In its annual report earlier this 12 months, the US Fee on Worldwide Non secular Freedom (USCIRF), an impartial federal authorities fee, had already really helpful that the administration impose focused sanctions on Indian authorities businesses and officers chargeable for “extreme violations of spiritual freedom by freezing these people’ belongings and/ or barring their entry into america.”
It pushed the case once more on Friday, saying, “The Indian authorities’s alleged involvement within the killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and the plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in america are deeply troubling, and signify a extreme escalation of India’s efforts to silence spiritual minorities and human rights defenders each inside its nation and overseas.”
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USCIRF Commissioner Stephen Schneck stated in an announcement that the Fee is “alarmed by India’s elevated transnational concentrating on of spiritual minorities and people advocating on their behalf.” Latest efforts by the Indian authorities to silence activists, journalists, and legal professionals overseas pose a critical menace to non secular freedom, he added.
This isn’t the primary time the USCIRF has made the sanctions pitch to administration the face of contemptuous smackdown from New Delhi. It has really helpful designating India a rustic of explicit concern in every of its final three annual experiences within the face of rejection from the Secretary of State (who makes the willpower) and pushback from the Indian authorities, which earlier this 12 months suggested USCIRF “to develop a greater understanding of India, its plurality and its democratic ethos.”
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New Delhi says the USCIRF routinely “regurgitates biased and motivated feedback” about India and “such misrepresentation of details solely serves to discredit USCIRF itself.”
Up to now, India has additionally discreetly rejected requests by USCIRF to go to India. Privately, Indian officers say the Fee shall be higher served by specializing in spiritual freedom in US, the place too there are episodes of spiritual profiling and bloodletting.
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In its newest salvo, the USCIRF additionally accused Indian authorities of utilizing spy ware and on-line harassment campaigns “to focus on and intimidate journalists and activists overseas advocating on behalf of spiritual minorities.” It particularly referred to the web marketing campaign of harassment in opposition to Wall Road Journal reporter Sabrina Siddiqui, whose query about spiritual freedom situations in India to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s throughout his state go to to Washington in June, triggered a web based marketing campaign in opposition to her, ostensibly fired up it stated by Amit Malviya, the top of BJP’s IT cell.
“Inside its personal borders, Indian authorities have repeatedly used draconian laws just like the Illegal Actions Prevention Act and anti-conversion legal guidelines to systematically crack down on spiritual minorities, journalists, and activists. Extending this repression to focus on spiritual minorities from India dwelling overseas, together with intimidation ways in opposition to journalists, is very harmful and can’t be ignored,” USCIRF Commissioner David Curry stated within the assertion.
“We urge the U.S. authorities to proceed its energetic engagement with senior Indian officers and worldwide companions to make sure spiritual minorities can reside and specific themselves with out concern of reprisal, whether or not in India or elsewhere,” he added.
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