Tag: india

Japan And India Disagree With Biden’s Claim They Are “Xenophobic”

Japan and India have both responded to Joe Biden’s charge last week that they are “xenophobic” because they have not embraced mass immigration.

As we highlighted, Biden asserted that Japan and India are facing economic struggles while the US economy is performing well “because we welcome immigrants.”

“Think about it,” Biden said during a fundraiser, “Why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong.”

Fox News reports that the Japanese Embassy responded to the comments, stating “We are aware that the U.S. government has clarified that President Biden’s comment was made in the context of explaining that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants and that immigrants make the U.S. stronger, and that his comment was not made with the intent of undermining the importance and permanence of the Japan-U.S. relationship.”

However, Japanese officials added “It is unfortunate that some of the comments were not based on an accurate understanding of Japan’s policies, and we have raised this point to the U.S. government and explained Japan’s positions and policies once again.”

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also took issue with Biden’s remarks, pointing to the country’s GDP growth and urging that India is an open society.

“I haven’t seen such an open, pluralistic, and diverse society anywhere in the world,” the minister stated during an Economic Times event, adding “We are actually not just not xenophobic, we are the most open, most pluralistic and in many ways the most understanding society in the world.”

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Three Men Arrested and Charged With Assassination of Sikh Separatist Leader in Canada

Three Indian nationals were arrested in Canada on Friday and charged with with the alleged assassination of a prominent Sikh separatist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was born in the Republic of India and who had been living in exile in the nation of the maple leaf flag.

According to Canadian police, the suspects, Karanpreet Singh, Kamalpreet Singh, and Karan Brar, are accused of conspiring to commit the murder using a firearm on June 18, 2023.

This incident has escalated diplomatic tensions between Canada and India, especially after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau linked the Indian government to the murder, which India has vehemently denied.

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An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi’s India

The White House went to extraordinary lengths last year to welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a state visit meant to bolster ties with an ascendant power and potential partner against China.

Tables on the South Lawn were decorated with lotus blooms, the symbol of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. A chef was flown in from California to preside over a vegetarian menu. President Biden extolled the shared values of a relationship “built on mutual trust, candor and respect.”

But even as the Indian leader was basking in U.S. adulation on June 22, an officer in India’s intelligence service was relaying final instructions to a hired hit team to kill one of Modi’s most vocal critics in the United States.

The assassination is a “priority now,” wrote Vikram Yadav, an officer in India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, according to current and former U.S. and Indian security officials.

Yadav forwarded details about the target, Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, including his New York address, according to the officials and a U.S. indictment. As soon as the would-be assassins could confirm that Pannun, a U.S. citizen, was home, “it will be a go ahead from us.”

Yadav’s identity and affiliation, which have not previously been reported, provide the most explicit evidence to date that the assassination plan — ultimately thwarted by U.S. authorities — was directed from within the Indian spy service. Higher-ranking RAW officials have also been implicated, according to current and former Western security officials, as part of a sprawling investigation by the CIA, FBI and other agencies that has mapped potential links to Modi’s inner circle.

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High Court In India Rules That Viewing, Downloading Child Porn Is Not A Crime

The Supreme Court of India is hearing arguments from child protection organizations after the Madras High Court ruled that downloading and watching child pornography is not a criminal offense. In January, the High Court dismissed charges against 28-year-old S. Harish, who was caught in possession of two pieces of child sexual abuse material on his cell phone. 

According to OpIndia, in addition to claiming Harish was innocent because he’d never viewed child porn before, Madras High Court Judge N. Anand Venkatesh also noted that it was “done in privacy without affecting or influencing anyone else.”

The defendant claimed that the CSAM had auto-downloaded after he received it through the popular messaging app WhatsApp, which his attorneys maintained is not a criminal offense under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act.

“To make out an offense under Section 14(1) of the Protection of Child from Sexual Offenses Act, 2012, a child or children must have been used for pornography purposes. This would mean that the accused person should have used the child for pornographic purposes. Even assuming that the accused person had watched child pornography [videos], that strictly will not fall within the scope of Section 14(1) of the Protection of Child from Sexual Offenses Act, 2012,” explained the judge at the Madras High Court.

Harish had his charges quashed, with the judge explaining that merely downloading and watching child pornography would not be considered a criminal offense under the POCSO Act and the Information Technology law. The decision lead to outrage from child protection groups.

