The 25th anniversary of the "black July", the worst ethnic killing in Sri Lanka

New Delhi, July 25, 2008. - The Tamils ​​around the world commemorate this day with plays, exhibitions and watches the 25 years since the worst massacres in Sri Lanka Ethnic recorded, seed of the current war-ravaged Indian Island.
"The 25 years deserved a review of the stories of what happened next. There are photographs of displaced women who have lost everything, "he says by phone EFE photographer Anoma Rajakaruna, Colombo presented in the exhibition" Life after 25 years. "
The powerful Tamil diaspora in the world these days you can attend theater in Toronto (Canada), book in Australia and India and vigils and demonstrations in the United States, with the common aim of commemorating the massacres of 1983.
"Some wonder why these events are remembered ritually every year every July. I think the only reason is to make sure something does not happen again, "he told Efe on the phone the Minister of National Integration, Dew Gunasekara.
Sinhalese (majority) and Tamils ​​had been locked in sporadic ethnic clashes since the 1970s, but definitely violence erupted in July 1983, the "Black July", with the arrival in Colombo of the bodies of 15 soldiers ambushed by guerrillas Tamil (LTTE).
"The soldiers were brought at once and people reacted with anger at the funeral. Furthermore, the Government took six days to call for calm, the silence encouraged the violent, "Gunasekara said from Colombo.
On the night of July 24, 1983, shortly after the burial, hordes of angry Sinhalese assaulted, raped and killed as many Tamils ​​in their path in the Ceylonese capital.
"I still remember how they stopped the car. Inside were four: a girl, a boy and his parents. Some questions with joy, not to make mistakes. And then took action. Sprinkle with gasoline and all that, "the poet writes Sinhalese Basil Fernando.
According to the chroniclers, the mob asked to motorists because of their ethnicity, and kill them if they happened to be Tamils, burned buses loaded with passengers and a crowd went into a criminal capital and slashed to 53 political prisoners in this community.
"He woke up one day in 1983 that changed the landscape and the family routine. Tamil burned every building in the city, including Pharmacy Uncle Joe. Days, weeks, months: he disappeared without trace, "says the photographer Rajakaruna.
The pogroms in Colombo later spread across the country with a balance chilling killed more than 1,000 Tamils ​​and it is estimated that 700,000 people left homeless, of which 400,000 left Sri Lanka and distributed worldwide.
Despite the silence government, the "Black July" also led to frequent acts of brotherhood between members of both communities, and documented many Sinhalese aid provided during the pogroms on Tamils.
But violence stifled cooperation between the two ethnic groups and gave prominence to the militant group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was financed with money from the diaspora and took power in the northern third of the island .
The war, Gunasekara, marked the de facto division of Sri Lanka and has since caused the deaths of nearly 100,000 people, with damage "incalculable" for mutual trust between the Buddhist Sinhalese and the Tamils, the Hindu religion.
The LTTE still fighting for an independent "Tamil Eelam", the areas with more presence, the Tamil north and east, and where are the front lines, although in recent months the Army has made ​​significant progress.
"What meant the 'black July'? The beginning of the era of guns, disappearances, child soldiers, the destruction of democracy. And the conflict is still going on, "says the minister.
Despite the country's wartime plight and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, during a discussion of Rajakaruna has been a small cause for rejoicing: the return of Uncle Joe, twenty years after his disappearance.
Uncle Joe at the pharmacy, and with 77 years Rajakaruna told that someone told him about the exhibition and then asked to bring him to her, who lost everything but came out later, that his son tamil married, happily, with a Sinhalese girl.

