The Indian American community on Sunday (local time) staged a protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington against Beijing's perpetrating acts of aggression to dominate the region and urged global powers, including the United States as well as India to economically decouple from the Asian giant.
Demonstrators, wearing face masks as a precautionary measure amid the coronavirus outbreak, held placard reading "China=#Bullying #Debt Trap Diplomacy #Human Rights Violation #Colonialism #mal Cruelty #Virus". Some of them were also heard shouting "Communist party! Down down! Chinese aggression! Down down".
Manoj Srinarayan, one among the protestors and president of local Keralite group, said, "China has been perpetrating these acts of aggression against the Indian troops on the border for a while now. In the short term, India has pushed back strongly against the Chinese forces. In the long-term, India wants to find a peaceful resolution for this situation. India wants to find suitable diplomatic options to solve this problem. And one of the ways is to create awareness about this issue and form a global alliance against China. While India can be patient for a little while and does not want an all-out war, it does want to resolve this as soon as possible. And we here, the Indian community, are helping to do the same."
The protestors also focused on the issue of Hong Kong and Vietnam, as well as other areas including the South China Sea, where Beijing is asserting its territorial claims despite criticism from Washington and other global powers.
Sreeram Rajgopalan, representing some of the Tamil orgsations here, said, "We are not just here for India alone. We are against the aggression of China on the South China Sea which also matters for several other countries globally. They are literally taking over slowly over all the parts of the South China Sea. They are creating problems for Hong Kong as well especially after the passage of the controversial national security law."
"The ultimate goal here is we would like the world powers to realise this threat of China and economically decouple from it, increase the tariff on Chinese goods," he added.
( With inputs from ANI )