The United Nations Human Rights Committee on Thursday expressed concern about the violence and discrimination faced by minority groups in India, including Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, and called for comprehensive legislation to prohibit such discrimination.
“While appreciating the measures adopted by the state party [India] to address discrimination, the committee was concerned about discrimination and violence against minority groups, including religious minorities, such as Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and LGBTI people,” the committee said.
The expert body made the remarks in a report on its findings on Croatia, Honduras, India, Maldives, Malta, Suriname and the Syrian Arab Republic after examining the seven nations in its latest session.
The report conveys the expert body’s concerns and recommendations on the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, among other aspects, within the nations.
The covenant is a multilateral treaty that elicits commitments from nations that they will respect the civil and political rights of individuals.
The expert body called on India to adopt “comprehensive legislation prohibiting discrimination, raise awareness among the general public, and provide training to civil servants, law enforcement officers, the judiciary and community leaders to promote respect for diversity”.
It also noted with concern that certain provisions of India’s Armed Forces Special Powers Act and other counter-terrorism legislations do not comply with the covenant.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, or AFSPA, gives Army personnel sweeping powers in disturbed areas to search, arrest and open fire if necessary for “the maintenance of public order”.
The act is presently in force in Jammu and Kashmir, and parts of Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
“The committee also voiced its concern over the application of counter-terrorism legislation for decades in ‘disturbed areas’, such as districts in Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, has led to widespread and grave human rights violations, including excessive use of force leading to unlawful killings, prolonged arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced displacement and torture,” the report said.
It urged India to comply with its obligations under the covenant and ensure that counter-terrorism and other security measures in disturbed areas were “temporary, proportionate, strictly necessary and subject to judicial review”.
The expert body also asked India to establish a mechanism to initiate a process to acknowledge responsibility and “ascertain the truth regarding human rights violations in disturbed areas”.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee report on Thursday came nearly a month after the release of the 2023 International Religious Freedom Report by the United States’ State Department, which flagged the repression of religious communities in India.
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken had commented on the report’s findings, saying that there has been a “concerning increase” in hate speech, anti-conversion laws, and demolitions of homes and places of worship belonging to members of religious minorities in India.
The report covered the period from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023.
The External Affairs Ministry, in response to the report, had said that it was “deeply biased”, lacked an understanding of India’s social fabric and was “visibly driven by votebank considerations”.
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