Date:17/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/17/stories/2008091761051600.htm

National

NCM team for Karnataka

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: A five-member team of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) left for Karnataka on Tuesday evening to make an on-the-spot study of the attacks on Christian institutions in different parts of Dakshina Kannada and Mangalore districts since Sunday.

The team, led by NCM chairperson Mohamed Shafi Qureshi, includes Vice-chairman Michael P. Pinto and member Harcharan Singh Josh. Arnold James, member of the Delhi Minorities Commission, is also part of the team.

Earlier, the NCM had sent Mr. Pinto to Orissa to take stock of the situation in the Kandhamal district where violence erupted in August following the killing of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader. Since Mr. Pinto had just returned, his report is awaited.

The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) issued a statement expressing distress over attacks on Christians in Karnataka. “We are struck by the irony that the saffron brigade is concurrently orchestrating a mass campaign of bigotry and lawlessness that began in Orissa and has now spread to Karnataka and even threatens hitherto tolerant and peaceful Kerala.”

While the SAHMAT is confident that the Kerala government will contain the threat to peace there, it fears that the turmoil and suffering inflicted on the Christians in Orissa and Karnataka may escalate as the “mob frenzy” is being “abetted by conniving State governments.”

Describing the approach to terrorism of the “Hindutva parties” as “susceptible to gross abuses,” the SAHMAT noted that the lawlessness such organisations were fomenting and the impunity they enjoyed in their campaign of violence against religious minorities created fertile breeding grounds for terrorism. “We condemn the terrorism of the mob just as strongly as we condemn the terrorism of the bomb.”