Tourists attacked with iron rods - Darjeeling Hills & Dooers

cutiepie

All these disruptions in darjeeling but sikkim also cut off from th world because of this. its really bad.

Bhaswaran

Tourists attacked & injured - Darjeeling Hills & Dooers

Things are going the worst possible direction in the Darjeeling Hills. This is probably the most ridiculous and barbaric way to keep up the pressure of a agitation - to attack tourists. Yesterday, GJM supporters enforcing a bandh (shutdown) forced some tourists out of their respective vehicles as they are fleeing the area and attacked them with rods and choppers, injuring eight them badly.

[Note: ALthough there is a similar thread about this about the situation in the Darjeeling Hills in the recent past, I have preferred to start a new one, keeping an eye on the importance of the situation.]

The violence in Darjeeling took a grisly turn on Wednesday (June 11, 2008) evening when Gorkha Janmukti Morcha supporters stopped two groups of tourists from Kolkata near the Gorumara sanctuary and attacked them with choppers and iron rods, leaving eight badly injured. Among the victims are an elderly couple and four women.

The attack marked a terrifying escalation of violence in the Gorkhaland stir. On Tuesday, GJM men smashed up seven tourist buses but spared tourists. Within 24 hours, they turned fear into terror.

Bimal Kumar Nandan (71) and wife Durgarani (59) clutched each other desperately as they were dragged out of their car and bashed up. The five others in their group were brutally assaulted. Their driver, a local, wasn’t spared either.

This is the first-ever attack on tourists in the 25-year-old strife in the Hills. Even when the Gorkhaland agitation was at its peak in the 1980s, no non-Nepali person — not to speak of tourists — was harmed. The incident has sent shockwaves through the entire region, increasing anxiety among tourists who are still trapped.

Link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/C...ow/3121968.cms

Mod Note

Bhaswaran - appreciate the severity of the situation, but the decision was made to merge the "unrest in the hills" thread into this one to ensure new members to the site had one thread they could refer to (and not inadvertently miss a piece of information they might need). In addition, from an admin point of view - having multiple concurrent threads on the same event every time there is a crisis somewhere in India would cause too much confusion across the board.

__________________
....life is a journey.....and the journey is more important than the destination........

Photos in Indiamike :http://www.indiamike.com/photopost/s...0/ppuser/15496

Photos in Flickr :http://www.flickr.com/photos/bhaswaran/

Darjeeling trip Video : "Darjeeling - The Queen of Hills" DVD

jyotirmoy

Very sad & very alarming.

capt_mahajan

Shocking.

I don't know the politics of the area well. Wondering if somebody is trying to muscle into political prominence here.

__________________
.
Outside the machine

Bhaswaran

You are right Captain. GJM is fast replacing GNLF, which is so far the largest party in the hills (remember, they also shot into prominence in the 80s with the Gorkhaland stir). Now, GJM is playing the same cards on the former - the same issue.

But whatever, brutal bleeding attacks on tourists (the most peace loving species in the world) should be condemned heavily. I appeal to all people over the world to condemn this.

capt_mahajan

Ah. Now it makes sense.

Business as usual, then.

Bhaswaran, we only have to look at Kashmir to see the impact terrorists have had on tourism. Agreed, this (fortunately) is not in that league yet, but I am not very confident that sense prevails quickly enough with these kind of folk.

dzibead

Appalling!

zoltan

Thanks for the details dream_traveller.

I don't care how it ends, I would just like to see a more peaceful approach to the "problem". If this escalates any further (ie. violence), it will snowball into an all in brawl.

Cheers
Zoltan

__________________
India (and other) photos click here

machadinha

(Emphasis mine.) Not to belittle this incident, but isn't it quite common for violence to be directed against vehicles etc. trying to ignore a bandh (strike)?

What I mean to say is it makes you wonder if this should be interpreted as a "new" tactic to target tourists (apparently domestic in this case, btw, to our international readers) specifically; or rather a more common case of enforcing such a bandh, where tourists just happened to get in the way.

For the sake of one's own safety, it should be common knowledge I think that during a bandh one shouldn't seek out transport in defiance of it.

__________________
Reading tips, all picked up at IndiaMike : INDAX's A Comprehensive Guide To India / Dinoj Surendran's Desi Humor / ITHVC on Culture Shock & Travel Health / JetLag Travel Guides For the Undiscerning Traveller / India Travel Links

Bhaswaran

Yes..the 80s Gorkhaland agitation effected the local population a lot, as almost the whole of the economy of the Darjeeling Hills is based on tourism. And tourists justifably avoided Darjeeling for more than a decade for that. It is this time, that the Sikkim Government took the opportunity and Gangtok with the whole of Sikkim rose into prominence in the tourist map of India.

Darjeeling never really recovered from that scar ever. Even after everything calmed down, 80% tourists who came down at NJP/Siliguri headed for Gangtok, some to Dooers, and the rest few to Darjeeling. Just stand at the jeep stand at NJP when the Darjeeling Mail arrives and you will see the sheer number of jeeps going to Gangtok in contrast to Darjeeling - thats the answer.

Now, an attack on tourists - and the hill population is going to suffer again, as it happened after terrorists attacked tourists in Kashmir. At that time, a few travel papers even called on a boycott to Kashmir after the death of a few tourists from the Srinagar greanade attack.

Bhaswaran

You are correct in one sense but the other way, the tourists have gone to visit a place, and not forever, after an elongated delay, they have to come back by any means (financial problems would be the main cause for no hotel in the world provide food and shelter free of cost), and also remember how the indefinite bandh is called. The bandh call came in the evening that from the next morning at 6 a.m., the indefinite bandh starts. Imagine the situation, the whole tourist polupalation wants to come down from the hills, and the number of vehicles cannot match. And adding to the woes, the charges go up - 1200 for a vehicle readily shoots up to 4000-5000 rupees. Otherwise, tourists know very much what a bandh means (especially as they are Indian tourists) and will never come out in road unless they have no other option. The situation was not as easy as said.

machadinha

Yes, I see what you mean.

Another article (Reuters, June 10th): Unrest hits India's famed Darjeeling hills

... Read on at http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/DEL47452.htm

theyyamdancer

I am really saddened by the news.

jyotirmoy

for states dependent on tourism this is suicidal. I was among the first group of visitors in Kashmir after the troubled times. I saw the abject poverty that had struck the common man.

shashank.aggarwal

I agree Dada...these guys are damaging their own future...

__________________
Travelogue - Around India
Random Reviews