Envoys press India over students’ safety

AFRICAN envoys based in Delhi have recommended to their governments that they should not send new students to India until their safety is guaranteed.

They had also requested the Indian Council of Cultural Relations to postpone the Africa Day celebrations that had been scheduled for yesterday.

The threat by 42 ambassadors to stay away from Africa Day was a major foreign policy embarrassment for the Narendra Modi government as it completed two years in office.

The envoys were reacting to the brutal murder of a Congolese man last week in Delhi, which they described as a “hate crime”.

Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj regretted the incident and promised protection to African students.

There are thousands of African students studying in various Indian universities. Swaraj aggressively tweeted the Indian government’s resolve to provide security to African students. She also sent a junior minister to talk with heads of mission to back off from their tough stand. The envoys were incensed by the killing last week of Masunda Kitada Oliver, by unidentified people. His crime was that he flagged down an auto rickshaw which was wanted by three other men.

An argument ensued and Oliver was brutally beaten. His attackers ran away when they realised he was unconscious. By the time he was taken to the Trauma Centre of the capital’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Oliver had stopped breathing.

This is not the first time that an African student has fallen victim to hate crime in India.

Some years ago a Nigerian student slipped into coma after he was savagely beaten. He never recovered.