INDIA: Ten people have died in a fresh outbreak of violence in India's western Gujarat state where the continuing sectarian bloodshed has claimed over 920 lives, mostly Muslim over the past nine weeks.
Two people were pulled from their bicycles and stabbed to death yesterday in the state's largest city Ahmedabad, which has borne the brunt of the Hindu-Muslim clashes that erupted in February.
Eight others were killed over the weekend.
Gujarat's revenge killings were triggered off by the burning of a trainload of 58 extremist Hindus by a Muslim mob at a station near Ahmedabad on February 27th. Thereafter, Hindu mobs, widely supported by the state machinery began their ethnic cleansing campaign, attacking Muslims, raping women, looting and burning their properties and setting hundreds of them alight.
Tens of thousands of Muslims continue to live in refugee camps, too terrified to return home. In several Gujarat areas Hindus have told Muslims that they can return home only after converting to Hinduism. As a guarantee against being set upon again, Hindu vigilante groups have asked Muslims to let them use their vehicles for free and not engage in the same businesses as them.
Muslims constitute 12 per cent and Hindus over 80 per cent of India's over one billion people. Some 65 Muslim families who fled their village have been told by the local Hindus that they could return if rape charges, registered against three local people, were withdrawn.
In its interim report, the National Human Rights Commission has indicted Gujarat's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janaya Party ( BJP) government for its lack of compliance with the rule of law. It declared that it trusted neither Chief Minister Narendra Modi's explanation on why the violence occurred and continued nor its inability to prosecute the guilty Hindu mobs that roamed freely, killing and terrorising at will.
Meanwhile, parliament's Upper House yesterday unanimously passed an opposition-sponsored motion urging federal intervention to curb the bloodshed in the state.
Last week India's Hindu nationalist BJP-led federal coalition survived a censure motion in the Lower House over Gujarat's continuing pogrom of Muslims, but the acrimonious debate dented its credibility and political legitimacy. The motion triggered rebellion among the government partners. and one cabinet minister resigned taking his three MPs out of the coalition over the government's mishandling of Gujarat.
Opposition MPs accused Mr Vajpayee of shielding Mr Modi who they said was "guilty" of "murder". The former prime minister, Mr Chandra Shekhar, compared the government's defence on Gujarat to statements made by Hitler's Nazi Party. The Interior Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, accused arch-rival Pakistan of fomenting Gujarat's communal violence even though investigators have failed to come up with any credible evidence of "outside" involvement.