[ad_1]
NEW YORK: Human Rights Watch has urged governments to take urgent measures to prevent the “racist, xenophobic and discrimination violence” linked to the COVID-19 pandemic while prosecuting racial attacks on Asians and people of Asian descent.
The international watchdog has pointed out that discrimination is not limited to countries like the United States, Australia, Russia, the United Kingdom, but in India and Sri Lanka, where leaders have done little to stop growing anti-Muslim discrimination in recent years, many apparent COVID-19 related attacks on Muslims have been reported.
In India, hate speech against Muslims, which is already a “serious and growing problem since the election of the Bharatiya Janata Hindu Nationalist Party (BJP) in 2015”, has increased due to the spread of the coronavirus.
HRW said that in April, social media and WhatsApp groups were “inundated” with calls for “social and economic boycotts of Muslims, including BJP supporters.”
Read more: Latest updates on coronavirus
“There have also been several physical attacks on Muslims, including volunteers who distribute relief materials, amid falsehoods that accuse them of deliberately spreading the virus,” the human rights organization said.
Anti-Muslim sentiment had increased in the country after the BJP-led government announced that a large number of Muslims have contracted the virus.
The government said the number of cases in the country had increased as people attended a mass religious congregation in Delhi, organized by the international Islamic mission movement Tablighi Jamaat.
“BJP officials fanned the flames by calling the Jamaat gathering a Taliban crime and terrorist terrorism. Some media outlets supporting the BJP have used terms like #CoronaJihad, making the hashtag go viral on social media.” HRW said.
Following such violent incidents, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a caution statement, stating that “it is very important that we do not profile cases on the basis of racial, religious and ethnic lines.”
The country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has not openly deplored the hate speech against the community, but tweeted “COVID19 does not see race, religion, color, caste, creed, language or borders before attacking. Our response and conduct thereafter must attribute primacy to unity and brotherhood. We’re in this together.”
Meanwhile, the country’s authorities at the national and local levels have failed to take “adequate measures” to stop the increasingly toxic atmosphere or conduct proper investigations of the attacks, as appropriate, the statement added.
[ad_2]
