In a recent interview with an America based news organisation, the head of the global Human Rights organisation has said that the West’s refusal to call out human rights abuses by Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi has only emboldened him in his anti-Muslim agenda.
Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) told Newsweek that the desire of leading countries in the West to use India as a counterweight to China’s power and influence as well as the unprincipled approach to human rights pursued by President Trump had only emboldened the Indian leader’s decision to undermine the human rights of Muslim citizens.
According to the report, the Prime Minister of India has been accused of stripping millions of Muslims in India of citizenship and also of undermining human rights in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority region.
Last year, Narendra Modi led GoI revoked the JK’s special status, imposed a year-long curfew, restricted the movement of people and shut down internet services for the longest period of time in any democracy.
As mentioned in the report, Roth’s organisation investigates human rights abuses across the world on the frontline, pushing for criminal prosecutions where necessary.
It shared the Nobel Peace Prize as a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and played a leading role in the 2008 treaty banning cluster munitions.
“The big issue with India is Prime Minister Modi’s systematic discrimination against Muslims and his tolerance of violence against Muslims,” Newsweek quoted Roth as having said.
UK and the US had banned Narendra Modi for his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat riots, in which more than 1,000 people were killed in communal violence, most of them Muslims.
At the time, Modi was the then chief minister of Gujarat and stood accused of “allowing” the anti-Muslim riots to go ahead. In 2012 a court in Gujarat said it found no evidence of Modi’s connection to the riots, the report said.
The report added that ever since Modi became the Prime Minister of India, he faced growing criticism from opposition parties and human rights organisation over his “treatment of minorities, with the United Nations (UN) labelling a citizenship law that Modi’s government passed as fundamentally discriminatory.”
The citizenship law offers amnesty to non-Muslim undocumented migrants from India’s neighbouring countries. By excluding Muslims, Modi was accused of undermining India’s secular constitution.
“The bill was also closely linked to a National Register of Citizens, where people have to provide documents proving their lineage and that they are not residing in India illegally. Given the high levels of illiteracy and poor record-keeping, human rights groups say the move is designed to render millions of Muslims stateless,” the report said.
The executive director of Human Rights Watch, according to report mentions that West has failed to call out human rights abuses in India.
Roth said: “Modi has largely got away with his anti-Muslim agenda and his oppression of protests against it, that is the relative lack of criticism from the West has only emboldened him on this abusive path.”
“In the Indian state of Assam, 1.9 million Muslims were made stateless,” the report said.
Modi has also received criticism for the human rights situation in Kashmir after he revoked the region’s autonomous status by repealing Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which gave the region its own constitution, flag and freedom to make some laws.
“His withdrawal of Kashmir’s special constitutional status and the subsequent crackdown on dissent, shutting down the Internet, all are part of this broader anti-Muslim element of BJP policy which Modi either participates in actively or simply tolerates, including the so-called cow-vigilantes, who are basically vigilantes who attack Muslims,” Roth was quoted as having said.
Human Rights Watch described the use of communal rhetoric by members of the ruling BJP as encouraging attacks on minorities who consume beef or engage in the cattle trade.
Human rights organisation have also accused Indian armed forces of serious human rights violations in the province, with civil society groups in the country saying “rape, torture and forced disappearances are routine in the country”.
When asked why are Western governments reluctant to call out human rights violations in India, Roth said: “It’s [Kashmir] one piece of a larger anti-Muslim agenda which the West has largely ignored. India is a major power, a major country. There is increasing tension with China and some just soften the criticism of India because they see it as an ally in competition with China.”
“Trump is utterly uninterested in calling out any human rights violation by anybody other than a handful of perceived adversaries: China, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua and Cuba and that’s about it, which is a completely unprincipled approach to human rights which does not attract any adherence and greatly weakens the force of US intervention,” he added.
Roth’s comments were part of a wide-ranging interview on human rights, in which he warned that China posed the greatest threat to the human rights system and also highlighted threats to human rights in Europe, the plight of Uighurs and the Rohingya and spoke of the dangers of facial recognition technology in undermining privacy.
“Promoting, protecting, and advancing human rights and fundamental freedoms is a top priority for the United States,” the report quoted a State Department spokesperson as having said.
“We support human rights defenders in a wide variety of environments, and support programs and policies to help countries solidify their role as or develop into democratic and human rights-respecting partners. Countering the malign actions of authoritarian states, including their attempts to undermine democratic governance and redefine human rights through tools such as disinformation, is a key part of the Department’s work and a focus of our partnerships with like-minded governments and international organisation,” the spokesperson was quoted by the report further saying.
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