NEW YORK: Pop superstar Rihanna has created a flutter in India by wading into the months-long protests by Indian farmers against new farm laws passed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which has slammed international celebrities for their “inaccurate” comments.
Tens of thousands of young and old farmers have blocked roads leading into New Delhi for more than two months, sheltering in tractors from the cold, to demand the repeal of three laws passed in September last year, which farmers say will destroy their livelihoods by bringing India’s vast agricultural sector under corporate control.
A tractor rally by farmers last week in New Delhi turned violent, killing one and wounding hundreds, including police officers.
Police responded by shutting down the internet, digging ditches, driving nails into roads and topping barricades with razor wire to prevent farmers from entering the capital again.
“Why aren’t we talking about this?!” Rihanna said in a Twitter post, sharing a CNN network’s article on the demonstrations with her 100.9 million followers on the platform, using the hashtag #FarmersProtest.
It was not immediately clear what led Rihanna, whose songs have done well in India, to suddenly tweet on the subject.
A couple of hours after Rihanna’s tweet, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg also posted the same CNN article, expressing solidarity with India’s protesting farmers.
“We stand in solidarity with the #FarmersProtest in India,” Thunberg tweeted to her 4.6 million followers.
Human Rights Watch also tweeted Rihanna, saying the government of Prime Minister Modi is “presiding over a dangerous regression in free speech rights in pursuit of its Hindu nationalist agenda”. “Increasingly in Modi’s India, independent institutions including investigators, prosecutors, and the courts, which should be impartially defending rights, are instead protecting government supporters and targeting its critics,” the rights group said in a statement on Tuesday.
