[Reader-list] Subject: US HRW Report on Anti-Muslim Violence in Gujarat

[Suchita Vemuri]

Beginning Tuesday, April 30, 2002, the report below will be online at
http://hrw.org/reports/2002/india/.


Subject: Report on Anti-Muslim Violence in Gujarat

Tuesday April 30, 2002

India: Gujarat Officials Took Part in Anti-Muslim Violence
New Report Documents Complicity of the State Government

(New York, April 30, 2002) - State officials of Gujarat, India were
directly involved in the killings of hundreds of Muslims since February
27 and are now engineering a massive cover-up of the state's role in the
violence, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report released today.

The Indian parliament is scheduled today to debate the situation in
Gujarat, and may vote to censure the Indian government for its handling
of the violence.

"What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising, it was a
carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims," said Smita Narula,
senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch and author of the
report. "The attacks were planned in advance and organized with
extensive participation of the police and state government officials."

The police were directly implicated in nearly all the attacks against
Muslims that are documented in the 75-page report, 'We Have No Orders to
Save You': State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in
Gujarat.  In some cases they were merely passive observers. But in many
instances, police officials led the charge of murderous mobs, aiming and
firing at Muslims who got in the way.

Under the guise of offering assistance, 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. Several witnesses reported being told by police: "We have
no orders to save you."

Three weeks after the initial attacks, Human Rights Watch visited
Ahmedabad, a site of large-scale destruction, murder, and several
massacres, and spoke to both Hindu and Muslim survivors of the attacks.
The report also provides testimony on retaliatory attacks against
Hindus, which Human Rights Watch strongly condemned.

More than 850 people have been killed in the Western state of Gujarat in
the past two months, most of them Muslims.  Unofficial estimates have
put the death toll as high as 2,000.  The violence began on February 27
after a Muslim mob in the town of Godhra attacked and set fire to two
carriages of a train carrying Hindu activists. Fifty-eight people were
killed.

Starting February 28, 2002, a three-day retaliatory killing spree by
Hindus 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.
Gravediggers told Human Rights Watch that bodies keep arriving, burnt
and mutilated beyond recognition.

Burnt Muslim shops and restaurants dot the main roads and highways in
Ahmedabad.  Neighboring Hindu establishments remain notably unscathed.

Between February 28 and March 2, thousands of attackers descended on
Muslim neighborhoods, 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 guided by voter
lists and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties-information
obtained from the local municipality. In the weeks following the
attacks, Hindu homes and businesses were also destroyed in retaliatory
attacks by Muslims.

The groups most directly involved in the violence against Muslims
include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the
Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) that heads the Gujarat state government.  Collectively, they
are known as the sangh parivar, or family of Hindu nationalist
organizations.

The Gujarat state administration has been engaged in a massive cover-up
of the state's role in the massacres and that of the sangh parivar.
Numerous police reports filed by eyewitnesses after the attacks have
specifically named local VHP, BJP, and Bajrang Dal leaders as
instigators or participants in the violence. The police, reportedly
under instructions from the state, face continuous pressure not to
arrest them or to reduce the severity of the charges filed. Top police
officials who sought to protect Muslims have been removed from positions
of command.

"This is a crisis of impunity," said Narula.  "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 violence in Gujarat has triggered national outrage and has been
strongly condemned by political parties, the National Human Rights
Commission, the Indian prime minister, and civil society at large.  Both
the Godhra massacre and the attacks that ensued have been documented in
meticulous detail by Indian human rights and civil liberties groups and
by the Indian press.

"After two months of violence, the international community is now waking
up and needs to respond," said Narula.

Government figures indicate that more than 98,000 people, an
overwhelming majority of them Muslim, are residing in more than one
hundred relief camps throughout the state.  The state government has
failed to provide adequate and timely humanitarian assistance to
internally displaced persons in Gujarat. Relief camps visited by Human
Rights Watch were in desperate need of more government and international
assistance. One camp with 6,000 residents was located on the site of a
Muslim graveyard. Residents were literally sleeping in the open, between
the graves.

Assistance from international humanitarian and United Nations agencies
is urgently needed for Hindus and Muslims in relief camps, Human Rights
Watch said. It urged the Indian government to actively seek the
assistance of international agencies and to invite United Nations human
rights experts to investigate state and police participation in the
violence in Gujarat.

Human Rights Watch also urged the international community to put
pressure on the Indian government to comply with international human
rights and Indian constitutional law and end impunity for orchestrated
violence against Indian minorities.


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