US Body on Int’l Religious Freedom’s Relentless Efforts to Spoil India’s Image


For the third year in a row, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) annual report released on Monday has again recommended putting India on the “blacklist” as “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC).

The countries on the CPC list, as per the laws, can be put on the sanctions list by the US President.

This list is used by global lobbying agencies to discourage investors from investing in the country concerned, and is also used to dent the country’s soft power and global image.

MAENZA, TIES WITH INDIA-HATING GROUPS

USCIRF, a religious freedom organization founded in 1998, comprises practising Christian Missionaries as members.

Nadine Maenza was appointed as USCIRF commissioner in 2018. Soon after, Maenza started working with Shaik Ubaid and his organization, Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), against India. Ubaid had been associated with Jamaat front active in USA-ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), which has links to Pakistan-designated terrorist organizations.

Prior to USCIRF, Maenza was associated with US politician Rick Santorum since 2012, where she also managed his political campaigns.

Maenza is the president of an organization called ‘Patriot Voices’, founded by Santorum in 2012, which claims to work for the American community and collects donations for the cause.

One of her colleagues at Patriot Voices is Terry Allen, who is the founder and president of a lobby firm called Fidelis Government Relations (FGR).

The FGR was hired by the IAMC to lobby USCIRF to blacklist India. For lobbying, IAMC paid the FGR $40,000 between 2013 and 2014.

FGR’s lobbying registration for the IAMC. (News18)

The IAMC has been charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) by the Tripura police in India for spreading a series of fake news during the communal violence in Tripura in November.

Another front which lobbied against India was the Burma Task Force (BTF). Ubaid is the founder of BTF, which hired FGR again, spending $267K between 2018 and 2020. The BTF operates under ‘Justice for All’ (JFA), which was founded by Abdul Malik Mujahid of Pakistani origin, who is also the founder of Chicago-based company Sound Vision. JFA is powered by Sound Vision, which in turn, was founded by ICNA. Sound Vision’s current executive director is Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, who founded the banned student outfit Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in 1977.

BTF hired FGR, spending $267K between 2018 and 2020. (News18)

Maenza has regularly been associated with both the IAMC and Burma Task Force and has called for designating India as CPC on the grounds of religious freedom several times.

USCIRF AND ITS REPORTS

This time the target of lobbying is the US Congress among others – the same body which has to accept the USCIRF report for it to have an actual impact.

On January 26, 2022, the IAMC hosted an event to target the current Indian Government.

The IAMC’s Jan 26, 2022 event. (News18)

Maenza and Former Vice-President of India Hamid Ansari were among the speakers at this event.

In 2020, USCIRF’s report was written by Harrison Akins whose mentor was Akbar Ahmad, a former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and was posted in Dhaka as a Deputy Secretary in the Pakistani Mission during the 1971 war.

In 2014, the USCIRF’s report distorted India’s map, therein removing J&K, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh from India.

The distorted Indian map in the report. (News18)

Another policy analyst of USCIRF is Naila Mohammad. Her mother Jamila Khalil is the president of New England Chapter of APPNA (Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America), whose political lobbying wing PAK PAC (Pakistan American Political Action Committee) has openly lobbied for Kashmir against India.

Another former South Asia analyst at USCIRF is Waris Husain. He is linked to the American Institute of Pakistani Studies (AIPS), where he had received a two-month fellowship in 2014-15. He also wrote for the Pakistani daily DAWN, Pakistan Post and Tribune.pk. His father is also from Pakistan.

‘TERRORISTS AS HEROES’

ICNA has extensive ties with globally designated terror groups — Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), Laskhar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen.

ICNA has had several heads from Jamaat. It has accorded hero status to several 1971 Bangladeshi war criminals. They also interviewed Hizbul-Mujahideen head Syed Salahudeen in 1997 for its magazine – The Message – glorifying him as a hero.

One of the convicts in the Genocide of Bengali intellectuals in 1971, Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, was associated with the ICNA Queen’s Chapter New York. He hailed from the Islami-Chhatra-Sangh (student wing of JeI) .He was also one of the co-founders of the BTF.

JFA has also hosted Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence’s convicted agent Ghulam Nabi Fai who was found guilty in 2011 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for concealing the transfer of USD 3.5 million from the US to Pakistan.

Fai is associated with “human rights” activist Angana Chatterji, who founded Coalition Against Genocide with Ubaid. Chatterji was with Maenza in one of her companies called Hardwired Global.

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News and IPL 2022 Live Updates here.



Source link