Devyani Khobragade case: India tightens screws, withdraws privileges for US consular officials

[MohitV]

NEW DELHI: In a perceptible hardening of stand against the US, India on Christmas eve rejected the American embassy's request for an extension on IDs for its consulate officials. With the deadline for surrender of these cards ending on Monday, India withdrew all identity cards of US consulate officials.

The move to issue fresh IDs came days after the arrest of senior Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade on visa fraud charges involving her domestic staff, Sangeeta Richard.

In a related development Kuoni Business Travels, a popular travel agent in Delhi, will face action from the government for issuing tax-free air tickets to the Richards family — Philip, Jennifer and Jatin — bought by the US embassy. The 'tax-exemption' applies only to diplomats and not to Indian citizens, and there was no doubt that the Richards are Indian citizens.

The Richards' ticket — PNR number H1XJ3 — was paid for byMasterCard. The endorsement of the ticket reads "JNTAXEXEMPTEDUSEMBASSY". Sources said there would be action against the travel agency. The US embassy spirited away the Richards in a way that has incensed the Indian government.

Sources said US diplomats in consular posts (US has four consulates in India) would get a new set of cards that are an exact replica of the cards issued to Indian diplomats in the US. The cards, which would be given to consulate officials and not their families, (unlike earlier) reflects the reciprocity India has been insisting on. The cards will say on the reverse that consulate officials have no immunity against felony charges.

The hardening of stand by the government is contrary to the almost conciliatory tone taken by foreign minister Salman Khurshid in his interactions with journalists. Sources said the US government was trying to stall or delay the actions that they had to take.

Meanwhile, keeping security considerations in mind, the government has changed some traffic movement patterns near the US embassy. Sources said, "All US diplomatic and consular officials are being provided security as before. No changes have been made in security status of US embassy in New Delhi and the security personnel remain deployed at check posts there."

There are a couple of steps left to be achieved in this case. First, the US state department has to issue an ID card to Khobragade which will seal her immunity status. The next step would be to negotiate with the department of justice and the state department to drop criminal charges against her, which will enable the government to bring her back easily.

Further down the road, both Khobragade and Sangeeta Richard would have to come to some understanding about the charges filed by the maid. Richard has a non-bailable warrant on her which means she can never return without being arrested at the airport.

In a larger context, India and the US would need to have a deeper dialogue on the rules of the game regarding their diplomats and what privileges they can enjoy in each other's country.

"The US system really needs to understand two things. First, Khobragade, or any Indian diplomat, is not an ordinary citizen on an ordinary visa. They have been sent by the government of India to work for the government. Their actions are governed by government of India rules. The same goes for IBDAs like Sangeeta Richard who go on official passports and their passage and salaries are paid for by the government," sources said.

Earlier, US consulate officials had it easy: they could import their requirements at any time during their three-year period of tenure in India. All that stops from Christmas day. US officials in consular posts will now have to import their requirements within the first six months after their arrival. Refuting media reports, officials said there was no clearance for duty-free goods since the freeze was imposed.

Officials said they had received the data on US schools in India which was being analysed. The government has started a scrutiny of whether US diplomats' families are engaged in tax-free employment which they are not entitled to.

Devyani Khobragade case: India tightens screws, withdraws privileges for US consular officials - The Times of India

 

[KRAIT]

Merry Christmas. Enjoy and celebrate in your consulates.

 

[Star Wars]

Merry Christmas

 

[dray]

Good job, it shouldn't have been given in the first place when they don't give such privileges to us. Now we shouldn't also restore it unless they offer us similar privileges.

 

[indiatester]

Good job, it shouldn't have been given in the first place when they don't give such privileges to us. Now we shouldn't also restore it unless they offer us similar privileges.

But our upper class IFS officers want special privileges in US. So they do this extended courtesy in the hope that they get treated like royalty in other countries. When that royal treatment is denied... oooooh there is not reciprocity and all the BS starts.

 

[dray]

But our upper class IFS officers want special privileges in US. So they do this extended courtesy in the hope that they get treated like royalty in other countries. When that royal treatment is denied... oooooh there is not reciprocity and all the BS starts.

Those upper class IFS officers have reached that upper class on their own merit, why should we be vindictive about them for reaching that class through hard work? And here the issue is not about one person.

