The day after: Suspicion, fear haunt Greater Noida
GREATERNOIDA/ NEW DELHI: Fear and anger gripped the African student community on Tuesday despite increased police presence, the Centre’s promise of swift action and more arrests in the violence against Nigerians in Greater Noida a day earlier.
The African Association of Students of India (AASI) asked students in Greater Noida, a township coming up in Uttar Pradesh, to stay away from colleges till they were provided police security. “We are hopeful the situation will improve. Yet, it is too early to advise students to resume their normal life. They are terrified,” said ‘Chemist’ Goodwill, a Nigerian who is also a representative of AASI.
The Greater Noida violence against Africans is the latest in a string of such incidents in New Delhi and its satellite towns.
At least six Africans, most of them Nigerians, were wounded in three separate incidents in south Delhi’s Chattarpur in May, a week after a 23-year-old Congolese man was stoned to death in a village near Vasant Kunj.
The African students are upset over the failure of the government to prevent such incidents.
“A basic sensitisation drive has not been carried out by the government. It is the people who have to be told that we are also humans and they should not judge us by our colour,” AASI president Samuel Jack, who is from Nigeria, said at a press conference in New Delhi.
The student body asked the Centre to move quickly or be prepared for a boycott of India by students from the continent.
The ultimatum came even after the Noida Police arrested two more persons and booked more than 300 unnamed people for the assault that wounded four Nigerians. “We are viewing each and every video footage to grab the scandalous groups quickly,” superintendent of police Sujata Singh said, adding they were looking for two more accused.
Five persons were arrested a few hours after some locals participating in a candle march attacked Africans .