Hundreds of Hindi-speakers flee ethnic bloodshed

HUNDREDS of Hindi-speakers in India’s northeastern state of Assam have started fleeing ethnic violence which has claimed 29 lives in the past week.

Trains leaving Assam are at full capacity, a railways spokesman said yesterday. "Seats are already full in all the trains," he said. With police reporting another six people killed by mobs and separatist rebels overnight, a sense of panic began to spread through members of the Hindi-speaking community, many of whom hail from the eastern state of Bihar.

"Life is not secure here and so we are waiting for the first possible train to get out of Assam," Madhav Prasad, a 45-year-old trader, said in the state capital Guwahati. "There are no tickets available in any of the trains that would take us to Bihar," he said. Prasad and his family of four were among hundreds of Biharis either waiting to leave or who had already fled the state by bus or train.

Officials appealed for calm, while the federal government said it could not allow the situation to continue. "We urge the Hindi-speaking people not to panic and leave the state. We are taking all possible security measures to ensure their safety," Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi said.

The violence has been led mainly by militants of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which is fighting for an independent homeland.

In the latest bloodshed, police said the ULFA killed three Hindi-speaking people late Wednesday in Nalbari town in western Assam, 70 kilometres (44 miles) from the state capital Guwahati. In another incident in eastern Assam's Tinsukia district, three members of a Bihari family, including a two-year-old child, were hacked to death by an armed mob, they said.

The violence was triggered when Assamese youths prevented Bihari candidates from taking recruitment tests for jobs at the state-run railways on November 9. Groups of Bihari youth retaliated three days later by attacking trains bound for Assam, injuring 50 people.

The ULFA issued a statement Saturday warning all Hindi-speaking people to leave the state immediately or face attacks. That night, rebels shot dead a Hindi-speaking businessman in western Assam the first of the killings.

The influential All Assam Students' Union called a 24-hour general strike in Assam on Monday to protest the attacks on train passengers in Bihar, sparking off a chain of violent clashes and arson. At least 600 houses of Hindi-speakers have been torched by angry mobs, while the ULFA has killed 20 people in separate attacks across the state. Another nine have been killed in mob violence, police said. Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, on the campaign trail in central Madhya Pradesh state, described the situation as "very serious".

"The federal government cannot be a passive spectator in such serious situations. We are taking steps to see the situation becomes normal," he said. Federal soldiers were called out with security forces issued shoot-on-sight orders to quell the violence.