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Kandhamal-(Bhubaneswar): The All India Christian Council
(AICC), 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 Union (EU), delegation which
will go to the district on Thursday and Friday (February 4th and 5th
).
An AICC Press release said that 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 on the
outskirts of 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 put 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 the 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.
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 release said.
(pervezbari@eth.net)
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