JOIN US6 types of hate crimes threatening harmony in Karnataka: Report
Communal policing and hate crimes in Dakshina Kannada district have threatened social harmony, bearing an impact on every day social interactions, a report has found.
The report, 'From Communal Policing to Hate Crimes: The attack on Ambedkar's dream of fraternity,' is the result of a fact-finding team of researchers visiting the district this year, mapping various communal incidents.
The team, including members from PUCL-Karnataka, All India Lawyers Association for Justice, All India People's Forum and Gauri Lankesh News, looked into incidents between January and September 2021.
Having analysed several incidents, the report notes, "The attack against the minority community is on all fronts – social, economic and political."
The Muslim community, especially, bears the brunt. There is a network of informers who pass on information about inter-faith social interactions to right-wing groups.
These could be bus drivers, conductors, vendors in tourist spots who tip-off groups about movement of people, especially students and youth, it says on the modus operandi.
The report classifies hate crimes in the state in 2021 into six categories: social segregation where all inter-faith social interactions from friendships to a mere conversation are prohibited by Hindutva organisations, dictating intimacies where couples are threatened and assaulted in the name of 'love jihad'; economic boycott ranging from calls being given not to buy from Muslim vendors to prohibition of businesses; attacks in the name of cattle protection; curbing religious freedom of minorities and hate speech. There is overt and covert support of the machinery for these crimes, it adds.
The researchers have recommended that the government comply with all orders of the Supreme Court related to maintaining religious freedom and communal harmony, ensure that there is no parallel administration to the government, ensure that FIRs are registered in all incidents of hate crimes, even if it means registering suo motu cases.
It has also urged the government to take action against all Hindutva organisations engaged in communal violence.
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