MUMBAI, Feb 28: More than 1,000 Muslim demonstrators shouted slogans while communist party supporters burned effigies of US President George Bush on Tuesday, saying he not be allowed to enter India.
“Devil Bush Go Back,” read some placards waved by the Muslim demonstrators. Others showed caricatures of Mr Bush as a cross between Superman and Satan _ dressed in the superhero’s red and blue costume with the devil’s horns and clutching a missile.
“Bush is terrorist number one and it is an insult to Indian Muslims that he is coming to India as a guest of the government,” said Mohammed Saeed Noori of the Raza Academy. “Bush first destroyed Afghanistan, then Iraq. He should be stopped from entering India.” Demonstrators at a rally later in the day shouted ‘Death to America’.
Dozens of protests have been planned by Indian communist politicians and Muslim leaders for Mr Bush’s trip.
Some mosques in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, which Mr Bush will visit on Friday, have already unfurled banners protesting his visit and plan to chant verses from the Holy Quran.
Muslim groups have also called for a daylong strike to protest Mr Bush’s visit. Muslims comprise 40 per cent of Hyderabad’s seven million people. In another protest, members of the leftist Students Federation of India and the Communist Party of India set fire to effigies of Mr Bush at three intersections.
The communists, who are key allies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government, have also drawn up protest plans for Thursday at India’s parliament, a few kilometres from where Mr Bush and the Indian prime minister will meet in New Delhi.
“Up to 50,000 people will take part in the march, and we have the police permission to express our feelings,” said Pushpender Grewal, secretary of the Communist Party of India.
“We will protest against the US policies, especially the inhuman atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq, a likely invasion of Iran and its continuing support to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine,” Mr Grewal said.—AP
