In a scathing indictment of India’s Human Rights record, a report by the United States State Department has expressed concerns over “police and security force abuses”. These include arbitrary detention and arrest, lengthy pre-trial detention, disappearances, torture, rape, extrajudicial killings, as well as life-threatening conditions in prisons. It also takes note of “reports of political prisoners in certain states” and significantly notes that “a lack of accountability for misconduct at all levels of government persisted, contributing to widespread immunity”.
According to the report, discrimination and violence based on religion, sexual orientation, and caste or tribe, including indigenous people, continued, also because of a lack of accountability. The lack of accountability with respect to human rights abuses seemed to be a persistent theme in the report, which highlights this problem, along with the lack of criminal probes for cases “related to rape, domestic violence, dowry-related deaths, honour killings, sexual harassment”. Moreover, at least eight states had “legal restrictions on religious conversion”.
It also mentions incidents of “censorship and harassment of media outlets, including some critical of the government”. The report underscores the restrictions on foreign funding of certain non-governmental organisations, curbing these group’s activities. These included “those with views the government stated were not in the ‘national interest,'” the report says.
Acknowledging that while individual cases saw probes and prosecution, “lax enforcement” along with a limited number of trained police personnel “and an overburdened and under-resourced court system contributed to a small number of convictions”. The report also mentioned terrorists and separatist insurgents in Jammu and Kashmir, the northeast, and in Maoist-affected areas engaging in “serious” human rights violations, including drafting and using child soldiers, as well as the torture and killing of civilians, government officials, police and armed forces personnel.
The US States’ State Department’s annual human rights reports look at internationally recognised civil, political and worker rights as per the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements. The State Department files such reports on all countries that get aid, and all United Nations member states to the US Congress.
The entire report may be read here.