Breaching the Vienna Conventions - The Hindu

Breaching the Vienna Conventions

Every Indian diplomat in the U.S. has told the same lie, because none of them can afford to pay the local minimum wage when their own pay, even with the foreign allowance, is barely more than that.
In the outrage over the arrest of Devyani Khobragade, we are perhaps not asking if the grounds the United States has given for this unusual step are morally or legally sustainable. The U.S. is right that Ms. Khobragade falsely stated when she applied for her domestic help’s visa that the woman would be paid over the minimum U.S. wage of $7.25 an hour. Every Indian diplomat in the U.S. has told the same lie, because none of them can afford to pay the local minimum wage when their own pay, even with the foreign allowance, is barely more than that. The U.S. government knows this, because the bank account of every Indian diplomat posted there, to which it has easy access, will make this plain. If it issues visas nevertheless, it is complicit in the lie.

The U.S. has a right to expect that no one brought there will be ill-treated. That forms the basis of its second charge, that because Ms. Khobragade did not pay her help the minimum U.S. wage, she treated the woman like a slave. Indians who agree, and believe the help is the real victim, perhaps do not know the facts.

Need and perception of need

The minimum wage in the U.S., as in India, is the government’s fanciful notion of what it costs to keep body and soul together, but civil society has long argued that it is woefully inadequate. Several U.S. non-governmental organisations make calculations for every city and county what the living wage should be, taking into account that the wage-earner must pay for food, housing, medical care, transportation and other essentials, including clothing. They hold that the minimum living wage in New York city for a single person is $12.75 an hour. For a single parent with two children, the dominant family pattern, it is $32.30, four times the official minimum wage.

This gap between actual need and the government’s perception of it translates into widespread poverty and hunger, particularly among the blacks and the Hispanics who form the bulk of the population that works at the minimum wage; they cannot live on it and therefore sink into debt. NGOs estimated that in 2012, 49 million Americans lived in food-insecure households. Households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children headed by single women (35.4 per cent), black households (24.6 per cent) and Hispanic households (23.3 per cent).

While the U.S. argues that anyone in New York paid less than the minimum U.S. wage is being ill-treated, what is in fact the case is that anyone who has to live only on that wage is — as the U.S. NGOs so vehemently argue — condemned to a life of poverty and hunger. Forbes pointed out in an article earlier this year that the unemployed who live on welfare get more in several States than those who work for minimum wages. In New York, Forbes calculated the annual take-home from welfare at $43,700 a year, or $21.01 an hour, almost three times the minimum wage.

It is important to remember this because a help employed by an Indian diplomat has none of the expenses that are assessed to compute either a minimum or a living wage. She stays in a room in the diplomat’s house, with her food, clothing, medical bills and transportation all paid for. Every dollar she earns is saved. If Sangeeta Richard was paid $500 a month, she was saving that a month. No one living on minimum wages in the U.S. has savings; most are up to their eyes in debt. Saving $500 a month for them is a pipe dream. The black and Hispanic women who work as domestic help and charwomen in the U.S., and form its underclass as the societal and lineal descendants of slave labour, would happily trade places with Sangeeta Richard.

Members of our civil society who argue that she was bonded labour, as defined in our Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, perhaps do not know the terms under which domestic help are employed by Indian diplomats. Neither that Act, nor any of the judgments of the Supreme Court which interpreted it, applies to them.

Convention and obligations

Those who claim that the Indian government has no interest in protecting domestic workers, and therefore is indifferent to Sangeeta Richard’s plight, ask why it has not ratified Convention 189 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) “Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers,” which came into force in September 2013. This is unfair because the government of India voted for the draft, and has since prepared a draft “Policy for Domestic Workers,” incorporating many of the provisions of the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act (UWSSA), 2008.

It is also not germane to this case because ILO Convention 189 would protect a domestic worker abroad only if the host government has ratified it. Like India, the U.S. government also voted for the Convention in 2011, but made a remarkably candid statement in explanation of vote: “In the case of the United States, a number of the provisions present complex issues with respect to our existing law in practice, including in regard to our federal system of government. Accordingly, we want to make clear that our vote to adopt this Convention entails no obligation by the United States to ratify it.”

Convention 189 offers all the protections that the U.S. claims Sangeeta Richard was denied. If these are already statutory requirements in the U.S., it is hard to understand why the convention presented it with “complex issues,” which had to be reconciled with its laws.

What is disturbing is that the U.S. “evacuated” the Richard family after issuing them “T-visas,” given to the next of kin of victims of human trafficking. This meant that, in its view, Sangeeta Richard was a victim of human trafficking as defined in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which supplements the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC).