Narendra Modi, the more political hero or the villain of India

Ahmedabad (India), February 28, 2008. - With more than 1,000 dead just six years ago, the religious clashes in 2002 in western India's Gujarat communal carnage caused the worst in recent decades and had as one of its main protagonists to then and now head of regional government, Narendra Modi.
Modi, reelected in December 2007 with an undisputed majority, has been accused of in the best case, a blind eye to the killing of Muslims, in which members of his government related items.
Carry the stigma of religious persecution against minorities, Modi in 2005 suffered the humiliation of seeing how the United States withdrew the entry visa into the country.
But suspicion falling on his rule on alleged violations of human rights have not weakened the professed admiration among his countrymen, who reiterated his confidence in the leader giving their votes and a new majority in the chamber.
Born in 1950 in the midst of a middle class family, Modi, a vegetarian meat consumption considered a waste of resources, he studied political science and joined radical formation Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
His rise in militancy boxes Conservative Party Bharatiya Janata Party-RSS-was akin to lightning, and soon became, in 2001 and a year before the riots that catapulted him to the "known" world, the regional general secretary in order to reorganize the training and attack power.
The trigger for those riots was the death of 58 Hindu pilgrims in the town of Godhra Gujarati in March 2002, when the train they were traveling stopped by a barricade of stones placed on the track and, moments later, caught fire.
Modi described the act as a "violent act of terrorism planned by one community against another," a clear accusation against Muslims that could spur the radical Hindus took to the streets.
With more than 1,000 deaths in the two months of unrest that followed these events, Modi could not ever shake off the stigma of the killings to the outside, but his popularity remains intact for most of his countrymen.
The reason is the economic situation in Gujarat, perhaps the strongest region of India, with an average annual growth exceeding 10 percent and a "change from the roots" that agricultural production has quadrupled and has made ​​the region a leader in power generation.
And the Modi Government has implemented a recipe for investment in infrastructure as a driver of economic growth that has paid off in the two times that has been reelected since (2002 and 2007), with the slogan "Vibrant Gujarat".
According to his biographers institutional, Modi is a visionary and a "pan-Indian image popular leader," passionate, young, energetic, writer, an astute politician, a speaker and a sharp negotiator who has earned "love and affection the masses. "
"I am eternally proud of being human and Hindu. Every time I feel I am large, extensive, I am sindhu (ethnicity of the area), "he wrote.
But some, less prone to visionary Modi, has been engaged to compile other compositions: the statements he made ​​during the ethnic slaughter, such as: "every action (in reference to fire the train) has an equal and opposite reaction."

Six years after the Gujarat killings, the victims still seeking justice

Ahmedabad (India), Feb 28 (EFE). - In the sixth anniversary of religious massacres that caused over 1,000 deaths, nothing stands in the western Indian region of Gujarat, a booming economic and industrial motor in which however there who demands justice.
Given the slowness of the courts, associations of victims, mostly Muslim, met today in a convention center in the main city of Gujarat, Ahmedabad, and decided to develop a long march to New Delhi within three months.
"The middle classes in Ahmedabad want to forget what happened, believe it is right up the past. But the victims are far from receiving justice and is now being organized, "says activist Efe Prasad Chacko, Action Aid.
Chacko estimated at 5,000 families fled their homes during the Gujarat riots, which began six years ago today after a fire in a train of Hindu pilgrims at the hands, as the extremists of that religion, of Muslims.
Over the next two months, Muslims and Hindus clashed in attacks and counterattacks that caused some 1,000 deaths, according to some calculations, and, above all, a scar still open in the religious coexistence, to the point that the two communities now live in neighborhoods separated.
"My house was destroyed," says professor Efe JS Bandukwala (Muslim), who had to hide in the service of a family friend (Hindu) after a mob of fundamentalists surround your house to burn and kill him.
"Over time I have forgiven. But it's not fair that Dhimant Bhatt, the person who led the action-and-follow publicly recognized on the street without any judicial proceedings brought against him, "he added.
Victims and aid organizations are very critical of the management of the crisis made ​​the regional government, then and now led by the conservative Narendra Modi, who described the burning of the train as a "violent act of terrorism planned by a community against another. "
This and another quote, "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" could spur the group perpetrators of fundamentalist organizations like the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), related to Modi party (BJP).
"We are sorry," he told Efe VHP general secretary, Amrit Sharma. "It was not planned, it was a sudden eruption we can not submit to reason from an office."
At its headquarters in Ahmedabad, VHP activists Sharma shared with khaki uniforms but are much less talkative and vanish to the first question.
"We have no information, photos are prohibited, we do not speak English or Hindi," he replies in Hindi an alleged press officer.
Hindu radicals are wary of the press since last September, when a research of the weekly magazine Tehelka-with-hidden cameras revealed the involvement of several members in the massacres of 2002.
"When men are hungry, eat a fruit or another, right? (There were) killed many girls and some men were served the fruit ... My wife is here, but let me tell you that the fruit was there and ate once the daughter of junk, Naseemo. That plump tasty. Then I reduced it to pulp, "he confessed in one of the recordings the militant Suresh Richard.
The press has taken over at the continuing investigations and allegations of corruption shadows of the security forces, whose professionalism has been questioned because, after all, taking orders from the regional government.
"The investigations were carried out so that those found guilty were released. Most cases in the Supreme Court will not prosper, and that victims should be organized differently, "he says Chacko.
A sign of weakness on the part of police work is to investigate the neighborhood of Naroda Patiya (now smiling Hindu majority), where a hundred people died in riots and where the police, records show, has only recovered a sword .
In other cases, the evidence gathered was insufficient, the perpetrators took cover for months or families of victims simply lacked the means to afford the cost of prosecution.
In Ahmedabad, a mute witness to the fight is the headquarters used by the most famous Gujarati history, "Mahatma" Gandhi, to launch a movement for Indian independence.
"My life is devoted to proving that cooperation between Hindus and Muslims is the inevitable condition for freedom from India", left word.
Six decades later, some have not understood and others did: "We are prepared to forgive if they express regret. They have to let us forgive, because coexistence is the only way, "concludes Professor Bandukwala.

