Statement by Dr. Sajjad Hassan, Aman Biradari, New Delhi, India Title: From victimhood to empowerment: Community based mobilization for justice, rights and peace building 1. Thank you, Mr Chairperson, for giving me this opportunity to present my views to this august house. 2. I will get to the draft recommendations in a bit, but before that, a quick preface: 3. India, and democracies like her, pose a peculiar challenge to studying and improving rights for minorities and their protection against violence. They are established democracies, with a set of laws and mechanisms for minorities. There is also political stability overall, not the generalized conflict situation seen to create the conditions for mass violations of minority rights. And yet discrimination, marginalization, and indeed violence persist. Some of the more infamous instances of violence against religious minorities in recent history in India being, those against Muslims in Nellie, Assam, 1983; against Sikhs in Delhi,1984; against Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar, 1989; in Mumbai, 1992; and Gujarat, 2002; against Christians in Kandamahal, Orissa in 2008; and against Muslims again in Uttar Pradesh, in 2013, and in Assam just 6 months ago in May 2014, when in an act of hate-inspired violence in Baksa district, 38 persons, 24 of them young children, were murdered and their houses burnt down. 4. State authorities will argue that the state is committed to protecting minority rights. But as one of the speakers yesterday noted, the acid test of whether a state is performing its duty on this count is if those responsible for the crimes are prosecuted, and victims provided justice. India's record on this is poor - one commission of enquiry after another, looking into the aforementioned cases of violence, have documented, in great