The protocol defines “trafficking in persons” in detail. None of the conditions precedent applies to Sangeeta Richard, and a person travelling on an official passport of a democracy run by the rule of law by definition is not someone who is being trafficked. Moreover, when the Indian Embassy had asked the U.S. government to help trace her when she absconded, the T-visas in response make it clear that the U.S. considered the Indian government complicit in human trafficking.

It follows that the U.S. does not have the slightest intention of abiding by Article 8 of the Protocol, which sets out the terms under which a victim of trafficking is sent back to her country. In turn, this violates the assurance the U.S. gave when it ratified the protocol, to which it entered a reservation, but clarified that “this reservation does not affect in any respect the ability of the United States to provide international cooperation to other Parties as contemplated in the Protocol.”

Iran case

Instead, the U.S. claims that its laws were broken, and since a consular officer does not have the full immunity of an accredited diplomat, Ms. Khobragade was not immune from either arrest or subsequent prosecution. This, though, is not what the U.S. argued as the applicable international law when its diplomatic and consular staff were taken hostage in Iran in 1979, and the government in Tehran threatened to prosecute them for acts that were, in its view, crimes in Iranian law. The U.S. moved the International Court of Justice and in its submission, claimed inter alia that: “Pursuant to Articles 28, 31, 33, 34, 36 and 40 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the Government of lran is under an international legal obligation to the United States to ensure that … the consular personnel of the United States be treated with respect and protected from attack on their persons, freedom, and dignity; and that United States consular officers be free from arrest or detention. The Government of Iran has violated and is currently violating the foregoing obligations.”

The court ruled in favour of the U.S. on all points, by a large majority on most, but unanimously on the U.S. contention, examined at length in its judgment, that the Iranian threat to prosecute diplomatic and consular staff was a violation of the Vienna Conventions. The court held that: “no member of the United States diplomatic or consular staff may be kept in Iran to be subjected to any form of judicial proceedings or to participate in them as a witness.”

The U.S. therefore does not really have a case, on either moral or legal grounds. What is surprising is that it was prepared to offend a country that is now of some strategic and commercial interest to it, and so blatantly breach the Vienna Conventions that protect its diplomatic and consular agents as much as they do all others. Except, it seems, in Iran in 1979 and in the U.S. in 2013.

(Satyabrata Pal, a former High Commissioner to Pakistan, is a Member of the National Human Rights Commission.)

 

[IND151]

Those upper class IFS officers have reached that upper class on their own merit, why should we be vindictive about them for reaching that class through hard work? And here the issue is not about one person.

Breaching the Vienna Conventions - The Hindu

Breaching the Vienna Conventions

Every Indian diplomat in the U.S. has told the same lie, because none of them can afford to pay the local minimum wage when their own pay, even with the foreign allowance, is barely more than that.
In the outrage over the arrest of Devyani Khobragade, we are perhaps not asking if the grounds the United States has given for this unusual step are morally or legally sustainable. The U.S. is right that Ms. Khobragade falsely stated when she applied for her domestic help’s visa that the woman would be paid over the minimum U.S. wage of $7.25 an hour. Every Indian diplomat in the U.S. has told the same lie, because none of them can afford to pay the local minimum wage when their own pay, even with the foreign allowance, is barely more than that. The U.S. government knows this, because the bank account of every Indian diplomat posted there, to which it has easy access, will make this plain. If it issues visas nevertheless, it is complicit in the lie.

The U.S. has a right to expect that no one brought there will be ill-treated. That forms the basis of its second charge, that because Ms. Khobragade did not pay her help the minimum U.S. wage, she treated the woman like a slave. Indians who agree, and believe the help is the real victim, perhaps do not know the facts.

Need and perception of need

The minimum wage in the U.S., as in India, is the government’s fanciful notion of what it costs to keep body and soul together, but civil society has long argued that it is woefully inadequate. Several U.S. non-governmental organisations make calculations for every city and county what the living wage should be, taking into account that the wage-earner must pay for food, housing, medical care, transportation and other essentials, including clothing. They hold that the minimum living wage in New York city for a single person is $12.75 an hour. For a single parent with two children, the dominant family pattern, it is $32.30, four times the official minimum wage.

This gap between actual need and the government’s perception of it translates into widespread poverty and hunger, particularly among the blacks and the Hispanics who form the bulk of the population that works at the minimum wage; they cannot live on it and therefore sink into debt. NGOs estimated that in 2012, 49 million Americans lived in food-insecure households. Households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children headed by single women (35.4 per cent), black households (24.6 per cent) and Hispanic households (23.3 per cent).