Gujarat Muslims look forward six years after the massacre

Ahmedabad (India), February 27, 2008. - In most segregated neighborhoods because of their religion, Muslims in the Indian region of Gujarat in the west, trying to get ahead and forget the killing of just six years ago, in which over a thousand people died.
In the thriving, bustling city of Ahmedabad, the largest in the region, there are hardly any traces of the wave of extremist violence that swept Gujarat, but a few blackened walls and a clear predominance in Hindu areas where there used to live together.
But the procession goes inside. "Before, neighborhoods and other Hindu domination of Muslim domination. But after the events of 2002, this issue, without being entirely an 'apartheid', has deteriorated, "said Somnath Vatsa Efe, a lawyer from Ahmedabad who has defended victims of the killings.
These began as a reaction to fire, according to Hindu extremists, led by Muslims on a train crowded with pilgrims ("karsevaks") on February 27, 2002, an event in which 58 people were killed, including women and children .
Within hours, Muslims in different cities suffered the attacks of radical Hindu groups who raped women, burned houses, damaged mosques, killing all who stood before them.
After these events, thousands of Muslims in Gujarat had to find foster homes, until their own aid associations bought land to build new neighborhoods who have devoted a de facto separation in the region.
One of the new neighborhoods is Juhapura, a crowd of 300,000 people and newly built homes that has been called, without euphemism, as the largest Muslim ghetto in Gujarat, including complaints of neglect of its residents.
"The country did not do anything for them then and today the situation remains worrying Vatsa attorney-tops. To ensure more interaction between Muslims and Hindus government must develop public programs. "
Indian Muslims, about 140 million, up 13.4 percent of the population but hold only 5 percent of government jobs in government institutions and their access to education remains very poor.
Furthermore, the faithful suffer an image problem dating from the time of independence and partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan (1947), when most of the Muslim middle classes chose to move on to Pakistani soil.
Muslims who stayed in India belonged mostly to the lower social strata, less training and more atavistic behavior, which continued to hinder their integration into the new independent company.
Cowards, according to gossip, and loyal to Pakistan Pakistan as Indian-Muslims in India have also had to endure growing accusations of complicity with terrorism after the emergence of fundamentalist discourse and the constant attacks by radical groups the subcontinent.
"Muslims are overwhelmed ... We prefer a nonviolent approach, which has an impact on our community. There are hardly any Muslims in the government and our solution must be education. Especially for women, "said Efe Professor JS Bandukwala, whose house burned during the riots in Gujarat.
These, the worst slaughter of the last decades, put on the lips of many analysts, the words "genocide" and "pogrom", due to inaction by the security forces and the regional government, then and now led by the conservative Narendra Modi.
India is a country built on a secular constitution and a salad of religions and cultures, hence, in the words of journalist Tarun Tejpal, the events in Gujarat was not only a "national shame", but "the biggest slap in the face the idea of India ".
Six years after the "slap", the citizens of the vibrant Ahmedabad pass, buy and sell on the streets working for mixed and indistinct, until, by evening, they return to their neighborhoods turned into Hindus and Muslims.