Americans protest against Delhi communal riots outside Indian consulate in Houston

Congress candidate Nyanza Moore, former Pakistani minister Babar Ghouri also attended the demonstration

HOUSTON: A large number of demonstrators, including Pakistani and Indian Muslims, gathered outside the office of Consulate General of India on Monday to stage their protest against brutalities of Modi-led regime against minority Muslims in New Delhi as India's capital  burns with communal riots over a controversial citizenship law.

Despite heavy rain and difficult weather conditions, people including senior citizens, women and children belonging to different communities joined hands with Muslims to launch their protest against Modi’s villainy against CAA protesters in India.

Nyanza Moore, a Democratic candidate for the US Congress, also stood in support with Muslims, lamenting, “We are also the oppressed blacks in the world’s largest democratic country -- the United States”.

PHOTO: EXPRESS

"We demand from the United Nations that Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, must be declared a terrorist.”

While censuring US President Donald Trump, who has been accused of endorsing white supremacists in the US and for backing Modi’s extremism, Moore said: “I don’t see any Muslim terrorists, it's Trump and Modi’s joint venture to call peaceful Muslim people extremists”.

Pakistan's former minister for shipping and port Babar Ghouri, who was also present on the occasion, told The Express Tribune that the permission for holding the demonstration was sought from City of Houston.

PHOTO: EXPRESS

However, a heavy contingent of police force was  deployed outside the Indian Consulate with barricades that were erected all around the building to confine the demonstrators, he added.

The protesters chanted slogans against the ruling party in India, BJP and its extremist stance on Muslim minorities.

The demonstrators also signed a memorandum demanding the United Nations (UN) and the US government to declare Modi a terrorist and to put ban on RSS, from which the Indian prime minister has pursued his party’s agenda of Hindu supremacy in India overshadowing the country's status as a secular state.

“Our families in India are not safe since our houses are burnt and many of our people are martyred mercilessly,” said an Indian American Muslim, Mohammed, demanding the US government to play its part in eliminating racial discrimination and to get Muslims out of the clutches of Indian police force and Hindu extremists.

Carrying placards inscribed with ‘down with India’ and ‘Modi be declared terrorist’, protesters raised both American and Pakistani flags.

Another Indian-American Muslim, who did not wish to be named, told The Express Tribune that a Indian secret service official from the consulate tried to intimidate them by noting their names in a bid to scare them away from recording their protest against New Delhi.