WASHINGTON: Panelists asked the US media to hold Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi accountable for the 2002 slaughter in Gujarat. It happened following the recent showing of the BBC documentary India: The Modi Question.
Documentary screening happened at National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC. Many officials from several American media outlets were in attendance.
The film examines the riots and horrific killings of Muslims in Gujarat, India, in 2002 and its aftermath.
The panel comprised individuals with first-hand knowledge of the events. They “called on the news media in the United States to reveal Mr. Modi’s crucial involvement in making it happen,” according to an NPC statement.
Rachel Oswald, chair of the NPC’s Press Freedom Unit, chaired the panel, which also featured an eyewitness to the slaughter and a family member, as well as the daughter of a police informant.
According to the NPC, the film depicts BBC coverage on the situation and interviews with the British foreign secretary at the time, Jack Straw. Jack describes an internal Foreign Office study detailing at least 2,000 murders of Muslims, which Mr. Straw referred to as “the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing.”
In 2011, Sanjiv Bhatt, a top Gujarat police official who participated in meetings after the riots broke out, testified before the Indian Supreme Court that Mr. Modi instructed police to do nothing for three days until the violence abated. Mr. Bhatt was eventually prosecuted in 2018 for an old accusation and was serving a life sentence, according to the NPC report.
Specific Attacks against Muslims
An eyewitness to the riots, Imran Dawood, was one of the panel members debating the documentary. According to him, the rioters engaged in “specific attacks against Muslims” using “the same tactics as in Nazi Germany.”
Moreover, Ms. Bhatt, when asked what actions the US news media could do, stated, “You have the authority to hold this dictatorship accountable,” and “Silence is a kind of accepting what Modi did.”
