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US Is Monitoring The Rising Human Rights Issue In India, Says Antony Blinken

Washington: In a rare frontal censure of Indiaโ€™s human rights record, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was monitoring what he described as a surge in human rights abuses by some officials in India.

โ€œWe 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,โ€ Mr Blinken said on Monday in a joint press briefing with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Indiaโ€™s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh

Mr. Blinken did not go into further detail. Mr Singh and Mr Jaishankar, who spoke at the briefing after Blinken, made no mention of the human rights problem.

Mr. Blinkenโ€™s comments come only days after US Representative Ilhan Omar questioned the US administrationโ€™s purported hesitation to criticise Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modiโ€™s government on human rights issues.

โ€œWhat does Modi need to do to Indiaโ€™s Muslim population before we will stop considering them a partner in peace?โ€ Mr Omar, who belongs to President Joe Bidenโ€™s Democratic Party, said last week.  

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 law in 2019, which critics claimed compromised Indiaโ€™s secular constitution by banning Muslim immigration from neighbouring countries. Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis, and Sikhs who fled Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan before 2015 were to be granted Indian citizenship under the law.

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