
of the 'murder of humanity' and said the
'opportunistic' alliance at the Centre has started
crumbling.
Participating in the discussion on an
opposition-sponsored censure motion on Gujarat, it
accused the government of conspiring to divide the
country in its attempt to 'save' the beleaguered chief
minister.

Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, who
initiated the debate, likened Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee to Emperor Nero, who was playing the
fiddle while Rome was burning.

"How many more bodies and how many more incidents of
arson will it take for you to become active?" he asked
the prime minister.

Hailing Lok Jan Shakti leader Ram Vilas Paswan for
severing ties with the NDA, he appealed to other
secular parties in the ruling alliance to follow suit.

Describing the incidents in Gujarat as a 'blot' on the
nation, he wanted the BJP's allies to understand that
the question was not of survival of the government but
of the country.

The SP leader said the prime minister could even now
ask Modi to quit or dismiss his government if he fails
to oblige.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi demanded immediate
removal of Modi for his failure to fulfil his
constitutional obligations and asked the Centre to
issue a directive to the state government to control
the communal disturbances without any delay.

The leader of the opposition also sought appointment
of a sitting Supreme Court judge to probe the
continuing violence.

In a hard-hitting speech in which she attacked Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi wanted all
recommendations of the National Human Rights
Commission to be implemented and bringing to book of
all guilty immediately by initiating firm law and
order measures and providing full relief and
rehabilitation to all those affected by the riots.

Copyright 2002 rediff.com. All Rights Reserved.

Rights Group Censures Gujarat

BBC UK.

April 30, 2002.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1959000/1959636.stm

A New York-based human rights group has launched a
strong attack on the government of India's western
state of Gujarat, alleging that state officials were
directly involved in the killings of hundreds of
Muslims.

What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous
uprising, it was a carefully orchestrated attack
against Muslims

Smita Narula Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch, which carried out its own
investigations, says the violence was pre-planned and
the state government was now involved in a massive
cover-up of its role in the rioting.

Nearly 900 people, mostly Muslims, died in the riots
which erupted in late February when a Muslim mob
attacked a train carrying Hindu activists, killing 58
people.

The Gujarat Government has been under attack by the
opposition as well as several welfare groups for
failing to prevent the spread of violence in the
state.

But the Human Rights Watch report is the most damning
so far.

The Gujarat Government has denied any role in the
violence.

Muslims targeted

Human Rights Watch visited Ahmedabad city three weeks
after the initial attacks.

Thousands have been displaced

It says at the height of the riots between 28 February
and 2 March, thousands of attackers descended on
Muslim neighbourhoods, clad in saffron scarves and
khaki shorts - the uniform of Hindu right-wing groups.

The report said they were guided by voter lists and
print-outs giving addresses of Muslim-owned
properties, information they obtained from the local
municipality.

The police were directly implicated in nearly all the
attacks against Muslims that were documented in the
75-page report.

In some cases, they were merely passive observers -
but in many instances they led the mobs, aiming and
firing at Muslims who got in the way, the report said.

Cover-up

The report says the Gujarat administration is now
engaged in a massive cover-up of the state's role in
the massacres.

It says many police complaints filed by eye-witnesses
specifically named local leaders of right-wing Hindu
groups as instigators or participants in the violence.

But the police are under pressure not to arrest them
or to reduce the severity of the charges filed, it
says.

"This is a crisis of impunity", said Smita Narula, the
author of the report.

"If charges against members of these groups are not
investigated, violence may continue to engulf the
state, and may even spread to other parts of the
country", she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Religious-Strife.html

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Ending a 16-hours of debate, India's Parliament
Wednesday defeated a motion to censure the government for its handling of
India's worst religious riots in a decade -- violence that has left more than
900 people dead in two months.

The governing coalition of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee won the vote
276-182, with eight abstentions.

A key ally of the government, with 28 votes, walked out of the Parliament
chamber before the vote, expressing its dissatisfaction with Prime Minister
Atal Bihari's speech, in which he announced no action to halt the rioting that
has killed more than 900 people.

The defeated motion expressed ``grave concern'' over the failure of the Hindu
nationalist-led government to ensure the security of Muslims in Gujarat.

In debate prior to the vote, opposition leader Sonia Gandhi assailed the
government for turning into ``a passive spectator, while a partisan chief
minister has besmirched the fair name of Gujarat.''

Gandhi called on Vajpayee to sack Gujarat's top-elected official, Chief
Minister Narendra Modi, for violating the secular character of the Indian
constitution. Violence began in the western state Feb. 27 when Hindu mobs went
on a retaliatory rampage after Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindu
pilgrims, killing 60.

Critics accuse the government of failing to protect Muslims from Hindu
attackers and several thousand people marched to Parliament on Tuesday, waving
flags and shouting slogans demanding Modi's removal.

Three more people died in violence overnight, police said Tuesday. Two Muslims
were killed when police opened fire in an attempt to disperse a crowd in
Ahmadabad, the state's commercial hub, and one person was killed in a
Hindu-Muslim clash in the same city.

In Parliament, Gandhi alleged that hundreds of Muslim women had been raped, yet
police had registered only one rape case.

Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party said it had enough support among the 19
parties in the governing alliance to defeat the motion in a vote expected
Tuesday night.

The government was believed to have majority support in the 542-member
Parliament, but some allies have demanded Modi's dismissal.

Many of the demonstrators outside parliament focused their anger on the Gujarat
chief. ``Sack Modi, save the nation,'' and, ``Hindus, Muslims, brothers,
brothers,'' read some of the placards.

``The situation in Gujarat is a warning that fascism is on the rise. Every
Indian must defeat those who seek to divide this country on the basis of
religion,'' Vishwanath P. Singh, a former prime minister, said amid the
demonstration.

Though it couldn't have brought the government down, such a censure would have
broadened the breaks within the ruling coalition.

Omar Abdullah, junior foreign minister, offered to resign Tuesday after his
National Conference party, which governs Muslim-majority Jammu-Kashmir state,
decided to abstain, rather than vote with the government.

A report released Monday by the New York-based Human Rights Watch said Gujarat
state officials ``were directly involved in the killings of hundreds of Muslims
since Feb. 27 and are now engineering a massive cover-up of the state's role in
the violence.''

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press

India Government Faces Crucial Vote Over Violence
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:22 a.m. ET
April 30, 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's Hindu nationalist-led government was confident on
Tuesday of winning a censure vote over its handling of deadly religious riots
despite the surprise resignation of a cabinet minister in protest over the
violence.

Coal minister Ram Vilas Paswan quit the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition on
Monday over its failure to halt India's worst religious bloodshed in a decade
in which critics have accused the Gujarat state government of complicity.

It was the first formal split in the 20-odd member coalition over the violence.

Some 850 people, mostly Muslims, have been killed in revenge killings and
clashes since 59 Hindus were burned to death in a train by a Muslim mob on
February 27 in Gujarat.

The western state is ruled by the BJP and is its last major state stronghold.

``We have enough strength,'' coalition spokesman George Fernandes said after
Paswan quit the coalition, taking the three other members of his Lok Jan Shakti
party with him.

The Gujarat violence has presented Vajpayee's coalition with its deepest
political crisis since it came to power in 1999 but a defeat in the vote
expected late on Tuesday would not force the government to quit as it is not a
confidence vote.

But it would be a humiliation for the BJP, stung by a raft of regional election
defeats and worried India's international image is being damaged by the
violence.

In another blow, President K.R. Narayanan, chosen by lawmakers and state
legislators and politically independent, said on the eve of the vote he was
``anguished and pained'' by the violence, calling it a ``crisis of our state
and society.''

However, the coalition partners, barring a key member, pledged their support at
a meeting called by Vajpayee after Paswan's exit. The 28-member Telugu Desam
Party, the BJP's biggest ally, was to decide later on Tuesday how it would
vote.

But even without its backing, the government would win as it would still have
more than the 272 majority it needs in the 545-member lower house, political
analysts said. Three seats are vacant.

FRESH VIOLENCE HOURS BEFORE VOTE

Just hours before the lower house began debate on the censure motion, one man
was killed and four were wounded when fresh clashes erupted on the outskirts of
Ahmedabad, Gujarat's biggest city which has borne the brunt of the violence.

The violence has ebbed since its peak in March but has continued to simmer in
the state where 110,000 people, mostly Muslims have fled to relief camps.

Human rights groups, opposition parties and witnesses have accused Gujarat
Chief Minister Narendra Modi's government of failing to protect Muslims and
sometimes even colluding with Hindu rioters who burned and hacked victims to
death. But the government has doggedly stuck by Modi who denies any wrongdoing.

Opposition groups have said the government has betrayed India's secular
foundations.

The main opposition party, Congress, said the censure vote was not a question
of numbers but would offer lawmakers a chance to voice their distress over the
Gujarat violence.

``No one expects us to win,'' senior Congress lawmaker Mani Shankar Aiyar said.
``But the country will take note of those who vote against the government.''

Copyright 2002 Reuters Ltd.

Indian PM Says Underestimated Religious Violence
By REUTERS
Filed at 7:29 p.m. ET
April 30, 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-riots.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on
Wednesday his Hindu nationalist-led government had failed to anticipate the
widespread reprisals against Muslims in the western state of Gujarat after 59
Hindus were killed by a Muslim mob in late February.

Vajpayee's statement was the first by him since the religious riots to accept
some responsibility for failing to anticipate the violence in Gujarat in which
more than 900 people, mostly Muslims, have been killed.

``Somehow we felt that the reaction to the Godhra incident would not be so
gruesome,'' Vajpayee told parliament referring to the torching of a train in
Gujarat's Godhra town in which the 59 Hindus were burned alive.

``This is what we felt. It was wrong. I only realized how strong it was
later,'' Vajpayee said at the end of a 16-hour debate on a censure motion over
the government's handling of the religious violence in the state.

The violence is India's worst in a decade and has plunged Vajpayee's fragile
government to its worst crisis as the opposition and some coalition partners
have attacked it for failing to contain the violence.

Copyright 2002 Reuters Ltd.