Curfew after students shot dead in Meghalaya, India

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Soldiers are helping to enforce a curfew in a strife-hit region of India's north-eastern Meghalaya state after police shot dead 12 protesters.

Police say they opened fire on Friday when students attacked them with stones but protesters say it was unprovoked.

The state's home minister has rejected opposition calls to resign.

Students from the Garo tribe have been staging protests against planned educational reforms that have created divisions with the Khasi tribe.

Troops have been carrying out high-profile marches in the Garo Hills region after being called out on Friday to help restore order amid an indefinite curfew.

'Brutal'

State Home Minister Mukul Sangma refused to concede to opposition demands for his resignation.

"It is a sad incident , but why should I resign? I did not ask the police to shoot at the boys. It all happened on the spur of the moment," Mr Sangma said.

The situation is tense but under control with soldiers given orders to shoot-on-sight anybody violating curfew orders
A Marak, police official
The most notable politician from Garo Hills, India's former parliament speaker Purno Sangma, said the entire Congress government in Meghalaya should resign.

"The police used AK-47 assault rifles on a peaceful gathering. These were students who might have thrown a few stones, but the police reaction was clearly brutal," Purno Sangma told the BBC.

He threatened to resign his parliament seat and said legislators of his Nationalist Congress Party in Meghalaya would resign theirs if the government did not.

The protests took place in the towns of Tura, in West Garo Hills, and Williamnagar, in East Garo Hills.

The deputy inspector general of the Garo Hills range, Vijay Kumar, told the BBC from Tura that the Garo Students Union (GSU) was not given permission to hold a rally.

Despite that, he said hundreds of people gathered in Tura for the rally.

When the police arrived, the crowd threw stones injuring some policemen, he said.

The police and paramilitary soldiers then opened fire in retaliation, Mr Kumar said. He said seven people died in Williamnagar and five in Tura.

Overstone Marak, a spokesman for the Garo Citizens' Committee, the organisation jointly leading the protest campaign, said: "Police opened fire on the agitators without any provocation and without resorting to baton charging first - which is the normal practice."

The GSU began a campaign of protests earlier this month against the state government's proposed educational reforms.

The government has asked the student body to end its protest actions before it negotiates over the reforms.
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[URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4300616.stm"]Source[/URL]
>> BBC

damm... this really makes me see RED !
 
In this case, I cannot (and neither can anyone who was not there) say exactly whose fault it is.

Maybe the police were right.... maybe the protestors really did charge them. But maybe they did not and maybe the police are really to blamce. But all I am saying is that we cannot pass judgements based on the media.

Since none of us were there personally, we cannot really say what happened.

but the thing I keep wanting to do to most of the politicians on this country is this ---- Hang them by the b@!!$
 
police might hav felt dat the reaction by the students over than they shud so thought for open fire as the solution for u dis matter
who knows the exact situation m8t
 
Well, actually yeah.... I am pretty sure that the students were not armed or anything.

So, the police are to be blamed. They could have used Water cannons(Do they have them in Meghalaya?? :p ) or teargas or at least lathicharged.

But then look, I have very extreme views abt some things. If some people are protesting for stupid reasons, I do feel like shooting all of them.

Examples:

Recent 19th sept strike. In Banaglore the autos were protesting agains the upcoming Metro Rail coz they said that their business will go down!!! RIDICULOUS.

Some Kannada activists tried to storm Infy recently coz none of the software companies being in B'lore are giving reservations to Kannadigas.

and think abt the fact that it was these companies which actually put India and Karnataka on the global map. And Infy had a chance to expand anywhere in the world. But they opened a new and HUGE campus in Mysore Karnataka.

And they have provided work to thousands of Kannadigas.

At these times, I feel that if only some te**o*i$ts had carried out an attack on these protesters, I would have rewarded those te**o*i$ts.

But yeah, in this case, the police were probably wrong.
 
Even if they were not armed with guns, remember that a few hundred students on a rampage is a dangerous thing...

which is why the politicians who provoked them to radical action ought to be shot.
 
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