A number of human rights groups are gearing up to take to the streets against the Indian PM who has been accused of rights violations back home.
In a recent report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticised the BJP saying: “‘The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government increasingly harassed, arrested, and prosecuted rights defenders, activists, journalists, students, academics, and others critical of the government or its policies”.
Human rights, civil rights groups and interfaith leaders opposed to state-sanctioned discrimination, intimidation, persecution, physical attacks and killings of religious minorities by Hindu right-wing extremists in India will gather near the White House Thursday to protest the U.S. visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The rally will be held at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza 833 1st Avenue New York, NY, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party leads the decades-old Hindu supremacist movement known as Hindutva that is systematically persecuting Muslims, Christians, Jews, Dalits and other non-Hindu minorities by denying basic economic, employment, human and civil rights by statute, state policy and physical attack.
Genocide Watch has issued a Genocide Emergency: India report placing India at stage No. 8 – persecution – on the 10-point scale leading to genocide, adding that although the government is not yet at the mass extermination phase, No. 9, it is already at No. 10, official denial.
The Modi regime has also been criticised by the UN High Commissioner for human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. In June, UN experts urged the Indian government to release human rights defenders and stop the clamp down on NGOs working for human rights reporting and advocacy. The overall situation in the J&K region has worsened due to a new media policy which gives authorities’ discretion to decide what is ‘fake news, unethical, or anti national activities.’ The law allows the government to take punitive action against media outlets and journalists.