“Right now, we are witnessing a slow genocide of minorities. The lives of India’s 200 million Muslims are at stake, and the Biden administration can no longer afford to stay silent. This meeting is the right time to send a stern message to India,” Syed Ali, the president of an advocacy group, the Indian American Muslim Council, was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying.
Victor Begg, a 74-year-old community leader and activist, said he travelled all the way from Florida state to register his protest against Biden’s meeting with the Hindu nationalist leader.
“What Modi represents is totally against American values. By allowing him into the United States and hosting him in the White House compromises our democracy as well,” Begg told Al Jazeera.
Modi is visiting the US to attend Quad Summit, with President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. The four-nation Quad alliance aims to check China’s growing military and economic power globally.
Indian American Muslim Council, in a press note, has demanded that Joe Biden must raise issues related to human rights violations, persecution of Muslims, crackdown on religious freedom in Kashmir and attacks on free speech, during his conversion with Modi.
As former chief minister of India’s Gujarat state, Modi was banned from going to the US for a decade after hundreds of Muslims were killed in 2002.
This story first appeared on muslimmirror.com