[Reader-list] also picket against Advani message

[Anjali Sagar]

PLEASE INFORM EVERYBODY CONCERNED WITH SOUTH ASIAN ISSUES
Here are details of the Advani picket tomorrow (Wednesday) and the text
of the leaflet issued by the organisers:

L K Advani not welcome here
Mass picket against Advani
Wednesday 21 August 2002
>From 5.00pm to 7.00pm
India High Commission, Aldwych, London WC2
Jointly organised by AWAAZ and South Asia Solidarity Group

India's Home Minister Lal Kishan Advani is on a three-day official visit
to the UK. We stand here to declare that he is not welcome here - ever.
Here is why.

As Home Minister he has allowed the Gujarat Government to engage in a
systematic, state sponsored massacre of Muslims. Since 28 February 2002,
more than 2000 Muslims have been killed - most burnt alive. Over 250
Muslim women have been gang raped and then torched or butchered. Looting
and burning of Muslim homes and businesses worth billions of pounds has
left 100,000 Muslims in relief camps. Hundreds of Muslim places of
worship have been destroyed. All this was done with the state government
ministers' direct involvement and the Home Minister's patronage.

>From the testimony of his secular, estranged daughter-in-law, it is now
known that LK Advani was directly responsible for the decision to
demolish the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in December 1992, an act that led to
communal violence in every district of India.

In 1990 he carried out a Ram Rath Yatra (a Hindu chariot procession) with
the specific goal of exploiting the Hindu religious sentiment to grab
power at the centre. Wherever it went, a blood bath followed the Rath
Yatra.

Advani joined the RSS, an extremist Hindu organisation implicated in the
assassination of Gandhi, as a teenager. In 1947 he ran to Gujarat from
his native Pakistan to avoid arrest on a charge of conspiracy to
assassinate Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan.

The collection of Hindu chauvinist organisations spawned by the RSS
includes the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, which, under the protective
umbrella provided by Advani as Home Minister, have carried out violent
crimes against Christians and Muslims throughout India including the
torching in 1999 of an Australian missionary and his two sons.

This ruthless exploiter of religious minorities is one of the accused in
the Jain Hawala case because his name was found in the personal diary of
Jain, a multi-millionaire businessman, along with others who were paid a
large sum of cash.

Issued by Awaaz - South Asia Watch. AWAAZ-South Asia Watch is a secular
network that has been set up to both monitor and combats the problem or
religious hatred and fascism both in the UK and South Asia. Although
newly established it has already secured support from leading civil
rights and community organisation such as Aaaj Kay Naam, Asian Women's
Refuge, Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF), Dalit Forum for
Social Justice (UK), Friends of All India Christian Alliance, India
Forum, Indian Muslim Federation, Indian Muslim Council, Muslim
Parliament, National Civil Rights Movement, SEWA Southall, Southall Black
Sisters, Socialist Alliance, The Monitoring Group and many more. Why not
join us? Contact Awaaz at: 14 Featherstone Road, Southall, Middlesex UB2
5AA tel: 020 8843 2333 fax: 020 8813 9734 email: info at ncrm.org.uk