Easy! India has a small Muslim population...
Posted on 12/17/2013 2:02:32 PM PST by RKM
India’s government – incensed over the arrest of a female diplomat in Manhattan last week – has retaliated by removing the security barriers in front of the US embassy in New Delhi, the country’s main news agency reported...
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Khobragade was handcuffed and reportedly strip-searched after her bust, treatment considered particularly demeaning for a woman in her country.India’s officials fumed that she was even held in a cell with drug addicts.
From a previous thread:
Furious India downgrades privileges of US diplomats
Outraged by the details of the alleged harsh treatment meted out to its deputy consul-general in New York, India Tuesday retaliated strongly with a series of measures that jolted the perception of friendly ties between New Delhi and Washington.
US consulate staff and their families were asked to return their diplomatic ID cards; details of Indians employed, along with their bank accounts and PAN numbers, sought; names and salaries of teachers employed at US embassy schools sought; import duty waivers, including permits to import liquor, withdrawn; and security barricades outside the US Embassy in Delhi removed.
Devyani Khobragade, the deputy consul-general, was arrested last week for alleged visa fraud while she had gone to drop her daughters to school.
Besides being handcuffed in public, Khobragade, 39, was not only stripped but also allegedly forced to undergo repeated body cavity searches - a treatment usually reserved for drug suspects - before she was freed on a $250,000 bail bond.
Subsequently, Khobragade narrated her ordeal in an email to her colleagues.
“I must admit that I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, hold up with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity,” the 1999-batch IFS officer wrote.
She thanked her colleagues for their support and said that during her confinement, she “got the strength to regain composure and remain dignified thinking that I must represent all of my colleagues and my country with confidence and pride”.
Disturbed by the details, New Delhi upped the ante and stripped US diplomats and their families in India of several privileges.
Taking the position that American staff at consulates will be treated at par with which Indian diplomats are treated in consulates in the US, all personnel posted in consulates and their families have been asked to turn in their diplomatic ID cards immediately.
On the instructions of the government, the special barricading outside the US Embassy in New Delhi that had closed a part of Nyaya Marg to the public, was also removed. While the barricading and closing of the stretch of road has ended, a police picket will remain there for security purposes.
Making a distinction between consulate and embassy staff - the US has four consulates in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad - instructions have been sent out that details of all Indians employed at the consulates have to be shared.
Besides, US staff at the consulates have been asked to provide details of the employment of their spouses or dependents along with tax details, bank account numbers and salary details.
In related moves, political leaders, ministers and Indian government officials have also cancelled their meetings with a visiting US Congressional delegation. Those who called off meetings with the delegation include Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.
Describing the incident as “unacceptable”, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said that a process has been “put in motion” to deal with the issue effectively.
“We have put in motion what we believe would be an effective way of addressing the issue...we have expressed our deep distress and sense of disquiet, that has been very very strongly felt, in the strongest words possible,” he said.
BJP leader Ravishankar Prasad condemned the incident and said that the treatment of the diplomat “does not accord to the level of friendship that the Indian government claims to have with the US”.
“The way she was arrested after being handcuffed, kept with drug addicts and strip-searched in the police station, that is condemnable, reprehensible and regrettable and in clear violation of conventions,” he said.
National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, who also called off his meeting with the Congressional delegation, termed the treatment meted out to the diplomat as “despicable” and “barbaric”.
A high-ranking official of the Bharatiya Janata Party – currently the largest opposition group in Indian and favored to win upcoming elections — urged India to arrest the domestic partners of any gay US officials there.
India’s Supreme Court, in a ruling last week, essentially deemed homosexuality there illegal.
They better not pout, they better not cry. The ever long faced john f’n kerry-heinz could be stoppin’ by. And we all know what a bad ass he is. Why, he’s like a junior jhen-jiss kahn.
Can anyone explain why the Indian diplomat was treated this way?
Obama White House blows up relations with a close ally, Starbucks raises coffee prices. Movie at 11.
This country, under Obama, is getting more whacked by the day!
I guess that’s a good an explanation as any. Thanks.
Sounds like the lib demonstrators are getting ready for a Occupy India or India Spring soon. May need to be worse than crapping on a cop car or raping a news woman though.
“urged India to arrest the domestic partners of any gay US officials there.”
LOL! That would be disastrous for 0h0m0ids!
Easy! India has a small Muslim population...
“Can anyone explain why the Indian diplomat was treated this way?”
She was suspected of being straight.
Strip searched by democrats in a democrat HIVE, democratically.. NYC...
The cavity searches were just for fun...
Are cavity searches TAXED in NYC?...
The temperature is rising world wide. I was in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, paid $135 to enter the country\., JUST Americans. The airport immigration people were NOT kind, saying it was pay back time. This is what they have to pay to get a visa to visit the USA. Brazil also I think does this. Bad boy in the WH is behind the black 8 ball. So he’ll go do a 17 day vacation to fix things. Modern politics, and the Senators and Congress well paid, don’t have any real patriot blood to fight to save the country.
There must have been a big mistake or something is missing from our side of the story is my guess.
$250K bail means that it was something worse than just overstaying her visa, all they reported was “visa fraud”. Perhaps she was allowing people on a watch list to get here with a phony identity for cash.
If that’s the case then screw her.
One story said she hired a cleaning lady who didn’t have an entry permit.
I would be mad too, were someone from my country treated this way on foreign (or any) soil. I heard nothing about this. What’s going on? All this for a what..a VISA? I don’t believe it. Not even TSA is this stupid. This was done to send a message of intimidation, to and for what of have no idea. This is preposterous and criminal. Stripped? Probbed? Is this now the USSSR? Meanwhile, Obumbo is overacting out of Africa, trying to get rid of gay rumors by lavishing the Great Dane with boyfriend-type attention, making sure his wife and the world sees him. Another day, another administrative embarrassment!
Reacting sharply to the arrest of the diplomat, former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha said the government should hit back by punishing same sex companions of US diplomats in India following the Supreme Court ruling on gay sex.
“Media has reported that we have issued visas to a number of US diplomats’ companions. ‘Companions’ means that they are of the same sex. Now, after the Supreme Court ruling, it is completely illegal in our country, just as paying less wages was illegal in the US,” the senior BJP leader said referring to visas issued to same sex ‘companions’ of US diplomats living in India.
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