The US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has requested the State Department to designate India withinside the pink listing for human rights issues.
For the 1/3 successive year, it advocated that India be certain as a “usa of specific concern” (CPC) for “accomplishing and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of non secular freedom, as described with the aid of using the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)”.
On the remaining occasions, the Trump in addition to the Biden Administration had declined to move with the aid of using the USCIRF’s guidelines to position India at the Red List.
The modern-day record unveiled on Monday has bracketed India with Afghanistan, Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.
The India bankruptcy of the record cited that non secular freedom situations in India “notably worsened”. During the year, the Indian authorities escalated its merchandising and enforcement of policies—which includes the ones selling a Hindu-nationalist agenda — that negatively have an effect on Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and different non secular minorities.
The USCIRF entreated the State Department to elevate non secular freedom troubles withinside the US-India bilateral dating and spotlight issues via hearings, briefings and letters.
The authorities persevered to systemise its ideological imaginative and prescient of a Hindu nation at each the country wide and nation degrees via the usage of each present and new legal guidelines and structural modifications adversarial to the usa’s non secular minorities.
In 2021, it accused the Indian authorities of repressingcritical voices, specially non secular minorities and people reporting on and advocating for them—via harassment, investigation, detention, and prosecution beneathneath legal guidelines including the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Sedition Law.
“The UAPA and Sedition Law were invoked to create an growing weather of intimidation and worry on the way to silence all of us talking out in opposition to the authorities,” it stated even as detailing the instances if the overdue Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-antique Jesuit priest, who died in custody and of Khurram Parvez, a Muslim human rights advocate.
At the near of 2021, the licences of almost 6,000 enterprises, which includes non secular and humanitarian enterprises including Missionaries of Charity and Oxfam India, have been now no longer renewed beneathneath the FCRA (after an outcry, Missionaries of Charity’s license become renewed in January 2022).
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