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US report on Nandigram human rights violation – India rejects finding |
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New Delhi has rejected the US State Department’s latest annual report on human rights which has listed the Nandigram violence among the worst cases of rights violations in India in 2007. Violence broke out in Nandigram (West Bengal) on March 14 last year over the acquisition of land for a special economic zone. Fourteen people were killed in police firing on the day the violence began and at least 50 were killed in clashes since then.
The Information and Broadcasting Minister, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, said, India would not take any criticism by the US on its internal matters. The CPI and CPIM were also quick to seize the opportunity to lambast the US for “grave interference in internal affairs of India by the Bush Administration.” CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta criticized and rejected the US report. The CPI[M] in a statement asked the US to concentrate on its own “gross human rights violations in occupied Iraq and by the Israeli regime in the Gaza Strip and other areas of occupied Palestine”. The party called the reference to Nandigram violence in the State Department report unnecessary and unwarranted and based on “totally misplaced facts.” Party leaders felt the reference to Nandigram had connections with the CPIM’s opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal.
The annual report of the US State Department holds the CPIM Government in West Bengal responsible for the violence and termed it a major case of human rights violations in India. It also mentions in detail the Rizwanur Rehman case in Kolkata which, after the Nandigram violence, caused huge embarrassment to the Left-ruled West Bengal. The report on India also mentions in detail human rights violations in Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s Gujarat and has cited a large number of cases to prove its point, including the Sohrabuddin encounter and the Bilkis Bano rape case. The report also mentions the failure of the Modi Government to arrest and convict those responsible for the 2002 violence. It also lists out a large number of instances of human rights violations in the troubled North-East as well as Jammu and Kashmir.
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