US to monitor human rights violations

In a rare frontal censure of the South Asian nation’s rights record, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the US is monitoring what he calls a surge in human rights abuses in India by some authorities.

“We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values (of human rights), and to that end, we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police, and prison officials,” Blinken said at a joint press briefing with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday.

Blinken didn’t go into detail. The human rights issue was not mentioned by Singh or Jaishankar, who spoke following Blinken at the briefing.

Blinken’s comments come only days after US Representative Ilhan Omar questioned the US administration’s purported hesitation to criticise Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on human rights issues.

“What must Modi do to India’s Muslim population before we no longer consider them a peace partner?” Last Monday, Omar, a member of President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party, remarked.

Modi’s detractors claim that since taking office in 2014, his Hindu nationalist ruling party has exacerbated religious polarisation.

Right-wing Hindu organisations have launched attacks on minorities since then, claiming to be attempting to prevent religious conversions. Anti-conversion legislation have been implemented or are being considered in several Indian states, putting the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of belief in jeopardy.

The government approved a citizenship bill in 2019 that opponents say undermines India’s secular constitution by preventing Muslim immigrants from neighbouring nations from naturalising. Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis, and Sikhs who fled Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan before 2015 were granted Indian citizenship under the ordinance.

Modi’s administration withdrew the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir in the same year, shortly after winning re-election in 2019, in an effort to completely integrate the Muslim-majority area into the country.

To quell protests, the administration imprisoned a number of Kashmiri political leaders and dispatched a large number of paramilitary police and soldiers to the Himalayan region, which Pakistan also claims.

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