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| April 30, 2002 | Tuesday | Safar 16, 1423 |
Police officials led Hindu attackers: HRW report on Muslims’ massacre in Gujarat
NEW YORK, April 29: Indian Gujarat state officials were directly involved in the killing of hundreds of Muslims since Feb 27 and are now engineering a massive cover-up of the state’s role in the violence, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released on Tuesday.
“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.”
More than 850 people have been killed in Gujarat in the past two months, most of them Muslims. Unofficial estimates have put the toll as high as 2,000. The violence began on Feb 27 after a Muslim mob in Godhra town attacked and set fire to two carriages of a train carrying Hindu activists. Fifty-eight people were killed.
The police were directly implicated in nearly all the attacks against Muslims that are documented in the 75-page HRW report, titled “We Have No Orders to Save You: State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat”. In some cases they were merely passive observers.
The HRW charged that in many instances police officials led the murderous mobs, aiming and firing at every Muslim who got in the way.
The report said that 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.
The HRW 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. Several witnesses reported being told by the police: “We have no orders to save you.”
Three weeks after the initial attacks, the HRW visited Ahmedabad, a site of large-scale destruction, murder, and many massacres, and spoke to both Hindu and Muslim survivors of the attacks. The report also provides testimony on retaliatory attacks against Hindus, which the HRW condemned.
Starting Feb 28, 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 the HRW that bodies