Council of Indian Muslims (UK)

MEMORANDUM  ON THE MASS MURDERER OF MUSLIMS  BEING HONOURED BY MUSLIM COUNTRIES

The Council of Indian Muslims (UK) wishes to complement this august gathering of Heads of states of the Organisation of Islamic Conference and presents the following facts urging the Excellencies to declare the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi persona non grata, who, according to Indian newspapers, has been invited for a visit by one of OIC member country, Indonesia. 

Earlier in November 2008 a similar invitation was extended to him by the government of Qatar but the visit was later cancelled. Recently in 2009 Sultanate of Oman also extended its hand to honour this mass murderer of Muslims. However, after online signature campaigns and protests by the Indian Muslims and justice loving non-Muslims, Government of Oman clarified that it had nothing to do with the invitation and a non Omani company working there had invited Modi on its own initiative.

 We are sure Your Excellencies will be aware that it was Modi, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, who led the massacre of thousands of Muslims in 2002 in Gujarat.

 Excellencies, it was due to Modi’s role in this genocide of Muslims that in 2005, the US government took the unprecedented step of revoking his visitor and diplomatic visas under the International Religious Freedom Act. Subsequently, the United Kingdom also advised the Indian government to cancel Modi’s trip to England. When Modi attempted to go to the US once again in 2008, over 32 US Congressmen intervened by writing to the US State Department opposing his entry into the US.

 Just to remind you, Your Excellencies, the enormity and severity of these pogroms we produce below excerpts from a memorandum that the Council of Indian Muslims —UK (CIM) had sent, through the Sudanese Embassy in London, to OIC’s meeting held on 25-29 June 2002 in Khartoum:

 More than 2000 Muslims have been killed, many of them burnt alive, in the ethnic cleansing in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Hundreds of Muslim women and girls as young as 13 have been gang raped and killed.

• Properties worth millions of pounds have been destroyed, looted, plundered and mosques and religious places razed and ransacked. All these facts have been fully documented not only by international human rights bodies but also by the Indian press as well as a large body of fair Hindu opinion.
• The former Indian Prime Minister Mr V. P. Singh has described these pogroms as parallel to the crimes committed in Bosnia. "What is happening in Bosnia is happening here." (The Telegraph, Calcutta, 13 March 2002).
• Giving a more detailed account of the barbarity. The Telegraph of London said, "It was certainly the first time officials of a political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which controls the Gujarat state as well as the Union government, have been implicated in turning a blind eye to mass murder." (18 June 2002)

"This was state-sponsored violence, no doubt about it" the paper quotes a police officer. "The police were told by politicians to take no action. The police conduct was tantamount to murder. As an officer, I feel totally scandalised and disgusted."

• Mukul Sinha, a Hindu lawyer who is pursuing one of dozens of complaints against thugs, state assembly members and police officers, said: "Please don't say this was a riot. It was genocide, pure and simple."
• Across the state, 180 mosques were destroyed or damaged along with thousands of Muslim-owned businesses and homes.
• In one of the villages Aid workers reported, “A Hindu mob dragged 30 young women into full public view, sexually assaulted them and forced them to run naked. Yet the Muslims of Fatehpura refused to go to the police or even reveal the names of the women, fearing no man would marry them” the aid workers said.” (The Washington Post 3 June 2002)
• A senior Indian bureaucrat, Harsh Mander, who resigned from his job in protest against this genocide, described “... a small fraction of all that I heard and saw ... what can you say about a woman eight months pregnant who begged to be spared? Her assailants instead slit open her stomach pulled out her foetus and slaughtered it before her eyes. What can you say about a family of nineteen being killed by flooding their house with water and then electrocuting them with high-tension electricity?" (http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020319&fname=mander&sid=1 )
• A senior British High Commission official in India who reported on these 'riots' to the Foreign Office in London wrote: these pogroms "had all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and that reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims is impossible while the chief minister remains in power." And, "far from being spontaneous, it was planned, possibly months in advance, carried out by an extremist Hindu organisation with the support of the state government." http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1951000/1951471.stm
• In its report, published on 6 April 2002, a women's only delegation, sponsored by Citizens Initiative reported that "There is compelling evidence of sexual violence against women. These crimes against women have been grossly underreported and the exact extent of these crimes - in rural and urban areas - demands further investigation. Among the women surviving in relief camps, are many who have suffered the most bestial forms of sexual violence - including rape, gang rape, mass rape, stripping, insertion of objects into their bodies, and molestations. A majority of rape victims have been burnt alive."
• So horrific have been these crimes that when the Indian Prime Minister Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee toured the refugee camps in Gujarat he said, "I am ashamed ... I don't know what face I will take to some of the Muslim countries I have to visit."
• However, soon after he visited a Muslim country where no one even so much as hinted of any feelings about the Gujarat genocide, he turned round against the victims themselves. He went on to say: "Wherever such Muslims live, they tend not to live in co-existence with others, not to mingle with others; and instead of propagating their ideas in a peaceful manner, they want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats. The world has become alert to this danger." (Speech in Goa, 12 April 2002, Indian Express, 24 April 2002).

In other words those Muslims who were killed in Gujarat or were being killed and brutalised elsewhere were 'such' Muslims who deserved to be done with! Mr Vajpayee was reciting the latest mantra of the September 11 world order viz. Muslim = Fundamentalist = Terrorist = Enemy of Civilisation. The rest is understood.

Excellencies, as far as the policies of Modi’s government are concerned, nothing has changed and eight years on, the Muslim community in Gujarat is still subjected to a devastating economic and social boycott, institutionalised at every level.

Excellencies, by inviting and honouring a mass murderer of Muslims like Modi by none but the Muslim countries themselves, a dangerous message is being given to anti-Muslim elements in India.

Excellencies, we are pained to see the silence of this eminent body on the injustices to which the 150 million Indian Muslims have been subjected. Far from fulfilling its duty to, at least, deplore the crimes meted out upon them the OIC as an organisation and its member states in their individual capacities are giving a green signal to anti-Muslim forces in India to do with Muslims what they like.

Therefore, Excellencies, we request you to use your good offices, ask the Indonesian Government to withdraw this invitation and issue a communiqué declaring Narendra Modi an Islamophobe and ask all member states to declare him a persona non grata and instruct OIC countries’ Ambassadors neither to accept an invitation by Modi led government in Gujarat nor to extend an invitation to this fascist.

CC:

H.E. Mr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu

Secretary General Organisation of Islamic Conference
PO Box: 178,
Jeddah-21411
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Fax: 00966 2 2751953

His Excellency Prof. Dr. Ahmet Davutoğlu

Foreign Minister of Republic of Turkey
Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Balgat / ANKARA /
TURKEY 06100
 

His Excellency Dr. R.M. Marty M. Natalegawa

Foreign Minister Republic of Indonesia
Jl. Pejambon No.6. Jakarta Pusat, 10110
INDONESIA

His Excellency Dr R M Marty M Natalegawa

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Indonesian Embassy
38 Grosvenor Sq
London, W1K 2HW
Fax: 020 7491 4993

His Excellency LetJen TNI (Purn) Andi M. Ghalib SH. MH.

Indonesian Embassy
50-A, Chanakyapuri New Delhi
INDIA
Fax: 0091-11-26884402