'No excuse for violence, it's unacceptable': US condemns attacks on Indian students

By Team Asianet Newsable | First Published Feb 16, 2024, 8:51 AM IST

Reacting to recent attacks on Indian students in the US, the White House has asserted that there is no excuse for violence based on race, gender or any other factor and called it unacceptable in the US.

US President Joe Biden and his administration have addressed a slew of attacks on Indian and Indian American students in various parts of the country. John Kirby, the National Security Council's Coordinator for Strategic Communications, told the media that violence had no justification.

"There is no excuse for violence, certainly based on race or gender or religion or any other factor. That's just unacceptable here in the United States," Kirby told reporters here when asked about the series of attacks on students from India and also those from the Indian American community.

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"The President and this administration have been working very, very hard to make sure we're doing everything we can to work with state and local authorities to try to thwart and disrupt those kinds of attacks and make it clear to anybody who might consider them that they'll be held properly accountable," Kirby stated.

In the previous several weeks, at least four Indian American students have died, according to reports from the US.

In January, a drug user attacked Vivek Saini, a student who worked part-time in a department store in Lithonia, Georgia, and killed him. An attack occurred in February on Syed Mazahir Ali, an Indian student at Indiana Wesleyan University.

Neel Acharya of Purdue University and Akul Dhawan of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign both died in January, presumably as a result of prolonged exposure to cold temperatures at night after excessive drinking. This month, Shreyas Reddy Benigeri, a student of Indian descent at Cincinnati's Lindner School of Business, was discovered dead in Ohio.

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