ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: The annual United States report on human rights practices released on Monday has listed significant human rights abuses in India, including unlawful and arbitrary killings, interference with privacy, challenges to freedom of press and violence targeting religious and ethnic minorities, with the Biden administration strongly urging Delhi to uphold its rights commitments.
The findings come nearly a year after Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, in a rare direct rebuke by the US of the Asian nation’s rights record, said Washington was monitoring what he described as an increase in human rights abuses in India committed by government officials.
There is strong evidence of significant human rights issues in India supported by credible reports of the government and its agents conducting extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment by police and prison officials; and unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists; political prisoners or detainees; the US report stated.
Human rights abuses by Modi Regime
Concerns have been raised by advocacy groups over what they see as a degrading human rights situation in India in past few years under the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of PM Narendra Modi.
Human Rights Watch said the Indian government’s policies and actions are against Muslims, while critics of Modi said his Hindu nationalist ruling party has fostered religious polarization after coming into power in 2014.
Opposers point to a 2019 citizenship law that the UN human rights office described as “fundamentally discriminatory” by excluding Muslim migrants from neighbouring nations, anti-conversion legislation that challenged the constitutionally saved right to freedom of belief, and revoking the special status of the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir in 2019.
