By Muslim Mirror Network
Washington: Members of the Indian-American community, belonging to a slew of social and human rights bodies, held a protest demonstration on Saturday in Washington against the alleged human rights abuses and assaults on religious freedom in India.
Protesters held signs, chanted slogans, issued calls for India to “return to its tradition of secular democracy and end human rights abuses” and interacted with passers-by, all while officers with the Metropolitan Police Department watched. Uniformed officers with the U.S. Secret Service, which is responsible for security at foreign missions in the Washington, D.C. region, also talked briefly with protesters.
People chanted slogans such as “fascist Modi has got to go,” referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose rightwing party , BJP, controls the national government as well as many state governments. They alleged that the current dispensation remained silent over the past eight years of documented human rights abuses happen against Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and other religious minorities, as well as Dalits and indigenous people.
Calls for a genocide of Muslims were issued during a gathering of Hindu religious leaders in December 2021 and deadly mob violence – including lynching – by Hindu right wing extremists take place on regular interval.
The participants left the Gandhi memorial statue and drove to Lafayette Square to continue their protest, facing the north side of the White House. The protesters also underlined that the Modi government’s Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens were discriminatory toward Muslim.
Saturday’s protest happened the same week Indian citizens and members of the global Indian diaspora observed the 75th anniversary of when India gained its independence from Great Britain on August 15, 1947. “India belongs to all the people of India,” Dr. Rehan Khan, president of the nonprofit human rights organization International Society for Peace and Justice, said as he noted the 75th anniversary. Khan discussed how “our forefathers have given their lives” for a free India, but those in power today do not know the value of India’s freedom and how hard previous generations fought for it.