After serial bombings killed dozens of people here, Muslim housewife Tahira Bi hopes history will not repeat itself in India’s western state of Gujarat, where memories of Hindu rage are still fresh.
With the city of Ahmedabad hit by blasts claimed by a little-known Islamist group, the specter of a fresh outbreak of communal violence or revenge attacks on Muslims is at the forefront of concerns.
“I first saw Hindu-Muslim riots when I was 10 years old. Then again in 2002. I have no fear any more,” Bi said at her home in the Naroda-Patiya residential area, where many Muslims were killed in riots six years ago.
“How long are we going to live scared and running, like cats and dogs? What has to happen will happen, but we have to go on,” said the mother of six, and who is in her 40s.
The riots in 2002 erupted after 59 Hindu pilgrims died in a train fire first blamed on a Muslim mob but which an inquiry later concluded was accidental.
Several investigations at the state and federal level have alleged police failed to protect Muslims, who accounted for most of the estimated 2,000 people killed in the pogrom.
After Saturday’s bombings, federal authorities have been quick to take preventative action — including the deployment of heavily armed combat troops in potential flashpoint areas to deter riots.
At least 45 were killed and more than 160 wounded in the blasts, official figures show.
An army commander said, “anger could spread once the bodies are handed back to relatives for cremations” and that the army had been deployed “as a major psychological deterrent to riots.”
Still, many Muslims here were optimistic the city would remain calm — mainly because Gujarat’s right-wing Hindu nationalist chief minister, Narendra Modi, was only re-elected last year so had no need to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment.
Modi, a member of the main national opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has consistently denied any role in the 2002 violence.
“This time it is not the same,” local Muslim businessman Altaf Memon said, suggesting that communal tensions have been easing since 2002.
“There is no question of riots, unless the politicians want them. I live in a Hindu area. I have a shop in the Hindu area and I don’t have to fear for anything,” Memon said.
A Hindu resident, who asked his name not be used, agreed with that sentiment, saying “Modi has come to power again, so he doesn’t need to divide people any more to get votes.”
Meanwhile, police raided the home of an US citizen in Mumbai and seized a computer from which an e-mail claiming responsibility for Saturday’s bombings was believed to have been sent, officials said yesterday.
The 48-year-old American has not been detained, said Kirit Sonawane, a police officer involved in the raid. He would not say if the American was a suspect and provided no other details about the man’s identity.
“We are talking to him,” Sonawane said.
Police said they also arrested an underworld figure in Ahmedabad with apparent ties to a banned Muslim group and were determining whether he had any connection to the attack.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS