WASHINGTON, D.C, September 23 (KMS): The Human rights groups and interfaith leaders planned a protest to oppose the U.S. visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to Kashmir Media Service, the rally will be held on Thursday in Lafayette Park near the White House. The organizers said they want to highlight the “state-sanctioned discrimination, intimidation, persecution, physical attacks and killings of religious minorities by Hindu right-wing extremists in India.
In a press note, the organizers states that,” 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”.
“ To focus world attention on the growing threat of Hindu right-wing nationalism, Hindutva, and to build support for pressuring the Indian government to take action to overturn policies and laws enacted specifically to deny basic human and civil rights to 10s of millions of Indian citizens,” they said.
“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” , it further pointed out.
WHO: Groups opposed to state-sanctioned persecution of religious minorities in India.
WHAT: Public peaceful protest of Indian PM Narendra Modi’s sanctioning human rights violations in India.
WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 23, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
WHERE: Lafayette Park, Pennsylvania Ave. NW and 16th Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20001 agencies