In an effort to "look good" to the world for the Commonwealth Games, the Delhi government demolished a slumdwellers' school.
Here.
"The government bulldozers came to the school at 11am, after yoga and before English and Hindi lessons. The children and their teachers had three hours to clear the classrooms. By mid-afternoon, the Yamuna Riverbank school was rubble.
"They told us we were a security risk, so we had to go," headteacher Parminder Khaur Somal said. "All my children were crying. I don't know how we can be a threat to anyone."
Somal founded the school five years ago for 180 local slum children living on the banks of the Yamuna river on the outskirts of Delhi. In recent months, she and her pupils have watched a vast new complex of luxury apartments rise 500 metres away: the athletes' village for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games. "We never thought it could be a problem," Somal said.
"If we were a security threat, we could have just stopped classes until after the games. But the law here is just 'might is right,'" Somal said."
The correct response from the world would be to boycott these games. No athletic competition is worth this. Every child's tears must be paid for.
