NEW DELHI, 23 November 2003 — Ethnic violence rocked India’s northeastern state of Assam again yesterday as suspected rebels riding motorcycles gunned down at least 11 settlers from the neighboring Bihar state.
Suspected members of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) killed eight workers and critically wounded two others with automatic rifles in Mahakali village in the eastern district of Tinsukia, said the state’s police chief, Khagen Sharma.
Three workers were killed a separate attack in the district’s Hebetakhoria village, Sharma said.
Tinsukia is the area worst affected by weeklong ethnic tensions between ethnic Assamese and migrants from neighboring Bihar state over access to government jobs in Assam.
The latest deaths bring to 40 the total of migrant workers from Bihar who have been killed this week.
The area is about 600 km east of the state capital, Guwahati. All the victims were brick factory workers, traders, cart pullers or vendors. Some 2,000 soldiers deployed in 14 of Assam’s 24 districts failed to quell the violence.
Three ministers in Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s federal government visited some violence-hit areas yesterday in an attempt to ease the swelling ethnic tensions.
C.P. Thakur, federal minister for development of the northeastern region, said the violence was part of a plan by separatist rebels to create unrest in India’s eastern border areas, and accused neighboring Bangladesh of sheltering the rebels.
“We all know that top leaders of the outlawed ULFA are based in Bangladesh, where they are being provided with logistic support,” Thakur told reporters. He didn’t give any details. India claims that the rebels have bases inside Bangladesh, a charge Dhaka denies.
ULFA, one of northeastern India’s main separatist groups, issued a statement last week warning Hindi-speaking people to leave Assam. Hindi is India’s national language but is not commonly spoken in the state.
Since then, sporadic attacks against Hindi speakers have taken place across the state. About 100 houses have been burned in eastern Assam, officials have said.
“The army in the two districts have been given full liberty to contain the situation in collaboration with local police and paramilitary,” the state’s Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said at a public peace rally in Guwahati yesterday. He didn’t elaborate.
Junior Interior Minister I.D. Swami said in New Delhi that his government was ready to assist state officials with more troops.
Hundreds of Biharis are fleeing Assam in trains and buses, and some 3,000 are in relief camps set up by the government, local officials said.
Biharis and Assamese are of different ethnicity, and people in the northeast resent those from other parts of India coming to take jobs in the economically underdeveloped region.
The Assam violence has prompted reprisals in Bihar, where mobs have attacked trains carrying Assamese to and from their home state.
Bihari residents going for railroad job examinations have also been mobbed in Bombay, where Hindu extremists are leading a campaign against “outsiders.”