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SECRET INDIAN MEMO ORDERED “CONCRETE MEASURES” AGAINST HARDEEP SINGH NIJJAR TWO MONTHS BEFORE HIS ASSASSINATION IN CANADA

THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT instructed its consulates in North America to launch a “sophisticated crackdown scheme” against Sikh diaspora organizations in Western countries, according to a secret memorandum issued in April 2023 by India’s Ministry of External Affairs. The memo, which was obtained by The Intercept, lists several Sikh dissidents under investigation by India’s intelligence agencies, including the Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

“Concrete measures shall be adopted to hold the suspects accountable,” the memo says. Nijjar was murdered in Vancouver in June, two months after being named as a target in the document, a killing the Canadian government said was ordered by Indian intelligence.

The memo addresses India’s growing concerns about its reputation due to activism from Sikh dissident organizations and portrays its political enemies as extremist or even terrorist organizations. Titled “Action Points on Khalistan Extremism,” using the name Sikh activists use for a separatist state, the document lists several Sikh activist organizations it blames for engaging in “anti-India propaganda,” as well as acts of “arson and vandalization” targeting Indian interests in North America.

The document instructs officials at its consulates to cooperate with Indian intelligence agencies to confront the groups Sikhs for Justice, Babbar Khalsa International, Sikh Youth of America, Sikh Coordination Committee East Coast, World Sikh Parliament, and Shiromani Akali Dal Amritsar America. It suggests that Nijjar and several other “suspects” are affiliated with one of these groups, Babbar Khalsa International. Babbar Khalsa International is proscribed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. and Canada, but the other organizations named in the document are considered legal in both countries.

A leader of one of another of the listed groups, Sikhs for Justice, was the target of an Indian assassination plot, according to federal prosecutors in the U.S. The indictment, unsealed last week, accused Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, of working with Indian officials to kill Sikhs for Justice general counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American citizen based in New York.

The leaked April memo from India’s Ministry of External Affairs does not explicitly order the killings of Sikh activists. Instead, it calls on Indian consular officials operating in the U.S. and Canada to work in cooperation with India’s Research and Analysis Wing, a foreign intelligence agency; the National Investigation Agency, a counterterror police force; and the Intelligence Bureau, an internal security agency akin to the FBI. Aside from Nijjar, a number of people accused in the document of having ties with BKI are believed to be based in Pakistan or currently incarcerated in India.

The Indian government did not respond to a request for comment. While the U.S. and Canada have both now charged India with orchestrating assassinations against Sikhs in the West, the secret document obtained by The Intercept is the first public evidence showing that the Indian government was targeting these specific Sikh diaspora organizations and dissidents.

Those involved in Sikh diaspora advocacy said that the Indian government frequently characterizes any political activity by Sikh separatist organizations as militant or extremist in nature.

“The Indian government and media consistently aim to manufacture a narrative that describes any type of political advocacy for Khalistan or Sikh sovereignty as ‘Sikh extremism’ as a pretext to justify a repressive security-based response,” said Prabjot Singh, an activist and editor of the Panth-Punjab Project, a digital platform focusing on Sikh politics and sociopolitical issues. “It’s important to recognize that this is a strategy that India employs in Punjab to justify crackdowns on Sikh political organizing, while misusing diplomatic resources abroad to try and enlist other countries as partners in this effort.”

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Indian man charged with assassination plot aimed at Sikh activist in NYC

The Justice Department announced charges against an Indian man who’s accused of directing an assassination plot.

Nikhil “Nick” Gupta was charged on Wednesday after an Indian government employee who works on security and intelligence encouraged him to take out a Sikh activist who supports a sovereign state in northern India, the Department of Justice said.

The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a U.S. citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs,” said Manhattan prosecutor Damian Williams in a statement.

It’s the second such incident announced in the past week. According to President Joe Biden’s administration, investigators foiled another plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States.

Among the most startling details in the Justice Department’s statement is an alleged revelation from Gupta to an undercover DEA agent that another Sikh leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, “was also the target.”

In fact, he revealed, “We have so many targets.”

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Air Force scrambled Rafales after ‘UFO’ sighting near Imphal airport

The Indian Air Force scrambled two Rafale fighter jets after getting information about the sighting of an ‘unidentified flying object’ (UFO) near Imphal airport in Manipur on Sunday.

