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Anti-Muslim Violence Pre-planned by India's Ruling Party: Rights Group
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| A mass grave
in Gujarat, in which 61 bodies – 34 women and 27 children -
are buried.
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NEW
DELHI, April 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Members of India's
ruling BJP party were directly involved in the killings of up to 2,000
Muslims in the western state of Gujarat, which were pre-planned and
could spread throughout the country, Human
Rights Watch
(HRW) charged Tuesday, April 30.
The
New York-based rights group said the state government of Gujarat, led
by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist BJP party,
was engaged in a "massive cover-up" to hide its role in two
months of communal violence that has left up to 2, 000 people dead,
and almost 100,000 homeless.
HRW’s
count was confirmed by the International Federation for Human Rights.
"What
happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising; it was a carefully
orchestrated attack against Muslims," 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.
The
report said that 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."
At
the height of the riots between February 28 and March 2, thousands of
saffron-clad Hindu hardliners 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 Gujarat's commercial capital
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 anti-Muslim violence along
with several affiliated Hindu revivalist groups, including the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), Bajrang Dal and the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh.
The
riots broke out February 27 after a mob torched a train carrying Hindu
hardliners, killing 58 people. Most of the victims since have been
Muslims, up to 100,000 of whom languish in displacement camps.
Opposition
parties have been demanding that Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra
Modi be sacked, but the BJP has refused to accept his resignation,
calling on him instead to seek a new mandate in early elections.
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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