Stop Modi's White House Visit 2023
Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The President of the United States,
The White House
Mr. President,
The media reports that you have invited India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an official visit to the United States. The trip is reportedly slated for summer of 2023 and includes an address by Modi to a joint session of Congress. We have difficulty believing that this report is accurate because we remember your passionate speeches for the US to stop genocide in Bosnia. We would like to see you become a champion of preventing genocide before it happens. That was the commitment the world made in the genocide treaty.
The well-regarded American organization Genocide Watch has two watches on India, and one genocide alert, and places it at stage 8, just below “Mass Extermination”. No other country has so many concerns against it flagged by Genocide Watch. The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University has released a report and concludes that “the process of genocide of Muslims is underway in India”.
We request you to rescind this invitation considering Modi’s utter failure to protect Muslim and Christian minorities in India, and his attacks on freedom, media, human rights and religious freedoms.
Narendra Modi, through his silence, has signaled a tacit approval of the many attacks in India against minorities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikh, Adivasis & Dalits. Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary organization with many aligned child-organizations that orchestrate these attacks. His party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is the political arm of the RSS, which expounds the militant and supremacist ideology of Hindutva.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedoms (USCIRF) has for three years in a row, recommended that India be designated as a Country of Particular Concern. The State Department reports on India, codify that India has seen rising Human & Religious rights issues under Modi. The Swedish watchdog V-Dem has termed India as an Electoral Autocracy. Reporters Without Borders has rated the “world’s largest democracy” as 150th among 180 countries.
Modi’s complicity in the 2002 pogroms against Muslims while he was Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, has recently been the subject of a BBC documentary that draws upon an investigation by the British government into the pogrom. It was because of his complicity, investigated and confirmed by the Bush administration, that Modi was denied a visa to the United States.
We ask you to rescind the invitation to Narendra Modi, unless he will make public statements on Indian mainstream media and his Social Media channels to:
1. Condemn the Hindu Religious Parliaments that have called for a Genocide of Indian Muslims
2. Reiterate that India belongs to all of its citizens, including Muslims, Christians, Sikh, Adivasis and Dalits
3. Call on his supporters and BJP-RSS to respect the rights and religious freedoms of Muslims and other minorities, and to stop the attacks that are happening in BJP ruled Indian states
4. Stop the extra-judicial demolition of Muslim homes and businesses that have taken place in BJP ruled states, especially the state of Uttar Pradesh.
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Notes & References
Adivasis are tribal communities in India, and are regarded as the indigenous peoples of the land, who have various religious practices. Dalits are the lowest of the Hindu caste hierarchy, or out-of-caste, and were previously called untouchables, the practice of which continues even today
https://www.uscirf.gov/countries/india
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/INDIA-2020-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf
https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/india/
https://v-dem.net/media/publications/dr_2022.pdf
https://rsf.org/en/country/india
https://www.hrw.org/asia/india
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/india
https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/india
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dkb144
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303380004579520041301275638
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