WASHINGTON: Indian Americans in Silicon Valley held a solidarity rally for Hindus in Canada and Bangladesh over violence against them in these two countries.
Addressing a gathering of scores of Indian Americans at the Milpitas City Hall, prominent community leaders spoke out about the attacks on the Hindu minority urging US leaders to condemn the human rights violations and hold the Canadian and Bangladesh governments accountable to safeguard their Hindu minority populations.
The Bay Area is home to more than 200,000 Indian Americans. Participants at the rally expressed disappointment at the poor handling of the attack on Hindu devotees at the Hindu Sabha temple in Brampton where Khalistanis attacked Hindu devotees, a media release said.
People in the rally were seen raising slogans "Stop khalistani terrorism, protect Canadian-Hindus", "Stop Islamist terrorism, protect Bangladeshi-Hindus".
"We saw videos of the Khalistani terrorists invading the temple premises and beating up men, women and children. It was horrible to see Hindus who had gone to celebrate the Diwali festival being hounded by those goons," the release said.
"To make matters worse we saw that the police were already infiltrated with Khalistan supporters and were beating up Hindu devotees. Freedom of violence is being dressed up as freedom of expression in Canada. We have lost all faith in the Trudeau government in protecting the basic human rights of Canadian-Hindus," it said.
Dr Ramesh Japra from Americans for Hindus called out the attacks by Khalistanis on Hindus in Canada and by radical groups in Bangladesh.
"We are one world, one family, one future," he said.
Pushpita Prasad from the Coalition of Hindus in North America (CoHNA) raised concerns about her team in Canada being targeted and profiled by Sikhs for Justice which is a banned organisation in India but operates freely in the US and Canada.