AISA holds protest against anti-Indian crimes in US

The All India Students' Association on Thursday held a protest march here against hate crimes against Indians in the US and demanded strict action from the government.

Members of the left wing student organisation marched from Teen Murti to the US Embassy here to protest rising cases of racist attacks against Indians in the US.

Engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed on February 22 in a racist attack in Kansas, while his friend Alok Madasani, was injured in the same attack. Deep Rai, a Sikh who is an American citizen, was injured in a racist attack last week. Another Indian, Harnish Patel, was killed in South Carolina 10 days ago, but the killing was not identified as a hate crime.

The AISA demanded the government should hold US President Donald Trump "accountable for propagating hate against racial minorities".

They asked for a tough diplomatic stand by Prime Minister Narendra Modi against increasing cases of hate crimes in the US.

The protesters raised slogans like -- "America ki dalali nahi chalegi", "Trump ki dalali nahi chalegi" (The American and Trump interference will not be tolerated).

"We will try to make this a civil society protest later. We are raising an initial voice against the deaths of the Indian-Americans in the US. Not only Indian-Americans, there have also been attacks on racial and religious minorities," AISA's National President Sucheta De told IANS.

"The racist attackers see minorities and shout -- 'This is not your country, go back to your country'. Very interestingly, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Prime Minister are silent because their own party (the Bharatiya Janata Party) tells religious minorities here to go (back) to their countries," she said.

"We are here to say that hate makes no country great and that there is a need to be proactive to end hate crimes in the US," she added.

--IANS

som-mg/in/rn