America's USCIRF chair colludes with Pak-backed Islamist groups to defame India, says media report

The media report by The New Indian is also akin to what has been reported by DisinfoLab, a legal entity unveiling fake news and propaganda intending to create turmoil among people. 

DisinfoLab while posting a detailed report of the nexus also tweeted on Monday: #USCIRF will release its annual report today degrading India as a Country of Particular Concern! Islamophobia,Fascism,Genocide..."

As per an investigation conducted by The New Indian, the USCIRF is working closely with Pakistani groups to label India as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC) in their annual reports on religious freedom.

Information available in the public domain reveals that the USCIRF chair Nadine Maenza has deep ties with Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) and its founder Shaik Ubaid, who have had links with the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the US offshoot of radical Jamaat-e-Islami (Pakistan), the New Indian reported.

She also has close ties with Burma Task Force (BTF) which operates under Justice For All founded by Pakistani origin Abdul Malik Mujahid.

The JFA is powered by Sound Vision Foundation whose current executive director is Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, the founder of the banned terrorist organisation SIMI in India, the newspaper reported.

The organisation was instrumental in the appointment of Nadine at USCIRF and since her appointment in 2018 as Commissioner she has been at the forefront of anti-India vitriol in its annual reports. Nadine is a regular speaker in the events organised by IAMC.

But IAMC’s relationship with Nadine goes back further, as per our investigation. In their effort to get India enlisted as a CPC in USCIRF’s annual reports, IAMC had hired a lobbying firm ‘Fidelis Government Relations’ represented by its President and political and legislative strategist, Terry Allen.

Nadine has been associated with Allen through an organisation called ‘Patriot Voices’ where she is the President. Both Nadine and Allen were also part of key staff and advisory committee of the Republican candidate Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign in 2016.

IAMC paid Fidelis Government Relations and Allen a sum of US $55K between 2013 and 2014 to lobby and influence the USCIRF against India, the report said. Their efforts showed results as USCIRF started using the distorted map of India, by removing J&K, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh from it, in its reports since 2014, it said.

Both Ubaid and Mujahid had lobbied for listing India as CPC in USCIRF’s reports through their organisation BTF between 2018-20. Not surprisingly, both Ubaid and Mujahid hired the same lobbying firm Fidelis Government Relations and Allen and paid him US $267K between 2018 and 2020 for lobbying against India, it said.

The newspaper said its investigations also showed that ICNA has close ties with 1971 Bangladesh war criminals. One of the convicts in the genocide of Bengali intellectuals in 1971, Ashrafuz Zaman Khan was associated with ICNA Queen’s Chapter in New York, who hailed from the Islami-Chhatra-Sangh, student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami. He was also one of the co-founders of Burma Task Force.

Meanwhile, DisinfoLab it its report  Operation Tupac – Decoding The Longest War pointed out seemingly unrelated events  taking place in India and in the USA in the recent past.

It lists incidents like vandalisation of the Statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the US, a conference on “Dismantling Hindutva” in September 2021 in the US and an online boycott campaign launched in the middle-east to boycott Indian products.

It pointed out a "series of seminars and conferences by some concerned individuals in the US on ‘Rising Fascism’ in India.

It said a toolkit was prepared for farmers’ protest for some unknown reasons mentioned to dent India’s soft image of Tea and Yoga.  
Organizations that lobbied USCIRF to blacklist India in 2018-20, had also lobbied during 2013-14 when there was a different government in India.
 
"One major commonality among all these events was that they were carried out by the same set of people. At present all these people are active and operating on different Fault Lines in India," it said.

The report said there are genuine problems in India, which are the long-running fault lines.

"These are very much real concerns for India. The issues of minorities and the discriminations against Dalits are real problems and should be discussed ad-nauseum and addressed head-on. We must face the problem of gender discrimination as well as regional concerns.

"What we must not do is to let vested interests hijack these issues and weaponize them against India. These issues should be raised by real stakeholders, who conveniently have been removed from the discourse. A set of ‘vulture activists’ have abrogated upon themselves to become the representative voice on every issue – at the cost of real stakeholders," it said.

"There have been, and are, many activists and experts on Indian issues – who have spent their lifetime fighting for the causes. However, instead of empowering them and giving them a voice, the eco-system oiled from the US-based Jamaat-linked machinery has taken control over the discourse – whose interest is not in addressing the issues – but to prolong them.

"It is not in their interests that any constructive debate takes place. Their interest is in deepening the fault lines – so much that they become unbridgeable. What would be the best strategy to bleed India than making Indians fight Indians," the report said.