NEW YORK, Jan 14: India witnessed its worst episode of communal violence in over a decade in 2002, demonstrating the increasingly volatile consequences of a broad and government-supported Hindu nationalist agenda in the country, while in Pakistan the measures taken by President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s government ensured a military-controlled democracy, said a Human Rights Watch 2003 report released on Tuesday.
The report said that in February and March state-supported anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat state claimed at least 2000. As in Gujarat, attacks against historically discriminated groups in other parts of the country, including Christians, Dalits (or so-called untouchables), and tribesmen, were carried out with virtual impunity. Attacks by militants continued to claim many civilian lives in the disputed region of Kashmir and in the northeast.
On Feb 27, in the town of Godhra in Gujarat, a Muslim mob attacked a train on which Hindu activists were travelling. Two train cars were set on fire, killing at least 58 people. In July, results of an official investigation by the Ahmedabad-based Forensic Science Laboratory stated that the fire could not have been set by the mob from the outside as had been alleged; the fire, it said, was set from inside the train.
The Godhra massacre was immediately followed by a four-day retaliatory killing spree, in which over 2000 people, mostly Muslims, fell victim to mobs that looted and burned their homes, destroyed places of worship and Muslim-owned businesses, and gang-raped and sexually mutilated Muslim women and girls.
The report said Human Rights Watch’s investigations, and those of Indian human rights groups, revealed that much of the violence was planned well in advance of the Godhra attack and was carried out with state approval and orchestration. State officials and the police were directly involved in the violence: In many cases, the police led the charge, using gunfire to kill Muslims who got in the mobs’ way. The groups most directly responsible for this violence against Muslims included the VHP, the Bajrang Dal (the militant youth wing of the VHP), and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS), collectively forming the sangh parivar (or “family” of Hindu nationalist groups).
The HRW report observed that the violence in Gujarat underscored the volatile consequences of rising Hindu nationalist sentiment, propagated by the sangh parivar. This revivalist campaign included the “Hinduization” of education, including the revision of history books to include hate propaganda against Islamic and Christian communities.
In September 2002 the National Council of Educational Research and Training released new textbooks for Indian children in implementation of a new educational framework, following the lifting of a stay by the Indian Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had rejected public interest litigation that argued the new framework would violate the constitutional requirement of secularism given the introduction of “value education” into the curriculum, seen by many as a means of injecting religious instruction into education, the report said.
Connections between the drafters of the new textbooks and Hindu nationalist organizations, revealed only once the stay had been lifted, increased these concerns. Member organizations of the sangh parivar also continued to distribute hate literature, direct violent attacks, and mount conversion efforts against other minority communities, most notably Christians and tribesmen.
Attacks against Christians included violence against nuns, priests, and missionaries, and the destruction of religious sites. On Feb 17, in the southern state of Karnataka, a church in the town of Hinkal was attacked during morning mass. A similar incident took place in the Koraput district of the eastern state of Orissa on April 29, when a church with 20 worshippers was torched by 50 assailants. Individuals were also the targets of religious violence.
Human Rights Watch continued to receive reports of Dalits falling victim to caste-based violence, most often at the hands of upper castes who perpetrated these crimes with almost complete impunity. In May three Dalits in the southern state of Tamil Nadu were tortured by a village leader: two were branded with a hot iron rod and forced to feed human feces to each other.
The incident occurred after the three victims publicly announced that the village president had yet to return money she owed one of them. One of the victims was subsequently strangled and beaten by the president’s husband and son.
KASHMIR: The HRW said that the conflict in Kashmir persisted throughout 2002, as the safety of civilians and political leaders came under regular attack by militant groups. Hundreds were killed during, and in the weeks preceding, state assembly elections in September and October. Moreover, heightened tensions between India and Pakistan once again raised concerns of armed conflict, especially as both countries rapidly deployed troops and refused diplomatic negotiation. Elections in Kashmir offered some hope for a resolution to the crisis in the state. The new coalition government’s action plan included a commitment to investigate allegations of human rights violations by Indian security forces, and a proposal to urge Delhi to hold peace talks with Kashmiri groups.
