US Lawmaker Slams Trump's Silence Over Muslim Killings In Delhi; Indian Journalist Accuses Modi Of Complicity

A prominent U.S. senator Friday denounced President Donald Trump's silence over the deadly attacks in New Delhi against Muslims protesting against the new citizenship law, and asked him to press Prime Minister Narendra Modi to protect "all persons in India regardless of their religion."

NEW YORK, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Feb, 2020 ):A prominent U.S. senator Friday denounced President Donald Trump's silence over the deadly attacks in New Delhi against Muslims protesting against the new citizenship law, and asked him to press Prime Minister Narendra Modi to protect "all persons in India regardless of their religion." "President Trump's failure to publicly voice concern about the clashes or express support for the human rights of all Indians during his visit to India is simply unacceptable, Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat, said in a statement issued upon the president's return from a two-day trip to India.

"The United States must be a leading voice in standing up for democratic values and human rights, including protection of religious minorities," he said.

"I urge the Trump Administration, and the rest of the international community, to condemn the violence in Delhi and press the Indian government to protect all persons in India regardless of their religion," Sen. Menendez added.

Trump's two-day visit to India, his first to the country as president, came amid huge demonstrations against the discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act and violent attacks against the protestors by Hindu mobs in which 42 people, mostly Muslims, have been killed and hundreds more injured. Hindus, mostly belonging to the ruling BJP of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, support the new law.

India and the U.S. announced during Trump's visit that the two would sign a defence agreement involving the purchase of more than $3 billion in U.S. military equipment, a move criticized by Pakistan.

In his statement Sen. Menendez also voiced his deep concern about the impact and consequences resulting from the shocking communal violence that unfolded in Delhi this week, particularly as it relates to India's democracy and human rights.

"On Sunday, clashes erupted between supporters and opponents of the Citizenship Amendment Act, which I have previously warned threatens India's long history of secularism and democratic values. Those clashes unfortunately spiraled into wider communal violence that killed dozens and injured hundreds more.

"I urge Indian authorities to step in and defend the communities being targeted in Delhi to prevent the violence from escalating further. As the world's largest democracy, the Indian government must do more to defend all of its citizens' rights, including the right to peaceful protest." Meanwhile, Rana Ayyub, a noted Indian journalist, accused PM Modi of looking the other way while Delhi burns, with his party men making provocative statements against Muslims.

(Ms. Ayyub's book, "Gujarat Files," about a massacre of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat, made her a target of Hindu nationalists.) "As hate festered in the national capital, the Narendra Modi government that has ignored hate speech by countless legislators and ministers in the last six years was busy hosting United States President Donald Trump in Ahmedabad, she wrote in TIME magazine, a major American weekly.

"As I write this, the official number of those killed has reached 42, a majority of them Muslims. It took three days for our Prime Minister to issue a statement while his backyard was burning," Ms. Ayyub wrote.

"This surprised nobody. As a journalist who has covered Modi's political career since 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, I have witnessed his lust for power and his ease with bloodshed from close quarters.

"In February 2002, as Gujarat burned in communal flames for days and a thousand Muslims were killed, leaders of his Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, gave speeches provoking Hindus to teach Muslims a lesson. Modi himself gave the most incendiary speech mocking riot victims, calling relief camps set up for Muslims, child producing factories.

"I was 19 when Modi made this speech, working as a relief worker during the anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat.

In the dingy relief camps, young women raped by Hindu nationalists lay unattended with no help from the state. Their bodies marked with the scars of the sexual violence, flies sitting on their wounds, their young children making castles of mud nearby while Modi and his ministers demonized them.

"Such was the intensity of the crime against Muslims in 2002 that the Supreme Court of India called the Modi government in Gujarat 'Modern day Neros who looked the other way while young women and children were burnt alive.' "To this day, neither has Mr.Modi apologised for the loss of thousand lives under his watch nor addressed the press even once in the last eighteen years.

"The carnage in Delhi this week took me back to those days in 2002. New Delhi's GTB Hospital looked like a warzone with dead bodies and injured trickling in by the hour. The mortuary of the hospital with wailing mothers and children aimlessly staring at the cameras surrounding them is not a sight for the weak.

"This did not take place overnight. It was a result of a sustained campaign of hate against Muslims in the six years since Modi assumed power.

"The hatred is plain to see among Modi's chief lieutenants. This week while Trump and Modi addressed a million strong audience in Ahmedabad, his minister for Corporate Affairs, Anurag Thakur sat in the front row along with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Four weeks ago, Thakur addressed a rally on the topic of the nationwide protests by Muslims. Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko, he said. ('Traitors of the country, shoot them') "The Home Minister of India, Amit Shah, the man who is responsible for maintaining law order in the country made the most communal speeches during the recently concluded Delhi elections which the BJP lost to the Aam Aadmi Party. He asked the voters to press the voting button with such anger that the (Muslim) protestors at Shaheen Bagh felt the current.

"The anti-Muslim pogrom in the national capital was inevitable. Muslims in India have been waiting for it to happen. I myself am a child of the Mumbai riots unleashed by Modi's party, the BJP, in 1992. I was nine, a cripple, when Hindu nationalists came home with swords to select me and my sister for gang rape. We survived when our Sikh neighbour came to our rescue.

"For decades I have been under treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a part of various groups to help heal my manic periods of anxiety. Almost once every month, the nightmare revisits me when I wake up sweating after a night long of trauma when I reimagine men with swords at my doorstep.

"But I am a privileged Muslim from a upper middle class family, with access to therapists and the best medical facilities.Those killed and injured in Delhi come from the lower socio-economic strata where therapy and psychological care is a luxury they cannot afford.

"As I write, many student bodies and activists are collecting money to provide the basic amenities, medicines to those whose lives have been destroyed in the violence. Modi is yet to visit the families of those who bore the brunt of his political animus and shall continue to live in fear. He is yet to announce compensation for the families who have lost their loved ones and their livelihood burnt to ashes.

"Now, hundreds of Muslim families are leaving New Delhi for safer cities fearing another attack as Modi's ministers continue to make hate speeches.

"I write this piece knowing that there will be no closure for me and thousands of riot survivors in India because we are being led by a man whose political career has been marked by the blood of innocents. But the cost of Narendra Modi giving his blessing to bloodshed is being paid by the people of this country, who fear this democracy will never be the same again."