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| Super cop shocked at Gujarat Riots |
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| jaihoon |
| 04/07/02 at 17:07:09 |
| Super cop shocked at Gujarat Riots Julio Ribeiro, known as India's "super cop" for his success in quelling religious riots, battling militants and fighting crime, says he has never seen communal hatred on the scale that exists in riot-hit Gujarat. "If the world took notice of (massacres in) Rwanda and Bosnia, it should take notice of this," he said, referring to India's worst religious violence that engulfed Gujarat in February. More than 800 people were killed, mostly Muslims. Email this page to friend "I'm almost 73 and I've never seen this kind of fanaticism among the Hindus," said Ribeiro, who was brought out of retirement to help restore trust in Gujarat police, accused of standing aside and watching the savage events. "They (Hindu hardline groups) have brainwashed people. Even children of four go around with (symbolic Hindu) tridents saying they've got to kill the Muslims," he told Reuters in an interview. Ribeiro, brought to Ahmedabad from his home in Mumbai at the request of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), was pessimistic about being able to help. "No normal policing method is going to solve this. I'd come here to see why police failed but now see it's gone well beyond that." A former police commissioner in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main commercial city, Ribeiro has an impressive record of controlling communal fury and battling militancy. He contained religious bloodletting in Ahmedabad in 1985 within a week of being named police commissioner. Seven years later he ended Hindu-Muslim riots in Mumbai and he also helped crush a 1980s Sikh separatist revolt in the state of Punjab. This time, though, he said problems plaguing Gujarat, known for its history of religious violence, were far tougher to cure. "It's a very, very deep and systematic effort to subvert the whole system to bring into being a religious fanaticism that did not exist," he said. The state government is led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which also heads the ruling federal government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in mainly Hindu, but officially secular, India. Both governments have been accused of turning a blind eye to the violence when it was at its peak - charges they have denied. But this week, India's human rights watchdog, the National Human Rights commission accused Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of "failing to protect life". Modi rejected opposition accusations that he runs a biased administration and that he allowed Hindu extremists free rein as they burnt, clubbed and hacked to death Muslims. The violence was triggered by the torching of a train by a mob in which 59 Hindus died. That touched off a wave of reprisal killings and religious clashes in which hundreds of people were burnt and hacked to death. A multitude of survivors have said police looked the other way when the carnage was at its height and even helped rioters who came armed with petrol cans, swords as well as municipal lists detailing where Muslims lived. A number of those police who did try to intervene and uphold the law have been shifted from their posts by the government. Ribeiro said hardline groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its militant arm, the Bajrang Dal, "are the ones ruling (the state)". "The government is totally with them," he said. "And today even if they want to put the genie back in the bottle, they won't be able to. Those fellows have become so powerful." He said allowing the spread of religious fanaticism was dangerous. "You're going to bring into being terrorists. They (Muslims) have no hope of justice." http://www.jaihoon.com/showcase/supercop.htm NB: the pics are too graphic! |
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