By TCN News,
Washington DC: Following the US tour by BJP President Mr. Rajnath Singh to plead with Members of Congress for a US visa for Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, a representative of the Coalition Against Genocide (CAG) met with Secretary of State John Kerry and updated him on the ongoing cases of human rights violations against Modi and his administration.
Manzoor Ghori, who represented the Coalition Against Genocide at the annual Iftar gathering organized by the US Department of State, handed a letter to the Secretary of State. The letter stated that rescinding the visa-ban on Mr. Modi would be immoral and inimical to the interests of United States internationally. "The US must take a moral lead when it comes to issues of gross human rights violations and Modi's visa was revoked because of his role in the 2002 anti-minority massacres," Ghori said.
It should be noted that Secretary Kerry himself, as a Senator representing Massachusetts, had written a letter in 2008 to the State Department urging the continuation of the visa ban on Modi. The documentation delivered by Mr. Ghori to the Department of State included a copy of the State Department's response to then Senator Kerry's letter which assured him that: "The Department is extremely sensitive to your concerns and we are cognizant of the human rights abuses Mr. Modi has committed" and went on to say "..should we receive an (visa) application, we assure you that it would be adjudicated in strict accordance with the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), including Section 212(a)(2)(G) which states that 'any alien who, while serving as a foreign government official, was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom, as defined in section 3 of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 is inadmissible."
After the US visa ban was imposed on Mr. Modi in 2005, his administration continued severe human rights and religious freedom violations against minorities in the state of Gujarat, including the use of his Home ministry for conducting fake police "encounter killings" of innocent youth to polarize the masses into voting for him. Mr. Modi also instituted an anti-conversion law which has made religious conversion into a criminal offence.
Coalition Against Genocide includes a diverse spectrum of organizations and individuals in the United States and Canada that have come together in response to the Gujarat genocide to demand accountability and justice.
