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‘What an embarrassment’: White House hopeful Nikki Haley blasts Democrats who skipped Modi's speech
The only two Muslim women members of the US Congress along with some other progressive lawmakers boycotted Modi's address to the Congress.
Former South Carolina governor and Republican leader Nikki Haley on Friday blasted the progressive Democrats who skipped Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at US Congress over rights issues, saying they boycott India's democratically elected leader but side with “Palestinian terrorists and socialist dictators.”
Progressive Reps. Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and Summer Lee (D-Pa.) joined fellow Democrats Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in boycotting the prime minister's speech in US Congress citing allegations of abuse of Indian dissidents and minorities, especially Muslims. US Senator Bernie Sanders said Modi's "aggressive Hindu nationalism" has “left little space for India's religious minorities.”
“AOC and the Squad boycotting India’s democratically elected leader while they side with Palestinian terrorists and socialist dictators is exactly on brand. What an embarrassment,” Nikki Haley said in a tweet.
Earlier this year, Haley became the first major Republican challenger to Trump when she kicked off her campaign on February 15 in Charleston. She is the only woman in the GOP field.
At a joint press conference on Thursday, PM Modi denied that discrimination against minorities existed under his government. When asked about steps he was willing to take to "improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities in your country and to uphold free speech," Modi suggested they did not need to be improved.
"Our Constitution and our government, and we have proved democracy can deliver. When I say deliver - caste, creed, religion, gender, there is no space for any discrimination (in my government)," Modi told reporters.
The UN human rights office described a 2019 citizenship law as "fundamentally discriminatory" for excluding Muslim migrants. Critics have pointed to anti-conversion legislation that challenged the constitutionally protected right to freedom of belief and the revoking of Jammu and Kashmir's special status in 2019 as well.
There has also been the demolition of properties owned by Muslims in the name of removing illegal construction; and a ban on wearing the hijab in classrooms in Karnataka when the BJP was in power in that state.
"The protection of the Muslim minority in a majority Hindu India, that is something worth mentioning," former US President Barack Obama told CNN in an interview aired on Thursday.
"If you do not protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, then there is a strong possibility that India at some point starts pulling apart," Obama said of what he would have told Modi now.
(With Reuters inputs)