The Rafales, launched from Hasimara air base, could not spot anything, top sources told India Today.

The first aircraft returned to the base and the second was deployed towards the area to check again, but it could not ascertain anything.

The Eastern Command of the Indian Air Force said that it had activated its Air Defence response mechanism.

“IAF activated its Air Defence response mechanism based on visual inputs from Imphal airport. The small object was not seen thereafter,” it tweeted on Sunday.

“The UFO was visible with bare eyes moving westwards of the airfield till 4 pm,” a CISF official said.

Flight operations at Bir Tikendrajit International Airport in Manipur’s Imphal were halted for several hours after an unidentified flying object was sighted above the airport.

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The World’s Largest Biometric Digital ID System, India’s Aadhaar, Just Suffered Its Biggest Ever Data Breach

In one fell swoop, roughly 10% of the global population appears to have had some of their most valuable personal identifiable information (PII) compromised. Yet Aadhaar continues to receive plaudits from Silicon Valley. 

An anonymous hacker claims to have breached the digital ID numbers, as well as other sensitive personal data, of around 815 million Indian citizens.

To put that number in perspective, it is more than 60% of the 1.3 billion Indian people enrolled in the government’s Aadhaar biometric digital identity program, and roughly 10% of the entire global population. Thanks to the breach — the largest single one in the country’s history, according to the Hindustan Times — the personal data of hundreds of millions of Indians are now up for grabs on the dark web, for as little as $80,000.

To register for an Aadhaar card, Indian residents have to provide basic demographic information, including name, date of birth, age, address and gender, as well as biometric information, including ten fingerprints, two eyeball scans and a facial photograph. Much of that data has apparently been compromised.

Media reports suggest that the source of the leak was the Covid-19 test data of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which is linked to each individual’s Aadhaar number.

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Another Putin critic ‘falls out a window’ to his death: Sausage tycoon plummets from luxury hotel – two days after his male friend died of a ‘heart attack’ on their trip to India

Russia‘s ‘highest-earning elected politician’ who had criticised Vladimir Putin‘s war in Ukraine has been found dead after a mysterious fall from a hotel in India.

Sausage multi-millionaire Pavel Antov, from the main pro-Putin party United Russia, had been on a trip to celebrate his upcoming 66th birthday.

A male friend in his party had died ‘from a heart attack’ on Thursday last week, and the wealthy politician perished two days later.

The married tycoon, an MP in the legislative assembly of the Vladimir region, was listed as Russia’s highest-earning elected official in 2019.

The Russian Consul General in Kolkata Alexei Idamkin told TASS he ‘fell’ out of a hotel window in Rayagada, Odisha state.

‘We are closely following the investigation and receiving all the information from the Odisha police,’ the diplomat said.

In June, Antov criticised the war and air strikes on Kyiv as Russian ‘terror’ wounding Ukrainian civilians.

He highlighted a Russian missile strike and said: ‘A girl has been pulled out from under the rubble, the girl’s father appears to have died.

‘The mother is trying to be pulled out with a crane – she is trapped under a slab. To tell the truth, it is extremely difficult to call this anything other than terror.’

He evidently then swiftly came under intense pressure after which he withdrew the comment and made a grovelling apology.

He made an about-turn and claimed his post on social media had been ‘an unfortunate misunderstanding’ and a ‘technical error’.

He insisted he had ‘always supported the president’ and ‘sincerely’ backed the goals of Putin’s military operation – but local journalists strongly disputed this.

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Indian Government Blames Public for Getting Vaccines Despite Being Aware of its Side Effects – Claims it Cannot be Held Liable for Any Injuries

The Indian government has argued before the Supreme Court of India that it is not liable for any injuries that may occur as a result of the Covid vaccine, according to its affidavit dated November 23.

This affidavit was submitted in response to a petition filed by the parents of two young women in India who tragically lost their lives after receiving the experimental Covid vaccine last year, according to Hindustan Times.

“The petition demanded an independent investigation into the deaths and an expert medical board to prepare a protocol for early detection and timely treatment of adverse effects following immunization (AEFI),” the outlet reported.

The petitioners were Rachana Gangu, mother of Rithaika Omtri, 18, and Venugopalan Govindan, father of Karunya Venugopalan, 20, who both died within 3 weeks of receiving the Covid vaccine.

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