Former British FM spills beans on 2002 Gujarat riots inquiry

ISLAMABAD (APP) - Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has testified to the fact that the British government had conducted an investigation on its own into the 2002 Gujarat riots in India after the large-scale violence created ripples in the UK.

He said that the investigation was carried out after citizens of Gujarati Muslim origin in the UK were worried about their loved ones in India and were making representations to that effect to the then Tony Blair government.

During an interview with ‘The Wire’ regarding BBC’s documentary about the 2002 Gujarat riots, the former British diplomat said that the simple fact was that in Britain, including in his constituency, there were hundreds of thousands of people from the Indian state of Gujarat, mainly Muslims.

There was a lot of concern and there were also people that he knew whose families were affected by these inter-communal riots directly and they were making representations to them, he added.

Straw further elaborated that the ripples of the Gujarat riots were felt in the UK and that as a result, then British High Commissioner Sir Rob Young ordered an investigation.

The 29-minute interview with Straw was conducted days after BBC aired the documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’, which revealed that British authorities had ordered an inquiry into the riots as they had found the extent of the violence alarming.

According to the BBC documentary, a report given to the UK government by the inquiry team mentioned that the “extent of the violence was much greater than reported” and there was a “widespread and systematic rape of Muslim women” as the violence was “politically motivated.”

It further said that the riots aimed to “purge Muslims from Hindu areas.”

“That undoubtedly came from Modi,” the documentary maintained.
In the documentary, a former British diplomat, who remains anonymous said, “At least 2,000 people were murdered during the violence where the vast majority were Muslims. We described it as a pogrom – a deliberate, and politically driven effort targeted at the Muslim community.”

The former UK foreign secretary said that he had conversations with Indian officials, including the then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and the then prime minister regarding the riots.

“What we did was establish an inquiry and have a team go to Gujarat and find out for themselves what had happened. And they produced a very thorough report,” the Indian media quoted the former diplomat as saying.

The BBC documentary looked at “the tensions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the country’s Muslim minority”, as well as “investigating claims” concerning his role in the large-scale communal violence that erupted in Gujarat in the months of February and March, in 2002 that left “over a thousand dead.”