India-US row over arrest of diplomat Devyani Khobragade escalates

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

India-US row over arrest of diplomat Devyani Khobragade escalates

Jason Burke in Delhi
theguardian.com, Tuesday 17 December 2013 13.51 GMT

Bulldozers have removed security barriers outside the US embassy in Delhi as a diplomatic row prompted by the arrest of an Indian diplomat on visa fraud charges in New York intensified.

Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York, was charged last week with making false statements on an application for her housekeeper to live and work in the United States.

India's national security adviser on Tuesday called the treatment of Khobragade "despicable and barbaric" and the country's foreign secretary summoned the US ambassador. Politicians – including Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and vice chairman of the ruling Congress party, and Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the Hindu nationalist opposition BJP – refused to meet a visiting US congressional delegation.

The removal of the barriers was one of a slew of retaliatory actions taken by the Indian government as outrage at the arrest grew, including the withdrawal of import clearances and special airport passes. The incident has become a major story in India, dominating TV bulletins.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/india-us-row-diplomat-khobragade-escalates

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. This is nothing more than human slavery. Here's a good article from an Indian website.

http://www.firstpost.com/world/devyani-khobragades-consular-rights-dont-include-a-cut-rate-nanny-1291527.html

Devyani Khobragade should not have had a maid if she couldn't afford one.

The story has quickly become one about national pride. How could India's consular official be strip-searched and made to stand with common criminals and drug addicts by the police? While the treatment meted out to Ms Khobragade is being perceived as a major insult to India, we seem less concerned with the treatment meted out to her maid, the reason why she was arrested in the first place.
There are obviously questions about whether the correct diplomatic protocols were followed or what the difference is between diplomatic immunity and consular immunity. But that's a process debate. There's a more fundamental question here separate from the rule book of consular relations. It is simply this. Do Indians have a domestic help problem?

Ms Khobragade is accused of visa fraud and exploiting her babysitter and housekeeper. According to the 11-page criminal complaint in her A-3 visa application for her domestic help, the domestic help alleged she worked far more than 40 hours a week and was paid less than $9.75 per hour as had been agreed to in a contract she had signed with Ms. Khobragade for her visa application. Ms Khobragade reportedly got her help to agree to being paid no more than Rs30,000 which works out to about $3.31 per hour.

"Foreign nationals brought to the United States to serve as domestic workers are entitled to the same protections against exploitation as those afforded to United States citizens," said Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. His office alleges Ms Khobragade tried to circumvent US protections for workers by submitting false documents and information while applying for a visa for “a babysitter and housekeeper” she brought from India.