India targeting Muslims in name of corona: PM Imran Khan

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Sunday that deliberate and violent targeting of the Muslims in India by the Modi government to divert the backlash over its COVID-19 policy is akin to what the Nazis did to Jews in Germany. In a tweet, he said this has left thousands stranded and hungry and is yet more proof of the racist Hindutva supremacist ideology of Modi government.

Meanwhile, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC) human rights body condemned the "unrelenting vicious Islamophobic campaign in India maligning Muslims for spread of COVID-19", the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the OIC's Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC) also condemned the "negative profiling [of Muslims in India] in media subjecting them to discrimination & violence with impunity".

The international body called upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government to take notice of and "take urgent steps to stop the growing tide of Islamophobia in India". The Indian government should "protect the rights of its persecuted Muslim minority as per its obligations" under international human rights laws, it added.

A New York Times report earlier this week said the outbreak of coronavirus in India had triggered a series of attacks against Muslims across the country, with the health ministry of Modi's Hindu nationalist government claiming that Muslims are spreading the virus.

“Young Muslim men who were passing out food to the poor were assaulted with cricket bats. ... Other Muslims have been beaten up, nearly lynched, run out of their neighborhoods or attacked in mosques, branded as virus spreaders,” the paper said.

It highlighted that Hindu extremists were scapegoating the country’s entire Muslim population for deliberately spreading the virus through “corona jihad”. Meanwhile, President Dr Arif Alvi said that instead of providing them basic health facilities, the dirty priority of the Indian government was to suppress the people of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK).

“Their soldiers have carried out this primary task through heinous brutalisation, torture & suppression,” the president said while sharing the statistics showing the dilapidation of the health sector in Kashmir.

According to an Indian media report, Kashmir has one ventilator for every 71,000 people, one doctor for 3,900 people but one armed soldier for every nine people. “With more than 95,000 innocent killed since 1989, these numbers shout out to the world,” the president remarked.