Hyderabad: US congresswoman Ilhan Omar questioned President Joe Biden’s administration about US support for India. She also brought up a long-running campaign against the country’s Muslim minority on Wednesday.
Ilhan Omar asked Wendy Sherman, Biden’s deputy secretary of state, how US support for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is “promoting a free and open region.” She brought up the US involvement in various countries and called it ‘historical injustices’.
“How much does the Modi administration have to criminalize the act of being Muslim in India for us to say something? What will it take for us to outwardly criticize the action that the Modi administration is taking against its Muslim minorities?” she asked.
Sherman said she agrees that the administration must stand up ‘for every religion, every ethnicity, every race, every quality of diversity in this world.’
Omar quickly responded, “I do hope we make a practice of standing up not just to our adversaries, but to our allies as well.”
She added in a tweet, “Why has the Biden Administration been so reluctant to criticize Modi’s government on human rights?”
Human Rights Watch in 2021 stated that the BJP’s prejudices have “infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police and the courts, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass, and attack religious minorities with impunity.”
