Fwd: [india-unity] Independent: 'Gujurat Massacre'

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 18:57:54 -0700



Zeeshan Farees <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Zeeshan Farees <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:38:44 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [india-unity] Independent: 'Gujurat Massacre'

While most western newspapers reporting about the Best Bakery retrial, referred to the Gujurat pogroms as 'religious riots' or 'mob attacks in religious riots', Independent calls them 'anti-muslim pogroms' and massacre.
 
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=511005
 

Retrial ordered for Gujarat massacre case

By Justin Huggler in Delhi

13 April 2004

India's supreme court yesterday ordered a retrial in a multiple murder case which has come to symbolise the Gujarat religious massacres of 2002, and what international human rights groups say is the failure of Indian authorities to bring those responsible to justice.

In one atrocity, 12 people were burnt to death in a bakery in the town of Baroda, during anti-Muslim pogroms that left at least 2,000 people dead in Gujarat state.

In a damning ruling for the ruling BJP party of India's Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, the supreme court ordered a retrial of what has become known as the Best Bakery case after a key witness said that senior local officials from the party had threatened her and her family with death if she told the truth.

Zahira Sheikh, 20, appealed to the supreme court, claiming she changed her testimony in the original case because of the threat. The court yesterday ordered the retrial to be moved to neighbouring Mahrashtra state. "This is a historic judgment," a lawyer for Ms Sheikh said. "Retrials are very rare in India. And it's even rarer for a trial to be transferred on the basis of a statement by one witness."

After the acquittal in the original trial last July, Ms Sheikh told reporters: "We had locked ourselves on the terrace. The crowd had swords, sticks, petrol cans. My sister, uncle and three of his children who were downstairs were all burnt alive." Several witnesses unexpectedly changed their testimony in court, and failed to identify any of the 21 accused.

The case has repeatedly been singled out by human rights groups who have condemned the Indian authorities' handling of the massacres in Gujarat. Human Rights Watch has accused the authorities in BJP-ruled Gujarat of sabotaging investigations, squandering evidence, routinely reducing murder and rape charges to rioting, and arbitrarily freeing or acquitting suspects.

The killings that raged across Gujarat started after at least 58 Hindu activists were burnt alive when their train was set on fire by a mob of Muslims. The activists were on their way home to Gujarat from Ayodhya. They had been visiting the site where Hindu extremists in 1992 tore down a mosque on the spot where Hindus believe the god Ram was born. They had reportedly attacked Muslim stallholders in a train station before being attacked.

Thirsting for revenge, Hindus across Gujarat turned on their Muslim neighbours. Members of both communities died: three Hindus were among the dead in the Best bakery, and one of the 21 accused is a Muslim. But the most of the dead were Muslims.

The killings exposed the deep tensions between India's Hindu majority and its 150 million Muslims. There were accusations that much of the killing was orchestrated by Hindu political parties who want to institute Hindu rule in India and make religious minorities bend the knee. Swept into the midst of this was Mr Vajpayee.

He took the Hindu nationalist BJP into government by backing away from its more chauvinist tendencies, and embracing a more tolerant outlook. The ordering of a retrial just weeks before national elections in which Mr Vajpayee and the BJP are expected to triumph again will serve only to expose the dangerous faultlines in Indian society.

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