Washington: In a rare frontal censure of India’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.
“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,” Mr Blinken said on Monday in a joint press briefing with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and India’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. 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 does Modi need to do to India’s Muslim population before we will stop considering them a partner in peace?” Mr Omar, who belongs to President Joe Biden’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 India’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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