The second season of “Vice” Showtime is full of shocking global stories that will remind viewers there are still crises beyond the coronavirus. Some crises are compounded by it, too, which “Vice” correspondent Isobel Yeung explained to TheWrap by phone this week.
Episode 2 — which airs Sunday, April 5 — outlines an ongoing human rights crisis in India, where Muslims are treated like second-class citizens. Beyond looking at the building of detention camps for the Muslims targeted by the Indian government, Yeung sat down with Dr. Subramanian Swamy — a member of India’s parliament — to get the government’s rationale for it. That clip, exclusive to TheWrap, can be seen above.
“On this issue, the country is with us,” he told Yeung. “Most people like our hardline approach to solving pending problems.”
He went on to say that “where the Muslim population is large, there is always trouble,” which Yeung countered by pointing out that with 200 million Muslim residents, India has the second-largest Islamic population in the world. When Swamy stuck to his position, she told him his comments sounded “like hatred,” but he said he was being “kind.”
Once Yeung cited Article 14 of India’s constitution — “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India” — he told her she was misinterpreting it and, in fact, Muslims are “not in an equal category” to non-Muslims.
In a subsequent chat with TheWrap, Yeung expanded on what’s happened to Muslims in India since she went there to talk to Swamy. The country, she said, is on lockdown for three weeks due to the coronavirus, and while there are relatively low numbers of confirmed cases, that’s likely because of a lack of testing.
At the end of February, there were violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims that resulted in over 50 deaths, with the majority of casualties Muslim people who were targeted for their religion. There were hundreds of injuries and many Muslims remain missing. As a result of these riots, a lot of Muslims lost their belongings and housing, Yeung explained.
“And now the government has said that there is this national lockdown, this national emergency,” she continued. “so they don’t necessarily have anywhere to turn so they are definitely one of the populations that are definitely going to struggle through this.”
Watch above, via Showtime.
“Vice” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Showtime.