Nikki Haley slams ‘Squad’ Democrats for boycotting Modi address
Emily Jacobs
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Presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Thursday blasted “Squad” Democrats as hypocritical for boycotting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to Congress over human rights issues while supporting “Palestinian terrorists and socialist dictators.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted on Wednesday that she would skip the speech in protest of India’s treatment of minorities and political opponents and said she would “encourage my colleagues who stand for pluralism, tolerance, and freedom of the press to join me in doing the same.” Fellow “Squad” members Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who are Muslim, quickly voiced their plans to join her.
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“AOC and the Squad boycotting India’s democratically elected leader while they side with Palestinian terrorists and socialist dictators is exactly on brand,” Haley told the Washington Examiner on Thursday. “What an embarrassment.”
Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have long been accused of violating the religious freedoms of India’s Muslim population, and Modi himself was accused of religious mob violence after the Gujarat riots in 2002 that led to the death of 1,000 Muslims. His once-frosty relationship with the United States began improving when he became India’s prime minister in 2014.
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“A joint address is among the most prestigious invitations and honors the United States Congress can extend,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We should not do so for individuals with deeply troubling human rights records — particularly for individuals whom our own State Department has concluded are engaged in systematic human rights abuses of religious minorities and caste-oppressed communities.”
The liberal lawmakers have long faced accusations of being hostile toward Israel. Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez made headlines last May when they pushed a controversial resolution in the House of Representatives that referred to Palestinians as the “indigenous inhabitants” of Israel that made no reference to Jewish history in the region.