The Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI), a human rights collective, warns that Modi’s administration is sponsoring new violence.
DESPARDES — City of Seattle adopted a resolution on February 3, the first of its kind by any legislative body in the US, denouncing Indian PM Modi for “promoting violence against religious minorities” that allegedly earned him the nickname “Butcher of Gujarat.”
The City Council hearing was marked by grave concern for the rights of minorities and caste oppressed in India with comparisons to the treatment of Jews under Nazi rule. It dovetails emerging voices of reason from the region against the situation in India.
Earlier in December, an expert told Congress that preparation for Muslims Genocide was definitely under way in India.
The IT-based city’s council heard an advocacy group of Indian-Americans — a huge community in the US — and condemned Modi’s moves — these have stoked tensions along religious divide in the largest democracy.
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The Alliance for Justice and Accountability (AJA), an umbrella organization of progressive South Asian groups across the United States lauded the City Council of Seattle for having unanimously passed Resolution 31926 which denounces India’s draconian Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The resolution was against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and highlights that the CAA “is the first instance of religion being used as a criterion for Indian citizenship” and warns that a proposed National Register of Citizens could strip citizenship from “hundreds of millions of people.” It also blames Modi for the 2002 Gujarat Pogrom “in which an estimated 2,000 people were killed in anti-Muslim violence, and many Muslim women were targeted for rape and other forms of sexual violence.”
Seattle’s resolution was introduced by City Councillor Kshama Sawant after she spoke at an anti-CAA rally in December 2019.
“By approving this resolution, the city council will urge the United States Congress to support legislation censuring the Indian BJP government for adopting policies that are discriminatory to Muslims, oppressed castes, women, indigenous and LGBTQ people,” said Sawant at the Feb. 3 Seattle City Council meeting. “By approving this resolution, the city council will draw a historic line in the sand recognizing the ominous similarities between the NRC and the CAA and the early Nuremberg Laws enacted by the Third Reich in 1930s Germany.”
“The CAA and NRC are key stepping stones towards the RSS’s goal of establish a religious apartheid state in India,” commented Pieter Friedrich, an analyst of South Asian affairs who attended the city council meeting. “The RSS’s ideologues said Indian Muslims should be treated like German Jews, and its earliest leaders praised Nazi racial policies like the Nuremberg Laws. Modi, a lifelong member of the RSS who was groomed to be prime minister, is enacting that Nazi-inspired paramilitary’s fascist vision.”
The Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI), a human rights collective, warns that Modi’s administration is sponsoring new violence. “Modi is sending his police out to murder anti-CAA protestors in India,” says Arvin Valmuci, OFMI spokesperson. “BJP Minister Anurag Thakur was just caught inciting a mob to shout ‘shoot the traitors.’ We fear that Modi may replicate the Gujarat model that earned him the ‘Butcher of Gujarat’ title. Seattle’s courageous stand against the fascism of Modi’s government should set an example for many other American cities to follow suit.”
