Former Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant Assaulted by Modi Government’s Indian Consulate

The following is a press release sent by Workers Strike Back on February 7, 2025 following a peaceful sit-in at the Indian Consulate in Seattle on February 6, to protest political retaliation against Workers Strike Back co-founder Kshama Sawant by the right-wing Modi regime.

SEATTLE, WA - Socialist, former Seattle City Councilmember, and Workers Strike Back founder Kshama Sawant has been denied a travel visa to India by the Modi government. India’s Modi and BJP regime has rejected her visa application three times, even though Kshama’s mother is 82 years old, in frail health, and desperately needs to have Kshama by her side. The Indian Consulate in Seattle informed Kshama that she is on “the reject list,” but has refused to provide an explanation as to why.

At the same time Kshama’s emergency visa request was denied, her husband’s, Calvin Priest’s, was granted — showing clearly that the Modi government was not rejecting the urgency of the case due to Kshama’s mother’s health. After three visa denials, it is completely clear that the visa denial represents political retaliation by Modi’s far right, anti-worker regime.

Left once again with no visa and no answers, Kshama and Calvin engaged in peaceful civil disobedience, asking for an explanation for the repeated rejections. Later, they were joined in the peaceful civil disobedience by their fellow Workers Strike Back members. As Kshama said, “all we were asking the Consulate officers was to explain why I was on, as they themselves admitted, ‘the reject list’ of the Modi government, and why my visa application had been rejected three times even though my mother is in very poor health.”

As if politically retaliating against Kshama and denying her right to see her aging and ill mother wasn’t egregious enough, last evening at the Indian Consulate, Kshama, Calvin, and other Workers Strike Back activists were intimidated, threatened, and physically assaulted while carrying out peaceful civil disobedience. The Consulate staff also called the police. Ironically, the most serious assault took place when Kshama, Calvin, and Workers Strike Back activists tried to peacefully leave the premises, as Consulate staff had repeatedly requested. The Consulate staff then attempted to block the door, physically assaulted those of us who were trying to exit, and engaged in a scuffle to try to confiscate the phone of one activist who was filming the violent actions of the Consulate staff. It was so obvious that the activists were being assaulted while peacefully leaving that even the police felt forced to say something to object to the manhandling by the Consulate staff.

It is shocking that the Modi government and their institutions would go this far, with their official state representatives resorting to manhandling U.S. citizens. This is happening alongside Trump’s attacks on immigrants, workers, and social services. All of this shows that working people of both Indian and other national origin in the United States and in Canada, alongside working people in India, need to urgently build mass protests, mass civil disobedience, and strike actions to fight repression and attacks by Modi and Trump, and all parties of the billionaires, including the Republicans and Democrats here.

There seems to be no other explanation than political retaliation by Modi’s far-right BJP government. Kshama was a socialist elected representative on the Seattle City Council for ten years. During that time, she passed a resolution condemning the anti-Muslim, anti-poor CAA-NRC citizenship laws from the Modi and BJP government. According to Amnesty International, “The Citizenship Amendment Act [CAA] is a bigoted law that legitimises discrimination on the basis of religion and should never have been enacted in the first place.” Kshama’s office also won a historic ban on caste-based discrimination. Both pieces of legislation were strenuously opposed by Modi and BJP supporters in the United States. Her office also won a resolution in solidarity with the farmers’ movement against Modi’s brutal and exploitative policies.

Workers Strike Back is urging working people across nationality to sign the petition calling on the Modi government to grant Kshama a visa so she can visit her sick mother, and to stop retaliating against activists and critics by denying visas and revoking residency status.

Kshama is one of many critics of the Modi government who have been denied visas or had their Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status revoked. Others targeted include Ashok Swain, Aatish Taseer, and Nitisha Kaul. Human Rights Watch documented in a report released last year that “Indian authorities are revoking visa privileges to overseas critics of Indian origin who have spoken out against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government’s policies.” The report states that “over the past decade, the government has canceled over 100 permits and deported some status holders.” This is blatant political retaliation against those who have publicly criticized the Modi regime, pure and simple. In a report released in March 2024, Amnesty International said that the intent of these acts has been to “target and punish dissenting voices.”

Read Kshama’s account of what transpired at the Indian Consulate in Seattle last evening:

Calvin and I said repeatedly that we'd leave once we get an explanation for why my visa has been rejected three times and why I'm on a “reject list.”

Instead of simply answering our question, they threatened to call the police on my husband and me.

In addition to threatening to call the police, they started gathering in larger and larger numbers around the two of us and were becoming increasingly intimidating.

All this made us feel concerned for our safety, so our fellow Workers Strike Back members came there to join our peaceful civil disobedience.

We engaged in peaceful civil disobedience inside the Consulate office, with other Workers Strike Back members in solidarity outside on the street.

We were simply asking for an explanation for why my visa was rejected three times. We asked repeatedly why, by the Consulate's own admission, I'm on the Modi government's "reject list."

We said clearly we will sit here until we get an explanation for the multiple visa rejections, preventing me from seeing my seriously ill mother.

Rather than give us an explanation, the Consulate repeatedly threatened to call the police on us, tried to physically grab and confiscate our phones, and tried to physically remove us.

Ultimately, they did call the police on us. Three police cars showed up. So we decided to leave.

But as we were trying to peacefully leave, one Consulate staff person first violently grabbed a Workers Strike Back member and tried to take her phone. The phone fell down, and the Consulate staff member engaged in a scuffle, trying to seize the phone.

At the same time, another Consulate staff person physically grabbed and pushed me when I was holding the door open for all of us to leave. He violently tried to slam the stairwell door shut to try to physically block us from leaving, despite the fact that we were doing exactly what they had repeatedly asked us to do, which is leave. Instead, they literally tried to trap us in.

That was when the police officer said to the Consulate staff, "Take your hands off them." Of course, the police are no friends of working people. But it was so obvious that we were being assaulted while peacefully leaving that even the police felt forced to say something to object to the manhandling of us by the Consulate staff.