Indian Envoy condemns hate-speech by Indians in the UAE

Cautioning Indians in the United Arab Emirates against a spate of religiously derogatory posts, India’s Ambassador to the UAE said any discrimination would not be tolerated. Indian nationals in the UAE should always remember this,” Ambassador Pavan Kapoor said in a tweet on Monday, indicating how strongly the government has taken many such cases that have come into prominence recently. The issue, according to at least two sources aware of the discussions, is creating a greater diplomatic strain for New Delhi, even as it negotiates with UAE officials who have been pushing for India to repatriate thousands of citizens who have lost jobs with companies in the Emirates due to COVID-19. On April 18, Sharjah businessman and filmmaker Sohan Roy was forced to apologise publicly after a complaint against him for a video which depicted Islamic clerics leading blindfolded men in skull caps in an adaptation of his poem on religious bigotry. In March, a Dubai-based Chef Trilok Singh was sacked for an online rape threat against a student for opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act. A complaint was also filed against the CEO of an events management company Sameer Bhandari, who, in a written response to an Indian Muslim job applicant, told him to “Go to Pakistan”. Posts on social media by a number of Indian expatriates have been widely reported in UAE media, inviting censure from one member of the Royal family, Sharjah Princess Hend Faisal Al Qassemi, who publicly threatened Indians working in the UAE with deportation. Anyone that is openly ‘racist and discriminatory’ in the UAE will be fined and made to leave,” Ms. Hend wrote in response of a series of tweets from in reply Saurabh Upadhyay, the CEO of an event management company based in Dubai. Over the past few weeks, many of Mr. Upadhyay’s tweets calling for the “social and economic boycott” of the Muslim community and referring to members of the Tablighi Jamaat as “radical terrorists”, have been flagged by various activists against hate speech online. He added that derogatory posts by some Indians “feed into the propaganda that hostile countries like Pakistan try to amplify to mould public perception about India, and that adds to the diplomatic challenges the government faces.”