Washington: A Congress-established independent panel on religious freedom has called on the US to maintain a visa ban on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, saying there was significant evidence linking him to the violence in the state in 2002.
“There is significant evidence linking him to the violence and the terrible events that took place in Gujarat and for this reason, a visa would not be appropriate,” Katrina Lantos Swett, chairwoman of the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) told reporters on Wednesday during a press conference held to release its annual report.
Modi, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Tuesday noted, was the only individual in whose case a provision of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) was invoked in March 2005 to bar his entry. IRFA bars the entry of such individuals “responsible for or directly carried out…particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
USCIRF said it wrote to the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012 about the possibility that Modi might apply for a visa, to reiterate its concerns about his admissibility to the United States.
In its 2013 annual report, the federal advisory body that monitors religious freedom abuses abroad, said USCIRF continues to urge the Departments of State and Homeland Security to develop a lookout list of aliens who are inadmissible to the US States on this basis.
The report places India and seven other nations on its “Tier 2 List” where “governments engage in or tolerate are particularly severe, and meet at least one criterion, but not all, of IRFA’s three-fold “systematic, ongoing, egregious” standard.
Other nations on the Tier 2 category which replaces the Watch List designation USCIRF previously used are: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos and Russia.
“There has been no large-scale communal violence against religious minorities in India since 2008, and in recent years the Indian government has created special investigative and judicial structures in an effort to address previous such attacks,” the report noted.
“In addition, members of religious minority communities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, reported an increase during the reporting period of intimidation, harassment, and violence, particularly in states with anti-conversion laws,” the report said.(Agencies)