Former vice-president Hamid Ansari on Wednesday participated in an event, which was backed by the Jamaat-e-Islami organization, and expressed concerns over the current human rights situation in India. The event was also joined by four US lawmakers, including a senator.
The Union government in India has denied these allegations.
The Indian-American Muslim Council had reportedly collected funds for the cause of Rohingya crisis and paid to lobby firm FGR for getting India blacklisted by the USCIRF.
FGR head Terry Allen was a long-time associate of Nadine Maenza, USCIRF Chair. IAMC’s Shaik Ubaid is friends with Abdul Malik Mujahid, who headed Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) – the US front for Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan. The ICNA has known links with Pak-based terror groups including LeT.
IAMC is headed by Rasheed Ahmed, who was Executive Director (2008-17) of Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) that accused of looting public Covid funds. Meanwhile, IMANA’s Director of Operations Zahid Mahmood is an ex-Pak Navy official.
During the event, Senator Ed Markey said, “As the Indian government continues to target the practices of minority faiths, it creates an atmosphere where discrimination and violence can take root. In recent years, we have seen an uptick in online hate speeches and acts of hate, including vandalised mosques, torched churches, and communal violence.”
Democratic Senator Markey, who had opposed the India-US civil nuclear deal during the Manmohan Singh regime, was speaking at a panel discussion organised by the Indian American Muslim Council.
Participating in the virtual panel discussion from India, former vice president Ansari expressed his concern over the rising trend of Hindu nationalism.
“In recent years, we have experienced the emergence of trends and practices that dispute the well-established principle of civic nationalism and interpose a new and imaginary practice of cultural nationalism…. It wants to distinguish citizens on the basis of their faith, give vent to intolerance, insinuate otherness, and promote disquiet and insecurity,”” he alleged.
The three other Congressmen who spoke during the panel discussion — Jim McGovern, Andy Levin and Jamie Raskin — have traditionally taken anti-India stands irrespective of the governments in power in New Delhi.
“There have been a lot of problems with the issue of religious authoritarianism and discrimination taking place in India,” Raskin said. “So we want to make sure that India stays on the path of respecting religious liberty, freedom, pluralism, toleration and dissent for everybody,” he added.
“Regrettably, today, the world’s largest democracy is seeing backsliding, human rights under attack and religious nationalism. Since 2014, India has fallen from 27 to 53 on the Democracy Index. And Freedom House has downgraded India from free to partly free,” Levin said.
McGovern, co-chair of the powerful Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the US House of Representatives, listed several warning signs that showed India’s “alarming backsliding” on human rights, according to a media release issued by the Indian American Muslim Council.
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