India: Troops Ordered To Shoot On Sight In Assam State

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In India, authorities have issued shoot on sight orders and dispatched additional troops to the northeastern state of Assam, where ethnic clashes have claimed at least 22 lives. Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes to escape the violence that has engulfed the region.

Heavily armed soldiers and paramilitary troops patrolled remote districts in the northeastern state of Assam as violence showed no signs of ebbing.

Location of Assam in India
Location of Assam in India

Clashes between the ethnic Bodo community and Muslim settlers erupted Friday night after unidentified persons killed four young people in a Bodo dominated district. Reports say that Bodos suspected that Muslims were behind the killings and attacked them in retaliation.

Since then, rioting mobs have targeted hundreds of villages and burned many homes. The violence has prompted tens of thousands of people to flee and seek shelter in refugee camps set up in schools and government buildings. An indefinite curfew has been imposed in the worst-affected Kokrajhar district.

The director general of police in Assam, Jayanta Narayan Chowdhury, told reporters that they are trying to control the situation.

“The situation is still tense, and isolated incidents, individual incidents are taking place, some of the houses have been burned and there are some other reports of clashes … In these areas, one of the problems we have is weapons. There are people who have weapons, we are going after them,” said Narayan.

As security forces struggled to contain the violence, authorities in New Delhi said they were in touch with leaders of the Bodos and the Muslims to try to defuse the situation.

The chief minister of Assam state, Tarun Gogoi, appealed for restraint.

“It is a matter of great concern, no doubt about it. We are taking it very seriously,” said Gogoi.

Transportation was hit as protestors squatted on rail lines and mobs attacked trains with spears and rocks. Assam, sandwiched between Bangladesh and China, is connected to India by a 22-kilometer corridor.

The hostility between the Bodos and the Muslims settlers has been simmering for decades, rooted in long-running disputes over territory. In recent years, anti-Muslim sentiment has been growing among indigenous tribes.

Sanjoy Hazarika heads the Center for North East Studies and Policy Research in New Delhi.

“Largely conflicts over land rights – really, the question of who is located where, concerns about people being moved out of their homes and villages – this has been a problem over quite some time,” said Sanjoy Hazarika, who heads the Center for North East Studies and Policy Research in New Delhi. “These are larger issues that need resolution not through mere government interventions but by senior people from the communities playing a role, reconciling people to living with each other, not just tolerating each other, and ultimately that in the north east is the key to any future solution.”

Hazarika says in the past, victims of such incidents of violence have languished in relief camps for many years. Clashes between the Bodos and Muslims also wracked the region in 2008.

VOA

The VOA is the Voice of America

One thought on “India: Troops Ordered To Shoot On Sight In Assam State

  • July 24, 2012 at 4:02 pm
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    This is a case of vote-bank-politics.These BANGLADESHI Muslims had been systematically infiltrating Assam,West Bengal,Bihar,Tripura etc since long.They had been well supported by Congress and CPM by providing them ration cards and included them into voters list and given voters ID thereby legalising their stay in these areas.They are core vote-bank for these parties.The demography of the region has changed drastically,the ethnic tribals and other are driven out from their lands by these illegal settlers with the support of Congress govt.These problems will continue and there is no solutions in foreseeable future.It will turn into more armed struggle.

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