This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/worst-communal-violence-in-delhi-in-decades-leaves-13-dead-as-trump-visits-india/2020/02/25/ecac4b5e-57dd-11ea-8efd-0f904bdd8057_story.html

The article has changed 9 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 7 Version 8
Death toll rises to 27 in Delhi violence as Modi issues plea for calm Worst communal violence in Delhi in decades leaves 17 dead as Trump visits India
(about 8 hours later)
NEW DELHI — The sit-in where women had gathered to protest a new citizenship law was gone, the posters torn and trampled. The mosque next door stood charred and silent, its floor smeared with blood. Stillness filled a major road, empty except for stray dogs picking their way through debris. NEW DELHI — Rioters roamed the streets with iron rods and wooden sticks, demanding to know whether people were Hindus or Muslims. Mosques were damaged and shops were set ablaze, sending smoke billowing high into the air. People with gunshot wounds and blunt trauma from hurled stones rushed into a nearby hospital.
A tense calm settled on a swath of India’s capital Wednesday after a stunning outbreak of communal violence this week left 27 dead. The riots are the worst such clashes to hit Delhi in decades and came as President Trump made his first official visit to India. Two days of communal violence in the northeastern part of Delhi have left at least 17 people dead and 150 injured in the worst such clashes in India’s capital in decades.
Mobs of Hindus and Muslims had clashed on roads and alleyways in northeast Delhi, throwing stones and crude gasoline bombs. At least three mosques were torched, as were scores of homes and businesses. Witnesses said that instead of stopping the violence, police joined crowds shouting Hindu nationalist slogans and fired indiscriminately. The violence happened to unfold as President Trump made his first official visit to India and conducted meetings Tuesday in the tony central area of the city home to central government buildings and embassies.
Trump’s second day in India: Violence in Delhi and support for Modi on ‘religious freedom’Trump’s second day in India: Violence in Delhi and support for Modi on ‘religious freedom’
On Wednesday afternoon, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended days of silence on the riots. He issued an appeal for calm, urging people in Delhi to “maintain peace and brotherhood at all times” and restore normalcy. The riots represent a serious escalation of tensions after months of protests in response to a controversial citizenship law and growing frictions between supporters and opponents of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This week’s violence marked the second time in Modi’s political career that he has presided over a significant episode of communal violence. In 2002, when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, more than 1,000 people were killed, mostly Muslims, in three days of riots. A court-appointed panel cleared Modi of involvement in the violence. Since winning reelection last year in a landslide victory, Modi has moved swiftly to implement his party’s agenda of Hindu primacy in India, a multireligious democracy founded as a secular nation. The citizenship law, which provides a fast track to citizenship for migrants from six religions — excluding Islam — is the most contentious step yet. While India is a Hindu-majority nation, Muslims make up about 14 percent of its 1.3 billion people.
Why protests are erupting over India’s new citizenship law India’s first-time protesters: Mothers and grandmothers stage weeks-long sit-in against citizenship law
The riots in Delhi took place against a backdrop of rising tensions over a controversial citizenship law passed by the Modi government in December. Critics say the measure is unconstitutional and has stoked fears that Muslims will be treated like second-class citizens in Modi’s India. Protests against the law have erupted nationwide, with Indians of all religions taking part. Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in peaceful protests against the law. Some protests have turned violent, and the government mounted a crackdown, storming university campuses and making widespread arrests. Nearly 20 people were killed in protests in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, in December.
But Muslims have led the opposition to the law. Meanwhile, members of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have vilified the protesters, calling them traitors who deserve to be shot and linking them with India’s rival Pakistan. One such leader, Kapil Mishra, helped trigger this week’s violence: He threatened to clear a sit-in conducted by Muslim women, sparking a clash between supporters and opponents of the citizenship law. On Tuesday night, police had barricaded the road to Maujpur, a poor and densely populated neighborhood of narrow lanes that reported some of the worst violence. Isolated gunshots punctuated the tense silence. All of the shops were shuttered.
The way the police responded to the violence in Delhi points to a troubling conclusion, said Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Brown University who has researched communal clashes in India. “The cops either looked away or participated,” he said. That means there was “state connivance and state culpability — it’s a pogrom,” Varshney said. This week’s violence in northeastern Delhi is the worst in the capital since at least 1992, when there were nationwide riots, and possibly since the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
M.S. Randhawa, a spokesman for the Delhi Police, told reporters Wednesday that “sufficient force was deployed” in the northeastern part of the city, and additional paramilitary personnel were brought in to assist. The “situation is under control,” he said. The trigger for the clashes came when Kapil Mishra, a local leader of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, on Sunday threatened to clear a sit-in mounted by protesters, nearly all Muslim women, against the citizenship law. He said he would take no action while Trump was visiting but that if police did not move the protesters soon, he would take matters into his own hands.
In the afternoon, Ajit Doval, India’s national security adviser, toured a riot-hit area on foot to reassure residents. An agitated young woman in a burqa who said she was a student approached him. “We’re not safe,” she said. “You don’t have to worry,” he responded. “I give you my word.” What happened next remains unclear and chaotic, but groups of Hindus and Muslims hurled stones at one another Monday.