However, the HRW said that the controversial passage of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act raised concerns that, like its predecessor, the act would be used to target political opponents and minorities in the name of the war against terrorism.
PAKISTAN: About Pakistan, the report said that the measures taken by President Pervez Musharraf’s administration in the months preceding the October elections, all but ensured a military-controlled democracy. Chief among them were an April referendum that extended Musharraf’s presidential term for five years, and constitutional amendments announced in August that formalized the military’s role in governance and extended restrictions on political party activities.
The report said that the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Q won most of the seats though it fell short of the number needed to form a government. The dramatic and unprecedented rise to power of religious parties also signalled a defiant rejection of Musharraf’s pro-US policies.
On the human rights violations in Pakistan the HRW said that internal groups coordinated and carried out attacks on foreigners and religious minorities in Pakistan. Increasing attacks on Christian community members raised concerns that they were being targeted because of Pakistan’s alliance with the US. Refugees from Afghanistan suffered from a lack of humanitarian assistance and faced increased hostility from authorities, while discriminatory laws continued to limit women’s security and safety. Hundreds of women were killed in the name of “honour.” Journalists faced heightened harassment, and in some cases arrest, for reporting on government activities.
Religious minorities, Christian communities in particular, also saw heightened threats to their security in 2002. On March 17, two unidentified men threw six grenades at the Protestant International Church in a diplomatic enclave in Islamabad, killing five people and injuring 40 others. On August 5, six Pakistani guards were killed during an attack on the Murree Christian School, when four gunmen stormed the premises. Only four days later, unidentified attackers hurled grenades at a chapel in a missionary hospital in Taxila, just as the women of the congregation were leaving from the daily morning prayer.
Three nurses were killed in the blast, as was one of the assailants, while 20 others were injured. The violence extended to Christian humanitarian aid workers on Sept 25, when two gunmen entered the Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ) in Karachi, and killed seven people by shooting them point blank in the head. All of the victims were Pakistani Christians.
The All Pakistan Minorities Alliance and the National Commission for Justice and Peace condemned the attacks, asserting that Pakistan’s Christians were being victimized for Pakistan’s alliance with the US, the report said.
Nevertheless, the HRW report noted that in a positive development, on Jan 16 Musharraf abolished a 16-year-old system that created separate electorates for Pakistan’s religious minorities and for the Muslim majority. Religious minorities have long claimed that a separate electorate, introduced by Gen Zia-ul-Haq in 1985, effectively marginalized them from mainstream politics, and welcomed the decision to restore joint elections.
Religious minorities also welcomed a decision by the Sindh High Court that the constitution did not bar a non-Muslim from serving on the high court. The court denied a petition to remove Justice Rana Bhagwandas from the bench on the ground that he was a Hindu.
The report stressed that women also continued to be victims of discriminatory laws and harmful customary practices in 2002. Referring to a report by Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP} the HRW said, more than 150 women were sexually assaulted in the first six months of the year in the Punjab alone, while in the first four months of the year, 211 women were murdered in the name of “honour” by male family members who believed that the women had transgressed cultural norms on female behaviour.
Such violence was exacerbated by laws, such as the Hudood Ordinance and the Qisas and Diyat Ordinances, which allowed perpetrators of crimes against women to avoid accountability.
The report said that the harm caused by the Hudood Ordinance was highlighted internationally when a Pakistani rape victim, Zafran Bibi, was charged with adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. Pakistani women’s rights groups rallied around the case and formed an alliance for the repeal of discriminatory laws, especially the Hudood Ordinance. After an active campaign the Federal Shariat Court of Pakistan overturned the sentence and acquitted Zafran Bibi in June on a technicality.
The HRW said that a positive development was initiated by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), an independent statutory body set up in July 2000, which succeeded in persuading the government to amend the Citizenship Act of 1951 to enable Pakistani women to confer nationality on their children regardless of the nationality of the father.