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Indian meat sellers end strike after government assurances that crackdown will end

A Muslim meat shop owner looks on outside his closed shop in Gurugram, Haryana, India, March 29, 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

Indian meat sellers have called off a strike following assurances by the government of a key northern state that a crackdown on slaughterhouses would not continue.

On Friday, meat sellers and slaughterhouses across India called off a four-day strike after the newly-elected government t of the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh gave assurances that slaughterhouses would not be shut down or attacked.

A campaign to protect cows, considered sacred by Hindus, had threatened to damage India’s 4.8-billion-dollar buffalo meat industry as slaughterhouses had been closed and exports stalled by the right-wing government in Uttar Pradesh.

Abattoirs have long been accused by Hindus of covering up the slaughter of cows and passing off the meat as buffalo, which are not revered as holy.

“We have decided to call off the strike after a meeting with the chief minister, who assured us that the state government will renew the licenses of slaughterhouses,” Chaudhary Aley Ummar Qureshi, a general secretary of the Muslim All India Jamiatul Quresh, said.

“The government also assured us of protection from any arbitrary or unlawful crackdown,” he added. Traders will resume selling meat after the nine-day festival of Navratra, when Hindu devotees fast and stay away from meat, ends on Wednesday, he said.

Yogi Adityanath, a priest, took office as Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister in March and promised tougher penalties for cow slaughter and a crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath (2nd-R) is seen with a delegation of meat sellers in Lucknow, March 30, 2017.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) handed the reins of India’s most important state to Adityanath despite his controversial stature and alleged anti-Muslim stances.

A few days after Adityanath was sworn in, the state’s law enforcement agencies began shutting butcheries, some of which had been operating for decades, for alleged violations of local laws, bringing the state’s entire buffalo meat industry to a halt.

Cow slaughter is illegal in Uttar Pradesh and many other states, with some enforcing life sentences for violators.

Rumors of cow slaughter can trigger communal carnage in the religiously-divided state, where nearly one in five is Muslim.

In September 2015, Mohammad Akhlaq was dragged from his house in the village of Bisada in Uttar Pradesh and beaten to death by about 100 Hindus amid rumors that he was hiding beef in his house. Akhlaq’s 22-year-old son was also seriously injured in the attack.

Akhlaq’s family maintained that they had mutton in the fridge and not beef. The incident sparked months of political and religious chaos across India, forcing authorities to set up a high-level inquiry.


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