Muslims thank Germans for Gujarat solidarity

Two US-based Indian Muslim groups have praised German parliamentarians, who last month justified the European Union’s position in barring Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from visiting EU nations.
“The German parliamentarians have taken a bold step. We admire them and ask others to follow their lead in order to bring Modi to justice,” Association of Indian Muslims of America (AIMA) and Indian Muslim Council - USA said in a statement.
Ute Granold from Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union Party and Pascal Kober from the Free Democratic Party visited the western Indian state in early April as part of a Catholic aid agency organized tour.
They said Modi was “persona non grata” in European countries for his alleged role in anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2008.
The parliamentarians also accused Modi of acting like a dictator and criticized his government’s human rights record, drawing parallels between Gujarat under Modi and Germany under Hitler. They also objected to Gujarat history books glorifying Hitler.
The Muslim groups’ statement said the parliamentarians “had learnt first-hand what millions of others … know about Modi, his ideology of hate, his acts of omissions and commissions in the Gujarat genocide of 2002, and his strategy of projecting well-planned genocide as a spontaneous communal riot to hoodwink Gujarat, India and the world.”
The groups said in the past eight years, Modi has jailed hundreds of innocent Muslims labeling them terrorists and forcing many more to live in ghettos, with no basic facilities.
The parliamentarians “only stated what they have actually seen in Gujarat,” the Muslim groups said.
Modi offended by the Germans’ comments, wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on April 9 seeking an apology from them for making “malicious, malignant and maleficent” statements against him.