But before giving lessons to India about Human Rights, it is high time that Barack Hussein Obama first look at his record, where he bombed the entire Middle East and helped in the rise of ISIS.
It is indeed a shining example of hypocrisy and selective amnesia, former US President Barack Hussein Obama, who has a shaky legacy on Human Rights, has now lectured India about human rights. It’s truly inspiring to see a former president who oversaw countless bombings, invasions, &drone strikes, all in the name of ‘peace.’
While giving an interview to CNN news host Christiane Amanpour, just an hour before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic visit to the US, Barack Hussein Obama, who is considered a war criminal, preached to India about protecting minorities.
He said, “If President Joe Biden meets with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the protection of the Muslim minority in a majority Hindu India is something worth mentioning. If I had a conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then part of the conversation would be that if you do not protect the rights of minorities, then there is a strong possibility that India, at some point, starts pulling apart… That would be contrary to the interests of India.”
But before giving lessons to India about Human Rights, it is high time that Obama first look at his record, where he bombed the entire Middle East and helped in the rise of ISIS.
While candidate Obama came to office pledging to end George W. Bush’s wars, he leaves office having been at war longer than any president in US history. He is also the only president to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.
According to a report published by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency.
As per the defence department’s data on airstrikes in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs on seven majority-Muslim countries. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.
A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries.
Under the belief they were targeting al-Qaida, President Obama’s first strike on Yemen killed 55 people including 21 children, 10 of which were under the age of five. Additionally, 12 women, five of them pregnant, were also among those who were murdered in this strike. These blundered acts of murder by not only President Obama, but the U.S. government, are morally reprehensible.
Obama authorized 54 drone strikes alone in Pakistan during his first year in office. One of the first CIA drone strikes under President Obama was at a funeral, murdering as many as 41 Pakistani civilians.
In 2012, an attack on the Shawal Valley aimed at Taliban commander Sadiq Noor reportedly killed up to 14 people in a double-tap drone strike. These attacks are both morally and legally reprehensible, as they are conscious acts of murder against civilians.
Apart from it, the lives of Muslims in the US got miserable under the presidency of Barack Obama, with assaults on Muslims reaching a historic high since the 2001 attack. In 2016, there were 127 reported victims of aggravated or simple assault, compared with 91 the year before and 93 in 2001.
But assaults are not the only form of hate crime carried out against Muslims and other religious groups. The most common is intimidation, which is defined as reasonable fear of bodily harm. Anti-Muslim intimidation also increased in 2016, with 144 reported victims, compared with 120 the previous year. These numbers, however, are still dwarfed by the 296 victims of anti-Muslim intimidation in 2001.
Overall, there were 307 incidents of anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2016, marking a 19% increase from the previous year. This rise in hate crimes builds on an even sharper increase the year before, when the total number of anti-Muslim incidents rose 67%, from 154 in 2014 to 257 in 2015.
It was under Obama’s tenure that Muslim country peoples were planned to be banned from arriving in the USA. Obama signed the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act as part of an omnibus spending bill. The legislation restricted access to the Visa Waiver Program, which allows citizens from 38 countries who are visiting the United States for less than 90 days to enter without a visa.