While the U.S. argues that anyone in New York paid less than the minimum U.S. wage is being ill-treated, what is in fact the case is that anyone who has to live only on that wage is — as the U.S. NGOs so vehemently argue — condemned to a life of poverty and hunger. Forbes pointed out in an article earlier this year that the unemployed who live on welfare get more in several States than those who work for minimum wages. In New York, Forbes calculated the annual take-home from welfare at $43,700 a year, or $21.01 an hour, almost three times the minimum wage.

It is important to remember this because a help employed by an Indian diplomat has none of the expenses that are assessed to compute either a minimum or a living wage. She stays in a room in the diplomat’s house, with her food, clothing, medical bills and transportation all paid for. Every dollar she earns is saved. If Sangeeta Richard was paid $500 a month, she was saving that a month. No one living on minimum wages in the U.S. has savings; most are up to their eyes in debt. Saving $500 a month for them is a pipe dream. The black and Hispanic women who work as domestic help and charwomen in the U.S., and form its underclass as the societal and lineal descendants of slave labour, would happily trade places with Sangeeta Richard.

Members of our civil society who argue that she was bonded labour, as defined in our Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, perhaps do not know the terms under which domestic help are employed by Indian diplomats. Neither that Act, nor any of the judgments of the Supreme Court which interpreted it, applies to them.

Convention and obligations

Those who claim that the Indian government has no interest in protecting domestic workers, and therefore is indifferent to Sangeeta Richard’s plight, ask why it has not ratified Convention 189 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) “Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers,” which came into force in September 2013. This is unfair because the government of India voted for the draft, and has since prepared a draft “Policy for Domestic Workers,” incorporating many of the provisions of the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act (UWSSA), 2008.

It is also not germane to this case because ILO Convention 189 would protect a domestic worker abroad only if the host government has ratified it. Like India, the U.S. government also voted for the Convention in 2011, but made a remarkably candid statement in explanation of vote: “In the case of the United States, a number of the provisions present complex issues with respect to our existing law in practice, including in regard to our federal system of government. Accordingly, we want to make clear that our vote to adopt this Convention entails no obligation by the United States to ratify it.”

Convention 189 offers all the protections that the U.S. claims Sangeeta Richard was denied. If these are already statutory requirements in the U.S., it is hard to understand why the convention presented it with “complex issues,” which had to be reconciled with its laws.

What is disturbing is that the U.S. “evacuated” the Richard family after issuing them “T-visas,” given to the next of kin of victims of human trafficking. This meant that, in its view, Sangeeta Richard was a victim of human trafficking as defined in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which supplements the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC).

The protocol defines “trafficking in persons” in detail. None of the conditions precedent applies to Sangeeta Richard, and a person travelling on an official passport of a democracy run by the rule of law by definition is not someone who is being trafficked. Moreover, when the Indian Embassy had asked the U.S. government to help trace her when she absconded, the T-visas in response make it clear that the U.S. considered the Indian government complicit in human trafficking.

It follows that the U.S. does not have the slightest intention of abiding by Article 8 of the Protocol, which sets out the terms under which a victim of trafficking is sent back to her country. In turn, this violates the assurance the U.S. gave when it ratified the protocol, to which it entered a reservation, but clarified that “this reservation does not affect in any respect the ability of the United States to provide international cooperation to other Parties as contemplated in the Protocol.”

Iran case

Instead, the U.S. claims that its laws were broken, and since a consular officer does not have the full immunity of an accredited diplomat, Ms. Khobragade was not immune from either arrest or subsequent prosecution. This, though, is not what the U.S. argued as the applicable international law when its diplomatic and consular staff were taken hostage in Iran in 1979, and the government in Tehran threatened to prosecute them for acts that were, in its view, crimes in Iranian law. The U.S. moved the International Court of Justice and in its submission, claimed inter alia that: “Pursuant to Articles 28, 31, 33, 34, 36 and 40 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the Government of lran is under an international legal obligation to the United States to ensure that … the consular personnel of the United States be treated with respect and protected from attack on their persons, freedom, and dignity; and that United States consular officers be free from arrest or detention. The Government of Iran has violated and is currently violating the foregoing obligations.”

The court ruled in favour of the U.S. on all points, by a large majority on most, but unanimously on the U.S. contention, examined at length in its judgment, that the Iranian threat to prosecute diplomatic and consular staff was a violation of the Vienna Conventions. The court held that: “no member of the United States diplomatic or consular staff may be kept in Iran to be subjected to any form of judicial proceedings or to participate in them as a witness.”