On Tuesday, as Trump commended Modi for his “incredible” efforts to uphold religious freedom at a news conference in central Delhi, violence was erupting in the northeastern part of the city. Adil Khan, 29, lives in the neighborhood of Kardampuri and said Muslims gathered in the street to defend themselves after a message went out that a mob was massing to attack. By the next morning, the mob was closer.
In Ashok Nagar, about 200 men chanted Jai Shri Ram or Victory to Lord Ram, a rallying cry of Modi’s ruling party, as they vandalized and torched a row of shops, said Avichal Dubey, a journalist for the Wire who witnessed the scene. Some climbed the minaret of a mosque, broke off a loudspeaker and hoisted a Hindu nationalist saffron flag. “From our house, we could see the mobs burning vehicles and shops,” he said. “The mob was very close. I was scared for my life.”
Shehzad Khan, 48, manages a small clinic in the area of Brij Puri. Normally his patients come in complaining of fevers or coughs. On Tuesday, three people arrived with gunshot wounds and more than a dozen with injuries from hurled stones. Groups of men carried in two dead bodies, Khan said, one with a gunshot wound to the head and the other charred in a fire. In a nearby area, groups of Hindu activists wielding sticks roamed the streets below Bilal Rabbani’s house, pounding on the hoods of passing cars and forcing them to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Victory to Lord Ram,” a favorite slogan of Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling party. Rabbani said supporters of the citizenship law — who appeared to be outsiders, rather than people who lived in the neighborhood — also set fire to Muslim shops as police looked on.
Residents described violent confrontations between groups of Hindus and Muslims near a main road that separates a Hindu-dominated area from a Muslim-dominated neighborhood. One Muslim family carrying bags of luggage hurried across the main road from the Hindu side to the Muslim side. “People used to say that things will change for Muslims if [Modi] wins and I never believed them,” said Rabbani, 25, who is training to be a librarian. “But I can see it now.”
“We only had time to carry a blanket and one pair of clothes each,” said Ayesha Salmani, 32, as she clutched the hand of her young daughter. Salmani said they fled their home as soon as they felt it was safe to leave. Several journalists were attacked. Saurabh Shukla, a reporter with New Delhi Television, said he and a colleague were on an overpass filming damage to a mosque Tuesday when they were spotted by rioters. The rioters came and began punching and beating his colleague with sticks, damaging three of his teeth. He and his colleague were allowed to leave only after Shukla showed them a string of prayer beads to prove he was Hindu and deleted the footage from their phones, Shukla said.
Mohammad Abbas is the 85-year-old caretaker of the small Farukhiya mosque in the same area. After evening prayers Tuesday, he said that police officers attacked him and the mosque’s imam. He said they called him a traitor, and he saw them vandalizing and setting fire to the mosque. When he was taken to the hospital, he said he was covered in blood. “They beat me so mercilessly, my hands were broken,” Abbas said. Police struggled to contain the violence, and witnesses said some joined in at points. A Reuters correspondent said he saw policemen encouraging supporters of the law to throw stones at Muslim protesters. Mohammad Sajid, 40, who works at a shop, said police arrived in his Muslim-dominated neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon and fired tear gas. When angry residents began to throw stones, the police opened fire, he said, hitting his younger brother in his back.
Randhawa, the police spokesman, denied the allegations but said that the authorities would take action if evidence were provided. He said he saw five others with gunshot wounds. “It’s a dark day,” said Sajid. The “police shouldn’t have fired.” A spokesman for the Delhi police did not respond to calls and messages seeking comment on the incident.
Outside the mosque, it was hard to believe this was India’s bustling capital. The area looked like a war zone: Acrid smoke drifted from a school that was burned and vandalized, and empty roads were littered with broken bricks and burned-out vehicles. Inside the mosque, the walls were blackened with soot, and charred books lay scattered on the floor. On the roof, an Indian flag fluttered weakly in the breeze. On Tuesday night, nearly a dozen injured people arrived on motorbikes, rickshaws and ambulances at Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, several with gunshot injuries. Rajesh Kumar Singh, 36, came with a gunshot wound in his thigh. Singh’s brother Amit said he was shot by masked men near his home and blamed Muslims for the attack.
Tania Dutta contributed to this report. “Why are they attacking us? If they are against the [citizenship] law, they should tell the government,” said Singh.
Trump praises Modi’s record on religious tolerance as violence erupts over India’s treatment of Muslims Sajid, the shop worker, said the area was plunged into bloodshed when members of the ruling party decided to confront opponents of the law. For two months, the protest against the citizenship law in the area had unfolded “without any violence,” he said. “Things turned ugly when the [law’s] supporters came.”
Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow contributed to this report.
Visual story: Trump’s 36 hours in India
Trump’s India visit opens with more symbolism than substance as he celebrates ties with a fellow nationalist
India’s Muslims rush to collect documents after new law fuels anxiety over their citizenship statusIndia’s Muslims rush to collect documents after new law fuels anxiety over their citizenship status
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the worldToday’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign newsLike Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news