News

Latest News

Imprisoning Democracy

Have your say


Newspaper


Back to index

Indian Muslims send memorandum to OIC

27-06-2002

London, COUNCIL of INDIAN MUSLIMS (UK):

Press release:

Indian Muslims Tell the OIC Foreign Ministers Conference


“We are not in any position to say what the OIC should or should not do, because, like most other oppressed Muslim peoples in the world, we have come not to have any expectations from the Organisation. However, we think it is our duty to inform Your Excellencies lest anyone pleaded ignorance on the Day of Judgement that ‘we did not know that it was really so horrible.’” Says a memorandum submitted by the British Indian Muslims to the 29th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers starting in Khartoum on June 25.


The memo has been submitted by the London based advocacy group the Council of Indian Muslims (UK) – CIM.


Giving example of how the Muslim countries’ as well as OIC’s collective inaction has encouraged the Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in labelling Islam and Muslims as intolerant and resorting to terror. The CIM said that when earlier he had toured the refugee camps in Gujarat Mr Vajpayee expressed his shock at the scenes and stories of the victims of anti-Muslim pogroms and said, “I am ashamed... I don’t know what face I will take to some of the Muslim countries I have to visit.”


“However, soon after he visited a Muslim country where no one even so much as hinted of any feelings about the Gujarat genocide, he turned round against the victims themselves. He went on to say: Wherever such Muslims live, they tend not to live in co-existence with others, not to mingle with others; and instead of propagating their ideas in a peaceful manner, they want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats. The world has become alert to this danger.” (Speech in Goa, 12 April 2002, Indian Express, 24 April 2002).

"In other words” says CIM’s memo, “those Muslims who were killed in Gujarat or were being killed and brutalised elsewhere were ‘such’ Muslims who deserved to be done with! Mr Vajpayee was reciting the latest mantra of the September 11 world order viz. Muslim = Fundamentalist = Terrorist = Enemy of Civilisation. The rest is understood.”

The memo quotes extensively from Indian and the world press giving examples of the most horrific crimes committed against Muslims.

“More than 2000 Muslims have been killed, many of them burnt alive, in the ethnic cleansing...Hundreds of Muslim women and girls as young as 13 have been gang raped and killed.” The memo says.

“Properties worth millions of pounds have been destroyed and looted and plundered and mosques and religious places have been razed and ransacked. All these facts have been fully documented not only by international human rights bodies but also by the Indian press as well as a large body of fair Hindu opinion.”

“The former Indian Prime Minister Mr V. P. Singh, has described these pogroms as parallel to the crimes committed in Bosnia. ‘What is happening in Bosnia is happening here.’” (The Telegraph , Calcutta, 13 March 2002).

“Giving a more detailed account of the barbarity. The Telegraph of London said, ‘It was certainly the first time officials of a political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which controls the Gujarat state as well as the Union government, have been implicated in turning a blind eye to mass murder.’” (18 June 2002)

"This was state-sponsored violence, no doubt about it” the memo quotes a police officer from the paper. "The police were told by politicians to take no action. The police conduct was tantamount to murder. As an officer, I feel totally scandalised and disgusted."

“Mukul Sinha, a Hindu lawyer who is pursuing one of dozens of complaints against thugs, state assembly members and police officers, said: ‘Please don't say this was a riot. It was genocide, pure and simple.’

“Across the state, 180 mosques were destroyed or damaged along with thousands of Muslim-owned businesses and homes.”

In one of the villages “Aid workers reported, a Hindu mob dragged 30 young women into full public view, sexually assaulted them and forced them to run naked. Yet the Muslims of Fatehpura refuse to go to the police or even reveal the names of the women, fearing no man would marry them, the aid workers said.” (The Washington Post 3 June 2002)

“A senior Indian bureaucrat, Harsh Mander, who resigned from his job in protest against this genocide described, ‘…a small fraction of all that I heard and saw ... what can you say about a woman eight months pregnant who begged to be spared? Her assailants instead slit open her stomach pulled out her foetus and slaughtered it before her eyes. What can you say about a family of nineteen being killed by flooding their house with water and then electrocuting them with high-tension electricity.” (www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=200230319&fname=mander&sid-1&pn=3)

“A senior British High Commission official in India who reported on these ‘riots’ to the Foreign Office in London wrote: these pogroms ‘had all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and that reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims is impossible while the chief minister remains in power.’ And, ‘far from being spontaneous, was planned, possibly months in advance, carried out by an extremist Hindu organisation with the support of the state government.’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1951000/1951471.stm

In its report, published on 6 April 2002, a women’s only delegation, sponsored by Citizens Initiative, reported, “There is compelling evidence of sexual violence against women. These crimes against women have been grossly underreported and the exact extent of these crimes - in rural and urban areas - demands further investigation. Among the women surviving in relief camps, are many who have suffered the most bestial forms of sexual violence - including rape, gang rape, mass rape, stripping, insertion of objects into their bodies, stripping, molestations. A majority of rape victims have been burnt alive."

Email this story to a friend | Printable Version

 

Latest News


Other News from Atrocities against Indian Muslims section


News and Views of Muslims in the United Kingdom