Kandhamal Update February 3rd 20101
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PRESS NOTE
Protest against hounding of G Udaigiri refugees as Kandhamal
Administration cleans up district on eve of European Delegation Visit;
government must give time frame for rehab, employment of all victims
Kandhamal-Bhubaneswar, 3 February 2010
All India Christian Council Secretary General Dr John Dayal, who is
also a member of the National Integration Council, has expressed his
deep distress and anguish at the hounding of and forcible evacuations
of Christian refugees living in shanties in G Udaigiri in a cosmetic
operation on the eve of the visit of the European delegation which
will go to the district on 4th and 5th February 2010.
In letters to the EU delegation, as also to the State government and
national human rights and minorities commissions, Dr Dayal narrated
the plight of the 91 members of 21 families of 11 villages now being
forced to live under plastic sheets along the road in the New Hatu-
Pada [weekly marketplace] of G Udaigiri town, just outside the town.
The families are originally refugees from the villages of Killaka,
Kutuluma, Rotingia-Porakia, Kiramaha, Dokadia, G-Mangia, Ratingia,
Dhangarama, Lorangia, Dakapala, Rudiangia, in Raikia and other
blocks. The group includes 11 married women, three widows, and an old
man with fracture of the hips and thighs, and two infants who were
born in the camp.
The families said they had to flee their villages in the first wave of
violence on 25-26 August 2008, and were out up in the Habaika High
school refugee camp run by the government. After some months, as the
government arbitrarily started closing down the formal refugee camps,
they were dispersed from Habaika and came to stay in the cemented
platforms and structures of the New Hato Pada market just outside the
G Udaigiri township. The men folk found casual work as labour in the
shops and fields nearby as they were not being given any aid by the
government, or indeed by any other official or voluntary agency. They
had been abandoned to their fate.
They were constantly harassed by the market authorities, but allowed
to stay on after their daily dose of threats and abuses. They could
not go back to their villages where they had been threatened all these
months with the village leaders insisting they would be allowed only
if they converted to Hinduism.
Suddenly, when it was learnt that the EU delegation was coming, the
Market Committee secretary, Jeevan Pattnaik, came with uniformed men,
said he was going to lock up the pump of the bore well which provided
them water, and told them to get out of the market. Barring the family
of the man whose thighs are fractured and who cannot move at all, the
other families fled the market and set up their shanties along the
road, on the raised boundary, using plastic sheets as a roof to shield
them from the winter.
Last night the Naib Tehsildar, the civil officer in charge of the G
Udaigiri block, came to spot with a jeep of police accompanying him
and asked the refugees to get out their shanties and move away. When
they, and in particular the women, protested, he told them they could
for the night come back to the market sheds, but to clear the road, as
those were his orders. A blackout of the mobile phone system in
Kandhamal which had lasted 48 hours prevented a faster implementation
of his orders as other officials had to be summoned from the Raikia
town by sending a messenger. When I left the place at 10 pm, the
refugees were still on the road in their shanties.
Dr Dayal said it was a matter of regret that a drive has been launched
to ensure that visiting fact finding teams, and in particular the EU
delegation, do not see the real magnitude of tragedy, and that it is
continuing. Much worse, the inhuman trauma on the children, women and
men who have been thrice displaced, has not even been taken into
official consideration.
At this moment, there is no information if the authorities at all want
to give land and rehabilitate this group of 91 human beings. The
government has also not spoken of the rehabilitation of tens of
thousands of refugees, or how it intends to see that the houses which
were destroyed, are completed. Even with the help of the church, more
than half of the 5,600 or so houses will still remain un-built, or
incomplete. There is no information on employment of the victims and
resuming the interrupted education of thousands of children. There
are also over 270 families in Barakhama who were displaced in the
December 2007 violence and are still to get land or house. The
government must give a time frame for all this, Dr Dayal said.
The AICC has expressed the hope the authorities will take humanitarian
action and settle the G. Udaigiri refugees. “We also hope the justice
dispensation process will ensure just punishment for all those who are
threatening this group with forcible conversion. The authorities must
also take disciplinary action against the erring officials”, the press
statement said.
Signed
John Dayal