US monitoring rise in rights abuses in India, Blinken says

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned the USA was monitoring what he described as an increase in human rights abuses in India by some officers, in a uncommon direct rebuke by Washington of the Asian nation’s rights document.
“We repeatedly have interaction with our Indian companions on these shared values (of human rights) and to that finish, we’re monitoring some latest regarding developments in India together with an increase in human rights abuses by some authorities, police and jail officers,” Blinken mentioned on Monday in a joint press briefing with US Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin, Indian Overseas Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and India’s Protection Minister Rajnath Singh.
Blinken didn’t elaborate. Singh and Jaishankar, who spoke after Blinken on the briefing, didn’t touch upon the human rights difficulty.
Blinken’s remarks got here days after US Consultant Ilhan Omar questioned the alleged reluctance of the US authorities to criticize Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authorities on human rights.
“What does Modi have to do to India’s Muslim inhabitants earlier than we are going to cease contemplating them a accomplice in peace?” Omar, who belongs to President Joe Biden’s Democratic Occasion, mentioned final week.
Modi’s critics say his Hindu nationalist ruling social gathering has fostered spiritual polarization since coming to energy in 2014.
Since Modi got here to energy, right-wing Hindu teams have launched assaults on minorities claiming they’re attempting to stop spiritual conversions. A number of Indian states have handed or are contemplating anti-conversion legal guidelines that problem the constitutionally protected proper to freedom of perception.
In 2019, the federal government handed a citizenship regulation that critics mentioned undermined India’s secular structure by excluding Muslim migrants from neighboring nations. The regulation was meant to grant Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs who fled Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan earlier than 2015.
In the identical yr, quickly after his 2019 re-election win, Modi’s authorities revoked the particular standing of Kashmir in a bid to totally combine the Muslim-majority area with the remainder of the nation. To maintain a lid on protests, the administration detained many Kashmir political leaders and despatched many extra paramilitary police and troopers to the Himalayan area additionally claimed by Pakistan.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP) not too long ago banned carrying the hijab in school rooms in Karnataka state. Laborious-line Hindu teams later demanded such restrictions in additional Indian states.