President Joe Biden is under increasing pressure from the American left to confront Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about his human rights record during Modi’s visit to Washington, D.C., this week.
The White House insisted on Wednesday that it will make its “views known” but will not “lecture” Modi or “assert that we don’t have challenges ourselves.”
“Ultimately, the question of where politics and the question of democratic institutions go in India is going to be determined within India by Indians. It’s not going to be determined by the United States,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
These comments by Sullivan implicitly accept Communist China’s critique that America has no right to lecture any other country about human rights because Americans are racist, sexist, warlike, and so forth. Chinese state media frequently quotes Biden’s Democrat Party and its media to make these accusations.
China’s vision of “human rights” effectively negates the concept by stating that every ruling regime gets to decide which human rights are important based on local culture and the political needs of the ruling party.
On Tuesday, 75 Democrat lawmakers wrote an open letter to Biden asking him to make human rights a focus of his talks with Modi. The letter was written by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).
The letter acknowledged India’s importance as a strategic and trade partner but called for an “honest and forthright” discussion about “the shrinking of political space, the rise of religious intolerance, the targeting of civil society organizations and journalists, and growing restrictions on press freedoms and internet access” under Modi’s administration.
The authors of the letter pointed to the U.S. State Department’s critical reports on human rights and religious freedom in India, dire reports on diminishing press freedom from Reporters Without Borders, and India’s unenviable ranking as the world’s top executor of Internet shutdowns to make the case that Modi’s government has drifted away from the commitment to human rights expressed in the Indian and American constitutions.
The letter insisted the signatories had no preference among Indian political parties, but the Hindustan Times noted that Sen. Van Hollen attended a private dinner for opposition leader Rahul Gandhi of the India Congress party this month and has been “a critic of India’s current political trajectory.”
Two of the farthest-left members of the Democrat caucus, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), announced they would boycott Modi’s address to Congress.
“It’s shameful that Modi has been given a platform at our nation’s capital,” Tlaib said via Twitter on Tuesday morning. “His long history of human rights abuses, anti-democratic actions, targeting Muslims and religious minorities, and censoring journalists is unacceptable.”
“Prime Minister Modi’s government has repressed religious minorities, emboldened violent Hindu nationalist groups, and targeted journalists/human rights advocates with impunity,” Omar said in her own tweet on Tuesday night.
“I will NOT be attending Modi’s speech. I WILL be holding a briefing with human rights groups to discuss Modi’s record of repression and violence,” she said.
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