'Massacres' being committed against Muslims in India: Erdogan

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday slammed the Indian government for the ongoing violence against Muslims in New Delhi, saying India has become a country where "massacres" are being committed against Muslims, reported Turkish channel TRT.

"India right now has become a country where massacres are widespread. What massacres? Massacres of Muslims? By who? Hindus," Erdogan said in a speech at his AK party headquarters in Ankara.

"How will these people [India] maintain world peace. It's impossible," Erodgan told his party members. "When making speeches –– since they have a large population –– they say 'we are strong' but that is not strength."

According to latest figures, at least 38 people have been killed as Hindu mobs attacked mosques, residences and businesses during demonstrations against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which discriminates against Muslims.

Also read: UN chief asks India to stop anti-Muslim violence as 38 die in Delhi riots

An opinion piece published in The Guardian, London, said the organisers behind the attacks were local politicians affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), India’s ruling party.

“They made the incendiary speeches that triggered the violence,” Mukul Kesavan, an author who teaches history at Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi, wrote.

“Their vigilante auxiliaries attacked Muslims with impunity, and the Delhi police, which reports to the home minister (and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-hand man), Amit Shah, either looked on as goons rioted, arrived after Muslims had been attacked, or actually participated in the violence against people demonstrating against Modi’s discriminatory citizenship law.”

“Delhi has not seen this kind of violence for decades – but it has been worse: in 1984 the Indian National Congress party used the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguard as an excuse for organising a pogrom in which thousands of Sikhs were murdered,” he wrote.

“The violence in Delhi is not yet a pogrom but a pattern of police complicity, and the political patronage extended to vigilante mobs suggests a continuing public-private partnership designed to violently subdue opposition to the BJP’s Hindu supremacist project.”