[Reader-list] Report From Guajarat

Lawrence Liang lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com
Wed Apr 24 10:54:22 IST 2002


 


Dear all, 

At present I am in  Gujarat and really overwhelmed by
the situation. I was requested by this group called
Center for Social Justice to help and came here with a
group of three other people( one student of the NLS,
Blore  and two members of Commonweath Human Rights
Initiative) To get a picture of the sheer brutality of
the situation , u  must  see the  powerful Syeda
Hamida report on sexual violence against women, the
PUCL report, the NHRC report and the team with Achin
Vanaik... The Syeda Hamida Report is gruesome in its
details as to how women were raped/tortured and burnt
by the organized mobs and systematically destroys the
theory of spontaneous violence post Godhra..

i will just briefly describe the kind of work we did
and which is still required..

we were in panchmahals and banaskanta district and the
sheer scale ovewhelms you.. some people have lost all
10 of thier family members and the fear is so deep
that even limited legal organizing is not happening...

For example, we went to police stations to try and get
people a copy of the FIR registered.. Because of being
outsiders in cases where there were FIR's registered
we were successful in getting a copy to people. But
the key problem seems to be that the state has
registered its own shoddy FIR's .. if you compare the
state FIR's with the peoples applications sent by
registered post to the SP,jurisdictional police
stations and NHRC , the discrepancy is shocking.. the
state FIR does not disclose any offence except loss of
property.(mentioned in vague terms a tractor , a shop
etc ). People have written about their family members
being hacked to death , and then burnt by mobs of over
a 1000 people, none of which find  a mention in the
omnibus state FIR's...

of course I am speaking about one police station ,
Kalol, in Panchmahals district... Similarly just in
Panchmahals dist alone there are over 412 applications
sent in by people all of which need to be compared
with the FIR's registered by the police to get a
picture of what offences the state has actually taken
cognizance of over a period of over two  months after
the train incident.

We did try to get a summary of FIR's lodged in
Panchmahals district from the SP who refused us. Two
of our team members are trying again tomorrow. 

Panchmahals is just one district. A similar collection
and analysis needs to happen in the other badly
affected districts in Gujarat to even understand what
is happening throughout Gujarat in terms of 
registering FIR's/beginning investigation.

The magnitude is so overwhelming that no group or
groups can follow up all the cases. The strategy seems
to be to pick a few key cases and follow them up fully
in each district.

Based on our limited expereince , outsiders have a
useful role to play at the grassroot level in Gujarat
since there is such a high level of fear and
insecurity in the Muslim community and even those who
help them....If advocacy and concern can translate
itself into a commmitment for at least a  week in the
camps/villages in Gujarat , it would play a role in at
least aiding a response to the organized murders
perpetrated with the connivance of the state.

Another point which has been deeply troubling is the
role of the Gujarati local press. The day after the
train incident , Sandesh carried headlines which said
that Hindu women were raped , theri breasts chopped
off by Muslims in Godhra. This was a blatant lie and
aimed to provoke the murders of the next month. Till
today no legal action has been taken against Sandesh.
If deliberate lies like this are allowed to go without
challenge it will only embolden the perpetrators of
this violence and entrench the politics of impunity.

To briefly put forward what can be done:

1) Teams of volunteers going to the camps to assist in
getting copies of FIR's to victims, and in analysing
the FIR's in the light of the applications sent by
people to the SP/NHRC etc

2) Plan a legal strategy in terms of a writ petition
asking the applications sent by people to the SP to
treated as FIR's in cases where the state FIR's do not
disclose any offence..

3) Aiding relief and rehabilitiaton work. It is to be
noted that the response to this man made terror is of
a far lower order as compared to the response to the
earthquake.

3) Initiation of  legal action against the
inflammatory and provocative statements of
Sandesh.(under sec 153 A of IPC) But in a climate of
such terror how does one initiate legal action in
Gujarat? Is it possible to initiate action in any
other state/states?

4) Help in building up district wise hard data and
documentation for use before the Shah Comission and
other forum ( extensive documentation has already been
done on Ahmedabad and needs to be done in other
districts)

5)Successful internationalization of the issue , using
principles fo unviersal jurisdiction to try and get
Modi extradited for violating international law, use
of UN mechanisms etc..

6) Initiating a network of concerned people who can
contribute to the above processes in a meaningful
way....

These suggestions have been arrived at after
discussions with both Gagan Sethi of Center for Social
Justice and Mihir Desai of HRLN.. They still remain
tentative and it would be great to receive other
suggestions on how one can take forward a concrete
response to the violations perpetrated by the Modi
regime..

regards 

arvind

 


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