INDIA: Five members of a Muslim family were burned alive by a Hindu mob and a sixth person shot dead by the police in western India's Gujarat state yesterday where the month-old pogrom continues unabated.
Nearly 800 people, mostly Muslims, have been butchered by Hindu mobs and their businesses and homes burnt in revenge killings that began nearly five weeks ago. A Muslim mob set fire to a trainload of 58 extremist Hindus at a small Gujarat town on February 27th, triggering off the wave of reprisal killings.
The bodies were discovered yesterday, a day before the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, visits the strife-torn state for the first time since rioting erupted.
Police said the five charred family members were found in a village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, the state's main commercial city, which has seen the worst rioting.
Four other Muslims were admitted to hospital for burns sustained after they were doused with paraffin and set alight.
"I have never seen so many people, so bereft of hope," independent MP, Mr Kuldip Nayar, said after visiting makeshift camps crammed full of tens of thousands of terrified Muslims across Gujarat.
The police behaved as if they had been given instructions not to interfere whilst rioting Hindus killed Muslims and looted and vandalised their properties, he stated. "It was really a pogrom, a well planned and executed scheme," Mr Nayar added.
While the worst of the mayhem occurred early last month, Gujarat has continued to simmer with almost daily killings and arson attacks. The violence has now spread to rural areas where there is little or no security present.
The National Human Rights Commission has indicted Gujarat's Hindu nationalist government for its lack of compliance with the rule of law. In its preliminary report, the ommission declared that it trusted neither State Chief Minister Narendra Modi's explanation on why the violence occurred and continued for nearly five weeks nor its inability to prosecute the guilty Hindu mobs that roamed freely, killing and terrorising at will.
Mr Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that heads the ruling federal coalition has praised Mr Modi's record in containing the riots. By its silence it has also endorsed Mr Modi transferring nearly 50 senior police officers who managed to take preventive measures to contain the rioting when it first started.
According to reports from Ahmedabad no sooner does darkness descend in the old walled city that the mobs emerge and, unhindered despite the imposition of curfew, begin their "ethnic cleansing".