Former US Vice President for relocating Afghanistan Sikhs, Hindus

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 15

US presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden has expressed concern over the targeting of Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan, especially after the attack on Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib, and suggested they will be given refugee status in the United States if he was elected President.

“If I am elected President, my administration will renew our commitment to refugees….I will raise the annual global refugee admissions cap to 1,25,000,” he said in a statement issued on a day when a US panel, frequently in the cross hairs of the Ministry of External Affairs for its observations on Kashmir and Islamophobia in the Indian media, also made common cause on the Sikh issue.

The influential Sam Brownback, head of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), described the attacks on the Sikhs in Afghanistan as a “terrible tragedy” for a “wonderful, peaceful religious group” that has been virtually decimated in Afghanistan.

Brownback, a Donald Trump ally, was more guarded on the issue of resettling the Sikh of Afghanistan and said he had heard talks about re-settling them in US, Canada, India or Pakistan.