BILASIPARA, India, Aug 10 (AlertNet) – There was little time to do anything but grab her two young boys and run as fast as she could when the gunmen came into the northeast Indian village in the dead of night and began firing.
Along with scores of other villagers, nine-months pregnant Rohima Begum hid with her family waist-deep in the rice fields as the gunshots rang out amid the screams of those left behind.
Eighteen days on, Rohima, like hundreds of thousands in Assam state, languishes in a displacement camp – too scared to go home after the worst ethnic violence in India in a decade.
But the government says the violence, in which 75 people have been killed and more than 400,000 displaced, is over and has set a deadline for fleeing villagers to return to their homes – India’s Independence Day on August 15.
“How can we go back? There is nothing left. We saw them burning down the entire village as we escaped. The fire and smoke were visible from a long distance,” Rohima says, cradling her three-day-old boy, who was born in the primary school which now houses 800 people in lower Assam’s Dhubri district.
“The people who did this to us live in villages next to us. There is no security. If we go back, they will kill us.”
Violence between the Bodo tribespeople and Muslim communities broke out on July 20, after unidentified men killed four Bodo youths. In retaliation, armed Bodos – who dominate Kokrajhar and Chirang districts – attacked Muslims, suspecting them of being behind the deaths.
Communal clashes have since ensued and fleeing survivors speak of large groups of men armed with automatic weapons surrounding entire villages, going on the rampage, gunning down people or hacking them to death with machetes. Hundreds of villages have been looted and razed.
Reuters has the full article
