USCIRF-backed report asks West to halt India slip to 'full-blown anti-Muslim genocide'

By Rajiv Shah* 

A new report, “Genocide Convention & Persecution of Muslims in India”, released by United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) commissioner David Curry at a Congressional Briefing on the Capitol Hill in Washington DC, has apprehended that if the international community does not urgently intervene, the Government of India will not only “continue to commit and allow acts of genocidal violence against Muslims”, but things may reach such a point which will inevitably led to “transition into a full-blown genocide.”
The report, citing a large number instances of alleged violence against minorities, especially Muslims, especially after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over in May 2014, says, “More and more Indian Muslims will fall victim” of the attacks against the minority community “unless western governments, notably the United States, intervene and attempt to stop what is perceived the world’s largest democracy from exterminating Indian Muslims.”
The report, prepared by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), claiming to be the world’s oldest and largest organization of the Indian Muslim diaspora “dedicated exclusively to the pursuance of civil and political liberties, peace, pluralism and justice”, insists, the United States particularly has “not only has a moral duty, as leader of the free world, but is bound by the United Nation’s 1948 Genocide Convention, “to realise its responsibility in stopping this ‘odious scourge’, genocide, from taking place in India.”
Released in the presence of former USCIRF chair Nadine Maenza and top US advocacy group Genocide Watch founder Dr Gergory Stanton, among others, even as giving large number of instances where “India’s federal government, state governments, and violent Hindu supremacist groups have acted against the Genocide Convention”, says, its aim is to explore how “India is moving closer to committing acts of genocide” against its approximately 200 million Muslim citizens “on a national scale.”
Referring to the Genocide Convention, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948 – called Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – in the aftermath of the Holocaust for formally recognising genocide as a crime, the report says, this was for the first time in human history that genocide was defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Noting that India signed the Genocide Convention in 1949 and ratified it 10 years later, thus agreeing to abide by the Genocide Convention and recognise that “genocide is a crime under international law”, the report says, in recent years the Government of India, State governments under BJP and Hindu supremacist organisations, especially Sangh Parivar, have “acted against the Convention”, committing “genocidal acts”, with authorities “failing to protect Indian minorities, especially Muslims and Christians.”

The report cites the globally renowned Genocide Watch listing India at stages 6 (Polarisation), 7 (Preparation), 8 (Persecution) and 10 (Extermination) in the wake of the BJP’s “polarising rhetoric, discriminatory legislation, and the ongoing state sponsored persecution of Indian Muslims”, pointing out, even the “United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has argued that India is the second likeliest place for mass killings to begin, behind only Pakistan.”

Genocide Convention was adopted by UN General Assembly in aftermath of Holocaust for formally recognising genocide as crime

Stating that India has contravened articles 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the Genocide Convention (which respectively criminalise “killing members of the group; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; imposing living conditions intended to destroy them; preventing their births; and forcibly transferring children out of the group”), the report cites instances of “genocidal violence” against Indian Muslims through hate crimes, cow vigilantism, extra-judicial killings, torture, custodial deaths, demolition of Muslim homes, anti-conversion laws, etc. As examples.
Claiming that the upcoming nation-wide National Register of Citizens (NRC) “will escalate the situation to genocide”, the report says, “National and local politicians continue to incite genocidal violence through hate speech, and the failure of the union and state governments, as well as the judiciary, to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions, makes these bodies complicit in the impending genocide against Indian Muslims.”
Pointing out that in June 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “berated India’s continued persecution against religious minorities, saying ‘India, the world’s largest democracy and home to great diversity of faiths, we have seen a rise in attacks on people and places of worship’,” the report referst to the USCIRF recommending that India should “be designated as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC)” for three consecutive years.
Ironically, the report has been released amidst the US State Department refusing to accept USCIRF recommendation to designate India as CPC despite recognising “overt and repeated severe violations of religious freedom”. A US senator, taking exception to the US government view, said, pressuring India is important as the country is “an important security partner for the United States and a key counter-weight against China in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Said US' Oaklahoma senator James Lankford, the US “must have a robust discussion about the deteriorating religious freedom conditions for religious minorities in India”, insisting, “The purpose of any designation – whether it be CPC or Special Watch List (SWL) – is to shine a light on the most egregious religious freedom violators and promote continued engagement on the value of religious liberty at all levels of government.”

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*Editor, Counterview