By TCN News,
New Delhi: Eminent citizens of the country have urged Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi to take all steps to ensure that violence stops, security is given to all displaced and dishoused by the violence so that they may return to their homes forthwith. They have also demanded adequate reparation for the lives lost and homes and other properties destroyed.
Most important of all, the citizens have demanded a judicial probe into the build-up and fallout of the violence.
“We, citizens of India committed to its deep secular and peace loving ethos appeal to you as head of the government in Assam to take all steps to ensure that violence stops, security is given to all displaced and dishoused by the violence so that they may return to their homes forthwith; adequate reparation for the lives lost and homes and other properties destroyed is paid and more than anything else a Fair and Time Bound Judicial Investigation by a Sitting HC Judge is conducted into the build up and fallout of the violence,” the eminent citizens said in an open letter to chief minister Gogoi on 25th July.
Hundreds of Muslims from Assam sitting on a dharna in New Delhi on 25th July 2012 demanding end to the killing of Muslims in Assam
They expressed their concern on the use of word infiltrators for the Muslim settlers whose status has been recognized in the Assam accord. They stressed dialogue between Bodos and Muslims for peaceful co-existence.
“What concerns us deeply is the divisive discourse that seeks to create legitimacy for the violence by words and phrases like “infiltrators.” Since the mid 1990s tensions have simmered between the majority Bodo Councils and Muslim settlers despite the fact that the latter status was recognised in the Assam accord. Yet under the guise of discriminating between the two a small skirmish blew into a full blown communal conflagration; while the ethnicity of the 32 persons who lost their lives does not matter, the fact that the five persons who lost their lives to police bullets are from the minority has generated fear. There are already 1,70,000 persons in relief camps and they must be assisted with due security to return to their homes immediately. Dialogue must begin between the majority Bodo villages and the Muslim settlers for integrated rehabilitation,” said the letter signed by:
Teesta Setalvad, Mumbai
Javed Anand, Mumbai
Dr Asghar Ali Engineer, Mumbai
Ram Puniyani , Mumbai
Irfan Engineer, Mumbai
Hasan Kamal, Mumbai
Zafar Agha, Mumbai
MM Tirmizi, Ahmedabad
Rupa @Tanaz Mody, Ahmedabad
Sairabehn Salimbhai Sandhi, Ahmedabad
Salimbhai Noormohammed Sandhi, Ahmedabad
Tanveer Jafri, Surat
Rajendra Prasad, SAHMAT, Delhi
Ram Rahman, Delhi
M K Raina, Delhi