Global Goalkeeper award to Modi: Sabah Hamid, Gates Foundation staffer resigns in protest

Hours before PM Modi was conferred with the Gates Foundation’s annual Global Goalkeeper Award for his contribution to sanitation with his mission Swacch Bharat, a staff member at the foundation reportedly resigned in protest.

Sabah Hamid, a 42-year-old communications specialist said that to venerate Modi like this, especially at the time like this, when his government has imposed a communications and movement lockdown in Kashmir for 50 days now; was a grave error, The Wire reported. “Since the foundation seemed set on its course of action to go ahead with the award – which as a private foundation it is entitled to – I could do just one thing: leave,” Hamid said.

She has been affiliated to the Gates Foundation for three and a half years. “Being Kashmiri makes it personal. Eight million of my people have been under an undeclared curfew for 50 days now, with minimal access even to medical care, and there is a humanitarian crisis underway in the valley.”

“The Modi led government has not only designed and implemented this crisis, their untruths and the complicity of a large part of the media means they are also trying to hijack the narrative. Being feted at large international gatherings, and winning awards plays right into that,” she told TRT World.