On Tuesday, September 24, 2019, Humeyra Pamuk and David Brunnstrom posted a piece in Yahoo News detailing the U.S condemnation of “China’s horrific campaign of repression.” This article says, “The United States led more than 30 countries on Tuesday in condemning what it called China’s “horrific campaign of repression” against Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang at an event on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly that was denounced by China.”
Citing abuses against ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in China, Assistant Secretary of State John Sullivan is quoted as saying the United Nations and its member states had “a singular responsibility to speak up when survivor after survivor recounts the horrors of state repression.”
Sullivan said it was incumbent on U.N. member states to ensure the world body was able to closely monitor human rights abuses by China and added that it must seek “immediate, unhindered, and unmonitored” access to Xinjiang for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR).
Catholic News Service reported on Tuesday, September 24, 2019, that President Donald Trump called on world leaders at a Sept. 23 U.N. event on religious freedom to end religious persecution around the globe.
President Trump said, “To stop the crimes against people of faith, release prisoners of conscience, repeal laws restricting freedom of religion and belief, protect the vulnerable, the defenseless and the oppressed, America stands with believers in every country who ask only for the freedom to live according to the faith that is within their own hearts.”
The United States “is founded on the principle that our rights do not come from government; they come from God,” Trump said. “This immortal truth is proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.”
According to Newsweek, in addressing concerns over President Trump’s warm reception for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, prominent evangelical leader Franklin Graham—a close confidant of Trump and the son of the late preacher Billy Graham—has argued that the president must befriend Modi to encourage improved conditions for the country’s 65 million Christians. He recommended that in the meantime devotees pray for Modi to change his ways.
This piece asserts that “Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party has long sought to whip up tensions between the country’s majority Hindu population and their religious minority compatriots, more often than not focusing on the roughly 200 million Muslims living in India. In turn, the party’s associated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh group—an extremist paramilitary organization of which Modi has long been a member—has led the persecution on the ground.
Modi’s own political career is smeared by allegations that, while chief minister of the northwestern Gujarat state in 2002, his state government allowed—and even incited—anti-Muslim rioting. Hundreds—possibly even thousands—of people were killed, most of them Muslims.
Such allegations meant that Modi was denied a visa to visit the U.S. in 2005 over concerns he was responsible for “severe violations of religious freedom,” the first person to ever be denied entry to the country on such grounds.”
Trump praised Modi as one of America’s “greatest, most devoted and most loyal friends,” while Modi said India had a “true friend” in the White House. “He has left a lasting impact everywhere,” Modi said of Trump, who he described as “warm, friendly, accessible, energetic and full of wit.”
Rabbi Spero says President Trump earned the distinction of the being Religious Freedom President with UN speech. This according to CNSnews.com on Tuesday, September 24f, 2019.
Rabbi Spero said, “It was obvious that the president’s remarks were not simply perfunctory, rather deeply felt and deeply important to him personally. We were grateful for him once again spotlighting the scourge of anti-Semitism, something that he has chosen to speak about more than any other president.”