The team from the racist, bigoted and the highly deplorable body United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has been denied entry into India, a letter to BJP MP Nishikant Dubey from External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar mentioned.
In the letter dated June 1, Minister Jaishankar wrote “We have denied visa to USCIRF teams that have sought to visit India in connection with issues related to religious freedom, as we do not see the locus standi of a foreign entity like USCIRF to pronounce on the state of Indian citizens’ constitutionally protected rights.”
“USCIRF has been known to make prejudiced, inaccurate and misleading observations regarding the state of religious freedom in India. We do not take cognisance of these pronouncements and have repudiated such attempts to misrepresent information related to India”, the External Affairs Minister wrote in his letter.
He also highlighted the fact that the MEA had earlier rejected USCIRF’s statements as ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unwarranted’ and assured the MP that India “will not accept any external interference or pronouncement on matters related to our sovereignty and the fundamental rights of our citizens that are guaranteed by the Constitution”.
The USCIRF had released a report in April in which it said that “religious freedom in India had taken drastic turn downward”. It cited the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A and Delhi riots and said that religious minorities in India were under assault and that there was rising “Islamophobia”.
It had recommended the Trump administration to impose targeted sanctions on India government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ assets and/ or barring their entry into the United States.
Earlier, it had partnered with Madras University to hold a Hinduphobic conference delusively titled “Conference in the Study of Religions of India”. The conference that was scheduled to happen between July 21 – 24, 2020 has now been ‘postponed until further notice’, in view of the pandemic.