In an annual report on international religious freedom, the United State has criticised Narendra Modi government for mob lynching, cow vigilante violence, hate speech, religious conversion, the legal status of minorities and government policies related to these. India has rejected this US report. The ruling BJP accused the U.S. State Department of a clear bias against the government of PM Modi. The US criticism is being seen as a result of white supremacy.
Ministry of External Affairs’ official Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, “India is proud of its secular credentials, its status as the largest democracy and a pluralistic society with a longstanding commitment to tolerance and inclusion. The Indian Constitution guarantees fundamental rights to all its citizens, including its minority communities.”
It is remarkable that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has released the report just before his visit to India. He will arrive in Delhi on June 25 for talks with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. The visit is expected to prepare the ground for a proposed meeting between President Donald Trump and PM Modi on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka on June 27 and 28.
The US has no moral right to criticise India when there are attacks on blacks and Non-Christians in the country. White supremacists and US President Donald Trump have an endless and varied supply of insults and taunts to African Americans.
According to an analysis of the Trump Twitter Archive website, the US president has used the words “dumb” or “dummy” 236 times since 2011, and on 14 occasions since becoming the president. He is accused of being racist. Trump makes the same criticism of black athletes, black journalists and black Members of Congress. He attacks their intelligence. Analysis shows Trump consistently targeted African Americans with ‘dumb’ and ‘low IQ’ jibes.
In the past eight years, across continents, white supremacists have repeatedly chosen the same targets for shootings, stabbings, bombings and car attacks. Mosques, Synagogues, Black churches and Leftwing politicians were attacked. The mass shootings in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing over 50 people, appear to be the latest attack motivated by the belief that the white race is endangered. The perceived threats include Jews, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, feminists and leftist politicians. The attackers have not been part of a single white supremacist group. But they are steeped in the same global racist propaganda and fluent in the same memes and conspiracies. In less than a decade, these attacks have included:
July 2011
77 people killed in attacks on Utøya Island and in Oslo, Norway
A bomb attack, followed by a shooting that targeted the island summer youth camp of Norway’s Labour party. The shooter, Anders Breivik, wanted to prevent an “invasion of Muslims” and deliberately targeted politically active young people who he saw as “cultural Marxists” and proponents of multiculturalism. More than half of the dead were teenagers.
August 2012
Six worshippers killed in a shooting targeting a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, US
The dead included the temple president, Satwant Singh Kaleka. The shooter, a “frustrated neo-Nazi” who had played in white power bands, was a regular on racist websites. He had previously talked to one colleague in the US military about a “racial holy war that was coming” and told another he was a “race traitor” for dating a Latina woman.
September 2013
Rapper and anti-fascist activist Pavlos Fyssas stabbed to death in Piraeus, Greece
A senior member of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party was imprisoned after confessing to the killing.
April 2014
Three killed at Jewish centre and retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas, US
A former Ku Klux Klan leader shot and killed three people, one of them just 14 years old. He said he believed Jews were destroying the white race, and that diversity was a kind of genocide. None of his victims were Jewish, but he said he considered two of them to be accomplices to Jewish people.
June 2015
Nine people killed during Bible study at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, US
The nine victims included elderly longtime church members at the Mother Emanuel AME church, and Clementa Pinckney, a state senator. The shooter, a self-avowed white supremacist, said he wanted to start a race war, and that he was concerned about “black-on-white crime”.
October 2015
Three killed in attack on school in Trollhättan, Sweden
The attacker targeted a local high school with a high percentage of immigrant students. He stabbed students and teachers, targeting those with darker skin, police said. Three died, including 15-year-old Ahmed Hassan, who was born in Somalia and had recently moved to Sweden.
June 2016
Labour MP Jo Cox shot and stabbed to death, UK
Cox was a supporter of Britain staying in the EU. She was attacked a week before the EU referendum vote in 2016. The man convicted of killing her, Thomas Mair, a white supremacist obsessed with the Nazis and apartheid-era South Africa, shouted: “This is for Britain,” “Keep Britain independent” and “Britain first” as he killed her.
January 2017
Six people killed during evening prayers at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada
One of the victims, Azzeddine Soufiane, was killed as he attempted to tackle the gunman. Nineteen people were also injured in the shooting, which the gunman said was prompted by Justin Trudeau’s tweet that refugees were welcome in Canada, and that “diversity is strength”, a response to Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries. The shooter, who said he feared refugees would kill his family, had previously been known as an aggressive online troll with anti-Muslim, anti-refugee and anti-feminist views.
March 2017
Timothy Caughman stalked and killed by a white supremacist with a sword, New York, US
Caughman, a 66-year-old “can and bottle recycler”, had lively social media accounts full of photographs with celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey. His killer, an American military veteran, said he targeted a random black man on the street in New York City as a “practice run” for a bigger attack, and as part of a campaign to persuade white women not to enter into interracial relationships. He urged one female journalist who interviewed him to have children: “Good white women should have as many children as possible.”
May 2017
Two men stabbed to death after intervening in an anti-Muslim rant, Portland, Oregon, US
Two men were killed and one injured after they tried to intervene to protect young women on a public train who were being targeted with an anti-Muslim tirade. Their alleged killer shouted “Free speech or die” in the courtroom, and “Death to Antifa! You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism!”
June 2017
Makram Ali killed and 12 people injured after a van ploughed into worshippers outside a mosque in Finsbury Park, United Kingdom
The killer, Darren Osborne, shouted “I want to kill all Muslims – I did my bit” after the van attack, according to witnesses. He had been radicalised online and over Twitter, a judge concluded, and avidly consumed anti-Muslim propaganda from prominent rightwing figures.
August 2017
Heather Heyer killed and dozens injured after a car ploughed into anti-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, US
After authorities shut down a violent white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, one of the men who had been photographed with a white supremacist group drove his car into a crowded street full of counter-protesters. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed. Dozens more were injured, many seriously. The killer had been obsessed with Hitler as a teenager, according to a former teacher. In phone calls from jail, he was recorded criticising Heyer’s mother as a “communist” and “one of those anti-white supremacists”.
October 2018
Man attempted to enter black church before allegedly killing two black people in a supermarket in Kentucky, US
A witness said that during the attack, the alleged shooter said: “Whites don’t kill whites.” His two victims, Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67, were both black. Shortly before the shooting he had attempted to enter a nearby, predominantly black church, which was locked.
November 2018
11 killed in a mass shooting targeting the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
The alleged shooter had an active profile on an extremist social media site, where he accused Jewish people of trying to bring “evil” Muslims into the US, and wrote that a refugee aid organisation “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people”. In his online posts, Robert Bowers allegedly referenced internal debates within white supremacist groups, and egged on the harassment of an anti-fascist activist from Charlottesville. He has pleaded not guilty.
March 2019
The Christchurch mosque shootings were two consecutive terrorist attacks at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday Prayer on 15 March 2019. The attacks began at the Al Noor Mosque in the suburb of Riccarton at 1:40 pm and continued at the Linwood Islamic Centre at about 1:55 pm. The gunman live-streamed the first attack on Facebook Live. The attacks killed 51 people and 49 people were injured. A 28-year-old Australian man, described in media reports as a white supremacist and part of the alt-right, was arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder and errorism. The attacks have been linked to an increase in white supremacism and alt-right extremism globally observed since the mid-2010s.
