Persecution in India: Today’s Update October 7, 2021 (Thursday)
Facebook Actively Enables Hindu Extremist Group RSS To Spread Hate Against India’s 200 Million Muslims
Judge Critical Of Delhi Police For Targeting Innocent Muslims Transferred Under Modi Government Pressure
Congressman David Trone Says US Envoy Should Not Have Met RSS Leader Bhagwat
Facebook Enables Islamophobia Spread: The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) condemns Facebook for actively enabling the world’s largest Extremist group, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), to mount massive campaigns of hate against India’s 200 million Muslims, as has been revealed by Frances Haugen, the courageous former Facebook employee who is now a whistleblower against the social media company, in her complaint filed with the US Securities & Exchange Commission.
It is hardly a surprise that Facebook has allowed the RSS, to which India’s Hindu Right wing prime minister Narendra Modi belongs, to promote “global division and ethnic violence”. IAMC demands that Facebook immediately disclose what “political sensitivities” prevented it from categorizing the RSS as a “hate group” based on its own standards. It is shocking that Facebook has long known that the RSS and its affiliates, such as Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and the Bajrang Dal have long used Facebook to spread hate speech against Muslims and Christians.
IAMC demands that US law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and Department of Justice, investigate the deliberate failure of Facebook to take action against the RSS and its affiliates for using its platform for promoting ethnic violence.
Tough Judge Hearing Anti-Muslim Violence Transferred: IAMC condemns the transfer of a tough judge in the Indian capital of New Delhi who had just the previous day openly admonished Delhi Police for their brazen targeting of Muslims. Because of this transfer, Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Yadav will no longer hear the docket of cases arising out of February 2020 Hindu extremist violence against Muslims in Delhi in which more than 35 Muslims were killed.
This clearly shows that India’s judiciary is now being fully managed by India’s Hindu extremist government that is targeting its Muslims. The judge was transferred on October 6 (Wednesday), a day after he said in the court that the witnesses for the prosecution were blatantly lying during the trial. The judge had also called the police investigation in the February 2020 violence “callous and farcical.” Delhi Police have shockingly filed criminal charges against dozens of Muslims who were victims of that violence.
Many others, including India’s leading human rights defenders such as Umar Khalid, are in prison falsely accused of conspiring to carry out that violence that was actually done by Hindu extremists belonging to Mr. Modi’s BJP party. At other times, Judge Yadav had called the biased police work “a very sorry state of affairs” that will torment the “sentinels of democracy” when history will look back on the violence. Last year, a high court judge was transferred out overnight after he had ordered the arrest of a leader of Prime Minister Modi’s BJP party for his involvement in inciting the Delhi violence.
Rep. Trone Questions US Envoy Meet With RSS: IAMC applauds US Representative David Trone (Democrat of Maryland 6th Congressional District) for questioning the decision of US Envoy Atul Keshap to meet with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in India last month. By “engaging with RSS officials and discussing their ideology” Ambassador Keshap had lent “legitimacy to this controversial group” as also further jeopardized the communities that the RSS targets.
Rep. Trone has written that the RSS has “long promoted principles of Hindu nationalism, an ideology which threatens the Muslim community.” The RSS has a “painful history of violence and destruction,” Congressman Trone wrote to Ambassador Keshap. IAMC is disappointed that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has not yet publicly spoken against Ambassador Keshap’s meeting with the RSS, nor explained how that meeting came about. IAMC demands that the US Department of State publicly affirm its opposition to Hindu extremist organizations and ideologies in India.