The U.S. therefore does not really have a case, on either moral or legal grounds. What is surprising is that it was prepared to offend a country that is now of some strategic and commercial interest to it, and so blatantly breach the Vienna Conventions that protect its diplomatic and consular agents as much as they do all others. Except, it seems, in Iran in 1979 and in the U.S. in 2013.

(Satyabrata Pal, a former High Commissioner to Pakistan, is a Member of the National Human Rights Commission.)

Very important point.

 

[harpoon]

But our upper class IFS officers want special privileges in US. So they do this extended courtesy in the hope that they get treated like royalty in other countries. When that royal treatment is denied... oooooh there is not reciprocity and all the BS starts.

What special privileges? The only one that I can now recall is US looking the otherway while diplomats bringing in maids form their home countries. Now that privilege is also not allowed why should extend the same to US consulates and diplomats.

 

[indiatester]

What special privileges? The only one that I can now recall is US looking the otherway while diplomats bringing in maids form their home countries. Now that privilege is also not allowed why should extend the same to US consulates and diplomats.

Exactly my point. We should not extend any unnecessary privilege to them (diplomats of foreign countries).

Regarding special privileges, I was exaggerating a but. But they must stop this practice of taking domestic help from India. They can enjoy those "services" when they are in India.

 

[indiatester]

Those upper class IFS officers have reached that upper class on their own merit, why should we be vindictive about them for reaching that class through hard work? And here the issue is not about one person.

I'm not arguing in favour of US action. US was wrong in arresting Devyani.
My gripe is with the practice of taking domestic help to foreign countries on wrong pretences. If the salary of the Indian diplomat is low wrt the country they are posted in, then they must not get a maid/domestic help.
If the domestic help is such a requirement, it should be arranged by the GoI. They can enjoy those services in India like the IAS and IPS officers do.
But then again, we are unnecessarily according them upper class treatment when it is not needed. They should hire all the help they want out of their salary and the tax payer should not be expected to bear the burden. (I do understand in Devyani's case, she was paying the domestic help out of her pocket)

 

[Srinivas]

But our upper class IFS officers want special privileges in US. So they do this extended courtesy in the hope that they get treated like royalty in other countries. When that royal treatment is denied... oooooh there is not reciprocity and all the BS starts.

No one demand royalty in USA, only protocols which are to be followed. Royalty is behavior of oneself so that others respect him, it is not demanding some thing from others.

 

[indiatester]

No one demand royalty in USA, only protocols which are to be followed. Royalty is behavior of oneself so that others respect him, it is not demanding some thing from others.

No question in the fact that diplomatic protocols were not followed by the US.

But the need for domestic help beats me. Unfortunately by the looks of it, it looks like standard practice by our officers.

 

[Srinivas]

No question in the fact that diplomatic protocols were not followed by the US.

But the need for domestic help beats me. Unfortunately by the looks of it, it looks like standard practice by our officers.

All countries diplomats brings his/her domestic help. The job also includes secrecy so they ask for their own country people in every job. The domestic violence is another thing, That will be dealt by New Delhi after this issue is resolved and diplomat returns.

The issue here is Diplomat's treatment in USA and USA's attitude.

This arrest seems to have been motivated for political gains.

 

[VCheng]

All this hoopla is for Indian domestic consumption in the run up to the elections to whip up national fervor. It will all be sorted out "amicably" soon thereafter.

 

[janon]

All this hoopla is for Indian domestic consumption in the run up to the elections to whip up national fervor. It will all be sorted out "amicably" soon thereafter.

1) India is not pakistan. This dismissive attitude from pakistanis is because they can't stomach the fact that India has the nerve to stand up to the US, something which they all want their country to do, but can't and won't. Sour grapes attitude.

2) You know precious little of the Indian electorate or politics, if you think that a Devayani Khobragade or a Sangita Richards is an election issue. In India electoral issues have always been 'bijli, sadak, pani' and recently anti-corruption. Issues like this one are only talked about or thought about by a very small fraction of the people, the so called intelligentia. When you make statements like this, you appear as clueless as those chinese bots who think that the LCA tejas was given IOC so that the party can win the next election - which tells us that they think a political party in a democracy behaves the same way as the CCCP in china.

It would be awesome if people only commented on things they know something about. But hey, it's PDF.