Protesters disrupt festival in New York over BJP leader’s presence
New York, September 16 (KMS): A group of protesters disrupted the New York event of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) over the presence of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader.
According to Kashmir Media Service, earlier, three writers had reportedly withdrawn from the event over the presence of BJP spokesperson, Shazia Ilmi.
The protesters countered Shaziz Ilmi when she said that she too was a Muslim woman. They maintained that Bilkis Bano is also a Muslim woman as are the thousands of Muslim women who have never seen justice for the crimes the BJP has committed.
Sana Qutubuddin with No Separate Justice, said to media that she had never seen a BJP official so shaken describing Shazia Ilmi visibly squirming in her seat in real time when Qutubuddin asked how the bribery money was treating her and that she’s betrayed all Muslim women.
At one point during her talk Shazia Ilmi acknowledged that there were Muslim women protesting the event outside and that she too was a Muslim to which the protesters responded that “all you represent to us is genocide and a deep betrayal”.
“We were there to get back to the basics and remind everyone what fascism actually looks like. This festival wanted to pretend it can invite Shazia Ilmi to show the BJP has become respectable and hip and cultured and enlightened, instead of a genocidal project built on razing all of India’s non-Hindu communities and cultures to the ground, and we will always show up to say it will never be,” Safia Albaiti with Muslim Women Kreate, one of the protest organizers, said.
“No cultural event in New York can hide the shame and truth that India is governed by a fascist party and ideology,” Albaiti asserted.
