By IINA,
New Delhi : The parents of Rashida, a three-year-old Muslim girl, could not imagine that the life of their little angle would end in a refugee camp away from their homes at such a young age.
“My daughter was looking cheerful till Tuesday night,” the morning father, Mohammad Momin, told India Today weekly. “We had lit a bonfire of garbage collected from the camp. My wife took her into the tent around midnight,” Momin, who stays with his family in the Manna Maja camp in Shamli district since anti-Muslim riot erupted in Muzaffarnagar, added. As world children welcomed with their families the new year, Rashida breathed her last in the dirty camp after the distressed family could not find a doctor for her.
“Rashida caught cold and had high fever in the morning. There was no doctor or medical staff near the camp. She died before I could take her to a doctor in Shamli,” the father said. “We didn’t sleep in the night because the tents were leaking. We are also unable to cook food since our brick-hearth is wet. Officials are forcing us to leave the camps,” he said. With Rashida’s death, the death toll in the relief camps reached 35. Reports about deaths at relief camps set for Muslims who escaped Hindu riots in Muzaffarangar have been vehemently denied by local government.
Last week, the Samajwadi Party-led state government admitted for the first time that 34 children had died in different riot relief camps. Yet, Uttar Pradesh Principal Secretary (Home) A.K. Gupta had come under fire from various quarters for his “insensitive” remarks after claiming that cold weather couldn’t be a reason for deaths. Gupta had said if cold killed people, nobody would have survived in Siberia. Muslims troubles started after Hindu-Muslim clashes erupted in Muzaffarnagar, located in the western part of the Uttar Pradesh province.
The riots resulted in the death of at least 60 and forced some 70,000 Muslims to flee their villages, according to the state government. In October 31, a fresh outbreak of violence killed four Muslims in the same region hit by deadly communal clashes. Muzaffarnagar district remains tense, with many who fled last month’s violence still living in camps.
The local government came under harsh criticism by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who raised its pitch against the SP government’s “apathy” towards the riot victims. “The state government had claimed that the riot victims have voluntarily vacated Loee relief camp where maximum number of families were living in makeshift shelters,” BSP general secretary Swami Prasad Maurya said after visiting the relief camps on Wednesday. “The camp still has 120 families. The CM had said forceful evacuation was not done in relief camps, but the victims told us that they were driven away from the camps. The CM is lying,”
Maurya claims solidified after Nadeem Ahmad, a refugee in the Bhura refugee camp of Shamli district, said that police forces following Akhilesh Yadav government tried to evacuate them by force on Wednesday. “Some of the policemen started throwing out our belongings. But when we requested them to let us collect out belongings, an officer announced that we have only two hours,” Nadeem said. “But a large number of villagers of the surrounding areas gathered after hearing the cries of women and children.”
There are some 140 million Muslims in Hindu-majority India and they have long complained of being discriminated against in all walks of life. Muzaffarnagar anti-Muslim attacks are not the first in India. Violence pitting Muslims against Hindus has been a defining feature of Indian politics since the country’s traumatic separation from Pakistan in 1947, when hundreds of thousands of people were killed and millions were displaced. Religion and caste violence plays a central role in politics in Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s poorest states with a population larger than that of Russia.
In 1992, 2,000 people were killed in riots after the demolition of a 16th century mosque built near a sacred Hindu site in the Uttar Pradesh town of Ayodhya, on the banks of the Ganges River. Hindu political mobilization around that conflict thrust the BJP onto the national stage and played a role in bringing it to power in the late 1990s.
[Photo Courtesy: IINA]