London: In an impressive demonstration of unified action, diaspora communities in the UK have approached the UK Government to urge action on its part, at this week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the UK, to help tackle the threats to their national homelands and religious freedoms across Indian controlled territories. The campaigners point to the alarming rise of Indian PM Modi’s BJP party and its right-wing extremist Hindutva affiliates which now effectively control the country’s political system, both at central and state level. Indian PM Narendra Modi – a leading Hindutva figure – is due to attend the Commonwealth gathering and also to engage in bilateral talks with the British government.
The campaign group ‘Minorities Against Modi’ submitted a memorandum at Downing Street calling on UK PM Theresa May to hold Indian PM to account for the mass human rights violations that have blighted not only his own record in office but also during previous decades of systematic violations which have involved genocide, extra-judicial killings, torture, disappearances, detention of political opponents, the mob lynching of freedom campaigners and religious minorities. Those abuses have been documented by international human rights bodies such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other reputable groups. The shocking news emerging from Kashmir this week of an eight-year Muslim old girl being gang raped and brutally murdered by Hindu extremists – and the subsequent attempts by BJP legislators to shield the them – has brought international condemnation from the UN itself.
The memorandum, supported by some thirty organisations and community representatives, highlighted the need for international intervention to get India to reverse its formal rejection of the right of self-determination as enshrined in Article 1 of the 1966 Covenants on Human Rights. The campaign group points out that India’s unlawful position on such a fundamental norm of international law has resulted directly in tragic and disastrous conflicts in Kashmir, Punjab, Assam and other regions. A debate in the House of Lords this week will consider what steps the UK government can take to help bring that change, so that peaceable conflict resolution can be pursued with a view to bringing peace and justice to those regions.
The memorandum also calls for international action to stop the persecution of religious minorities by Indian state and non-state actors. The almost daily news of Christians, Dalits and Muslims being violently attacked by mobs and the desecration of Sikh scriptures has alarmed organisations such as the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Their 2017 report urged the Indian government to act swiftly on a raft of recommendations including constitutional reform (Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists are currently classed as Hindus) and the effective protection of religious freedoms and minority rights at executive, police and judicial level.
The campaign group is holding a major protest in Westminster Square on Wednesday 18th April to highlight the need for action before UK parliamentarians and the global media which will be gathered in London for the Commonwealth summit. Indian strategists, clearly worried about PM Modi’s image, plan a counter demonstration but observers note that move lacks the grassroots backing of the massive diaspora communities that have come together under the ‘Minorities Against Modi’ banner.
Freedom campaigners, following the submission of the memorandum, boarded buses that travelled in convoy around central London displaying banners calling for freedom in Kashmir and in Khalistan. The organisers characterised the violent suppression of struggles for self-determination in Kashmir and Punjab, by the Indian army and other security forces, as an illegal and ultimately futile attempt to crush the authentic demands for freedom by the peoples of those regions. Lord Nazir Ahmed, who addressed the media on the occasion, condemned the brutal suppression of those legitimate freedom struggles and called on the global community to intervene by holding PM Modi and his Hindutva forces to account, based on international law and civilised norms.
