UPDATE (India): Witness protection required for Gujarat victims and witnesses

Dear Friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission wishes to inform you the need for the Indian Government to provide witness protection in all trials related to the Gujarat pogrom.  

Over 2,000 Indian citizens were killed in Gujarat in the weeks and months following 28 February 2002.  It is not known how many women and girls were raped before being killed.  To determine or even estimate the economic losses suffered during that time will be a most difficult endeavor: although the Gujarat Government’s solution has been to dole out an absurdly small pittance in the name of compensation.  (For further details on the mass violence of Gujarat, please see our previous forward appeal in 2002: FA-3-2002and press release in 2003: ALRC-PL-04-2003).

After so many deaths, so many rapes, so much destruction of property, so much looting, so much human suffering of all varieties, there should have been countless more trials than the very few which are in progress or are awaiting.  No trial can be conducted without witnesses, and witnesses cannot testify freely in an atmosphere of fear and insecurity, when they live in terror of those institutions and individuals that should protect them and ensure that they get justice.

At this point in time, there appears a declining chance that Gujarat’s Muslims will get justice, or that they will be able to speak freely about what happened during the post-Godhra violence, while the Gujarat Government and the Gujarat Police can manipulate and terrorise them.

A recent case provides proof of this situation.  The Best Bakery of Hanuman Tekri, Vododara, was attacked by a mob of several hundred people late in the evening on 1 March 2002.  By morning, the bakery had been burnt down and over a dozen people had been killed.  Zahira Habibullah Sheikh, many members of whose family were among the dead or injured, described in detail what had happened.  She said, among other things, that the Police Control Room and the Panigate Police Station had been asked for help, and that a police vehicle had stopped briefly by the bakery but had driven on.  Despite this testimony, Zhira has since stated they she knew nothing of the attack on the bakery and that the accused had actually been their saviours.  As a consequence, all 21 accused were acquitted.  In an even more remarkable claim, Zahira also accused NGO personnel of taking her to Mumbai “at knife point” and holding her captive there.  She has, however, since withdrawn this claim.

Where was Zahira when she decided to tell the trial court that she had lied earlier and no attack had taken place?  Where was Zahira when she decided to ask to be protected from NGO personnel?  On both occasions, she was in Vododara; and on the second, it was only the Gujarat Police that could be asked to protect her.  Who controlled the Gujarat Police, the force whose duty it was to have prevented the crimes of which the Supreme Court had spoken? The Gujarat Government, of course, which so many have held responsible for having planned and instigated those very crimes.

In light of this, we ask you to intervene in this matter, and request you to appeal to the President of Republic of India, to the Prime Minister, to the Minister for Home, and to the National Human Rights Commission to make arrangements for the protection of all witnesses in all trials related to the Gujarat pogrom.  We further request that you ask these authorities to extend this protection to the families of the witnesses.  

It goes without saying that the Gujarat Government and the Gujarat Police should not be involved in the planning or execution of this program of protection, and that witnesses should face no threat of pressure from NGOs either.

Thank you.

Urgent Appeals Desk
Asian Human Rights Commission
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SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please send a letter, fax or an email to the following authorities and request that protection be provided to all witnesses and their families.

To support this case, please click here: SEND APPEAL LETTER