Islamabad: International Human Rights Day is being commemorated on Saturday across the globe with a commitment to uphold the United Nations General Assembly’s (UNGA) adopted Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), ensuring basic human rights to all people.

But India, despite being on the radar of global human rights bodies, for its systematic and gruesome policies against minorities especially Muslims and Kashmiris in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), is blatantly violating the human norms and international declarations. Human Rights Watch, in its latest report, said that the Indian government adopted laws and policies that discriminated against religious minorities, especially Muslims. “This, coupled with the vilification of Muslims by some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and police failed to take action against BJP supporters who commit violence, emboldened Hindu nationalist groups to attack Muslims and government critics with impunity,” it said.

The critics of the BJP-led government in India including activists, journalists, peaceful protesters, and even poets, actors, and businesses are increasingly risking politically motivated harassment, prosecutions, and tax raids. Indian authorities shut down rights groups using foreign funding regulations or allegations of financial irregularities.

The Indian security forces have turned IIOJK into an open-air prison while the Indian minorities are facing saffron-junta-led terrorism and extremism with full backing of BJP leadership. These human rights abuses in IIOJK range from mass killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and sexual abuse to political repression and suppression of freedom of speech.

Human Rights Watch in its report further said that five UN experts have raised concerns about “the repressive measures and broader pattern of systematic infringements of fundamental rights used against the local population, as well as of intimidations, searches and confiscations committed by national security agents.”

Published in The Daily National Courier, December, 10 2022

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