Today, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak before Congress and attend a state dinner with President Biden.

It’s shameful that Modi has been given a platform at our nation’s capital. His long history of human rights abuses is unacceptable, including imprisoning journalists and targeting Muslims and religious minorities.

Modi was once banned from the U.S. after leading the Gujarat state during a 2002 mass murder of Muslims. As Prime Minister, his far-right Hindu nationalist party has “disappeared,” imprisoned, and tortured political opponents, activists, and journalists -- often for years without trial.

The government has also censored critics, shut down Internet access in Muslim-majority areas, and systematically discriminated against people from religious minority communities and from historically caste-oppressed communities. Modi’s party has emboldened violent attacks on these marginalized groups, enabling mob killings and collective punishment with impunity

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and the U.S. State Department have recently reported on this rise in violent human rights violations, but too many of our national political leaders have stayed silent.

I won’t be silent. Today, I’m boycotting Modi’s joint address to Congress.

Please sign if you agree: Our federal government should not roll out the red carpet for India’s Prime Minister Modi, an authoritarian who’s overseeing mass human rights violations. Instead, we need more political leaders to speak out and hold India’s government accountable for its human rights abuses.

Thank you for continuing to take action against oppression everywhere. I’m going to keep fighting for human rights here and around the world, even when I’m targeted for doing so.

In solidarity,

Rashida