Michelle Bachelet was dusted off the shelf and showcased in media by Indian National Congress on Wednesday.
Bachelet has receded far in memory and so, one suspects, has Congress party but newspapers, particularly Indian Express, has used columns in highlighting the event when the woman was bestowed with Indira Gandhi Peace Prize and a cheque of Rs 2.5 million by another woman (Sonia Gandhi) in the Capital.
Bachelet has been an ex-president of Chile and most would struggle to recall her face or the geographical location of her country in this part of the world. Yet Bachelet took undue interest in India when she graduated from her role in Chile to United Nations as its high commissioner for human rights between 2018-2022.
She was on that high stool which fell between the first two terms of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and had gone ballistic against his government. She abused her position to even move India’s Supreme Court on the issue of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2020 to which India’s foreign minister Dr S. Jaishankar in his typically dry tone had remarked: “It can’t be anybody’s case that government and parliament don’t have the right to set terms of citizenship.”
Bachelet, as could be guessed, was also frothing in mouth against the BJP government during the farmers’ agitation but had no qualms when some of them indulged in unprovoked violence on a Republic Day. She had even chosen the terrible tragedy of Pulwama attack to rail against Indian state lest Kashmiris in other parts of the country were attacked in its aftermath!
She made it her mission under the guise of Human Rights to shed crocodile tears on “minority’s issues” in India though brazen acts of terrorism and human rights violations by Pakistan could never prick her conscience.
Likewise, it had moved Bachelet to hit out at India for deporting five—yes just five—Rohingyas in 2019 but no such pangs of ethics or concern on human rights when Saudi Arabia sent hundreds of same Rohingyas packing to Bangladesh around the same time.
As for the credibility or lack of it of UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), the United States had quit it in 2018 describing it as a “cesspool of political bias” and Nikki Haley, then the US envoy to the UN, had termed the institution “hypocritical” and that it “makes a mockery of human rights.”
Such a character who undermines India’s state and parliament; gives a free pass to terrorism; raises the minority bogey is today the darling of Congress party. One whose record shows an unceasing hostility against India is today the toast of Congress.
What does it tell about Congress and the welfare it has in mind for Republic of India?
