Monday, September 23, 2013

Uttar Pradesh rocked: Hindu-Muslim violence erupts as India's electoral battle looms...

The streets are stilled, the doors shuttered. Hundreds of people have fled. Over the course of a day, up to 1,000 Muslims left this village in fear for their lives. A number were killed, several homes were torched and someone tried to set alight to the mosque.

“Our home was set on fire and eight people were killed,” claimed Rahisha Begum, one of hundreds of Muslims taking refuge in a emergency shelter in the nearby town of Shapar. “Our women were molested. People were cut into pieces.”

The people of the twin villages of Kutbi and Kutba are among more than 40,000 Muslims forced from their homes in some of the worst Hindu-Muslim violence in western Uttar Pradesh for decades. A smaller number of Hindus have also fled and at least 48 people have died.

Communal violence is nothing new to India or to UP, the huge, impoverished but politically crucial state which returns 80 members to the national parliament. But what has created particular concern about the latest bloodletting is the central role local politicians apparently took in turning a localised incident into something much more deadly, and doing so for political gains. Full story...

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