On April 8, HAF's Director of Public Policy, Ishani Chowdhury, testified on recent events in Malaysia at a briefing held by the Congressional Task Force on International Religious Freedom (TIRF) on Capitol Hill. At the briefing, attended by representatives of the U.S. Department of State, staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Malaysian Embassy, Chowdhury flayed the Malaysian government on its record of persecution and discrimination of the country's substantial Hindu minority, constituting 7% of the population.
Joining exiled Malaysian Indian leader, P. Waythamoorthy, academics and journalists, HAF testified on behalf of Malaysian Hindus at a briefing held in the House of Lords on December 8. Ishani Chowdhury, Director of Public Policy for the Foundation, blasted the Malaysian government's systematic persecution of minority Hindus, banning of the non-violent Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) and illegal incarceration of its leaders.
In the aftermath of Election Day and through the beginning of the next presidential administration, the ONE Campaign is mobilizing faith communities across America to speak out and take global action in the struggle against poverty and disease. According to its website, the ONE Campaign is a non-partisan, secular effort comprised of over 2.4 million people and over 100 of America's most well-known and respected non-profit, advocacy and humanitarian organizations. The campaign encourages faith communities and individual believers to serve as advocates in the effort to highlight the connection between poverty and deaths from preventable and treatable diseases. HAF became the first Hindu non-profit to join the ONE Campaign in November and, along with long-time academic consultant, Professor Jeffrey Long of Elizabethtown College, created a backgrounder on Hinduism and value of social service. For the first time, in addition to the Jewish, Christian and Muslims congregations in ONE Sabbath and ONE Sadaqua respectively, the ONE Campaign features ONE Seva for the Hindu community.
In a ruling on December 11, a federal judge blocked South Carolina plans to issue a Christian themed license plate that was to feature the phrase,"I Believe," above a gold cross and stained-glass church window. HAF, which had filed suit against the state of South Carolina in June along with an interfaith coalition of co-plaintiffs including local Christian and Jewish leaders as well as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, applauded the court's ruling. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious liberty watch dog group based in Washington, DC, represented the coalition.
Upon learning that a Hindu inmate in prison was not receiving vegetarian meals despite multiple requests, HAF's Legal Counsel, Suhag Shukla, contacted the Sheriff's department to ensure the inmate was provided vegetarian meals, as was his legal right. Just a few days after HAF's intervention, the inmate finally received his first vegetarian meal since he was first incarcerated six weeks earlier.
The results of HAF's efforts to ensure changes in the R-1 visa program included Hindu religious workers were successful. In 2007, HAF along with other Hindu institutions and temples, submitted extensive comments and suggestions vis a vis mounting concern that Hindu priests, temple artisans and traditional temple architects were increasingly being denied religious worker visas. Of concern, also were examples of religious workers provided by the USCIS which only took into consideration Judeo-Christian needs. In response to concerns of this bias raised by HAF and others, USCIS removed the list of examples in its entirety, leaving temples and religious organizations the opportunity to describe their needs independently.
Persecution, discrimination and terror are daily realities for millions of Hindus from Bangladesh and Pakistan to Malaysia and Saudi Arabia among many other countries according to a human rights report released by HAF on May 19. The release of the fourth annual report entitled, Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights 2007 is now an annual rite for the Foundation and has brought widespread coverage to a human rights story many Hindus felt had been omitted or inadequately covered in the past. The 2007 report covers ten countries in its 182 pages and has gained widespread support on Capitol Hill. As a complement to the report, the Foundation produced a new Government Supplement detailing appropriations from the United States to each of the covered countries and the State Department requests for aid. The Government Supplement will be used in meetings with members of Congress to demonstrate that nearly 1 billion dollars in aid was appropriated to countries with a record of significant human rights violations against Hindus and other minorities.
HAF began dialog and building a friendship with the Episcopal Church to work together on various interfaith issues of mutual interest. In February, in an unprecedented act, the Los Angeles diocese of the Episcopal church issued an unqualified apology to Hindus worldwide 'for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them.' The church also denounced ongoing proselytization efforts by Christian missionaries as counterproductive to religious harmony. HAF initiated a dialog with the church to work together on a number of issues in the future, including modifying the definition of religious freedom as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include the right to retain one's religion; working against predatory proselytization; creating a Hindu-Christian study guide for grassroots interfaith engagement and other matters of public policy involving religious issues.
HAF held its fifth annual awareness and education campaign dinner in November, attended by supporters from around Northern California. The event highlighted the Foundation's achievements over 2008 and details of its future plans. With over 250 people in attendance, including interfaith leaders from Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, the event marked HAF's largest turnout and fiscally most successful campaign event ever. Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, the highest ranking state official ever to attend a Hindu event in California, addressed supporters on the importance of HAF's work and Hindu American advocacy.