GENEVA, Mar 11 (TNS): A United Nations human rights expert has accused the Indian government of tacitly allowing incitement to violence against Muslims in a report that documents the state-driven and tolerated hatred, discrimination and violence against minorities in India.<\/p>\n
The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Ahmad Shaheed, who presented the report to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council on Thursday, also denounced the wide-ranging Indian atrocities in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.<\/p>\n
Stung by the damning report on \u2018rights of religious or belief minorities in situations of insecurity and conflict\u2019, India rejected the UN expert\u2019s findings, without offering any substantive arguments.<\/p>\n
On his part, Pakistan\u2019s Permanent Representative to the UN Offices in Geneva, Ambassador Khalil Hashmi, echoed the report\u2019s references about human rights situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir and called on the UN expert to continue monitoring and reporting on the situation, especially the Kashmiri people\u2019s inalienable right to self-determination. .<\/p>\n
In his report, Special Rapporteur Shaheed said that the Indian authorities had failed to address impunity for human rights violations in Kashmir \u2013 including extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and rape \u2013 and have enacted special laws to impede accountability and obstruct victims\u2019 access to remedies.<\/p>\n
In fact, he wrote that India had increased restrictions on movements of the predominantly Muslim Kashmiri population, already under strict lockdown since the 2019 revocation of Kashmir\u2019s special autonomous status, and sent more troops.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese measures, combined with Internet shutdowns, have hampered Kashmiris\u2019 ability to protect themselves from the virus or receive outside help,\u201d the special rapporteur said.<\/p>\n
The UN report went on to say that Indian armed forces in Kashmir have arrested local politicians, by invoking the Public Safety Act that permits them to imprison someone for up to two years without a charge or trial, following the forces\u2019 dispatch to quell protests and unrest sparked by the Government\u2019s introduction of controversial amendments to the Indian Constitution.<\/p>\n
(Under those amendments, India annex the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and international law.)<\/p>\n
In India, the report said that the spread of derogatory slurs against Christians and Muslims, such as \u201crice bag converts\u201d and conspiracy theories that Muslim men marry Hindu women to convert them (\u201clove jihad\u201d), foster an environment where discrimination is not just tolerated but sanctioned by political leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cVarious authorities in the country have adopted anti-conversion bills that target Christians and Muslims in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnline activities can also inflict intersectional harm, such as websites in India that promote mock \u2018auctions\u2019 of Muslim women, especially those who are politically outspoken, as a means to compel their withdrawal from public life,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
According to the report, interlocutors report that the Indian government has tacitly allowed incitement to violence against Muslims, failing to condemn a December 2021 video of Hindu religious leaders calling for a Muslim genocide until India\u2019s Supreme Court took up judicial notice.<\/p>\n
(Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his close associates have not condemned those statements, including one by monk Yati Narsinghanand Giri, that encouraged Hindus to carry out
\nThe Indian authorities also omitted Muslim migrants from citizenship fast-tracking and excluded Bengali-speaking Muslims from the national citizen registry, the report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Sri Lanka, India, and Myanmar, State and non-state actors have accused Muslim minorities of importing the virus or increasing infection rates, sometimes with deadly consequences,\u201d the report added. \u201cSocial media has proven a dangerous tool for spreading these conspiracy theories, with the \u201ccorona jihad\u201d hashtag (#coronajihad) going viral on Twitter in India after the Government announced high infection rates in the Muslim population.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Indian state of Karnataka, according to the report, is attempting to single out Christian organizations, including hospitals and schools, for a census survey, amidst rising regional hostility against that minority group.<\/p>\n
In his comments on the report, Indian delegate Pawankumar Badhe said, \u201cWe reject the Report of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, which is full of unfounded, unjustified, irresponsible and presumptuous allegations against my country based on unverified information and far-fetched conclusions,\u201d.<\/p>\n
Taking note of the report\u2019s findings, the Pakistan ambassador said many of them findings were relevant to the grim human rights conditions in UN-recognized situations of foreign occupation.
\n\u201cEven as people living in these situations do not meet the legal threshold of minority, occupation regimes have often instrumentalized religion to perpetrate and justify atrocity crimes against them,\u201d Ambassador Hashmi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn doing so,\u201d the Pakistani ambassador added, \u201cthey invariably aim to eliminate the distinct identity of these people, pursuing legitimate freedom struggle.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs chronicled by the Report, this dangerous trend alarmingly resonates with the post-05th August situation in occupied Jammu & Kashmir.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the so-called \u201cFinal Solution\u201d, the occupying Power is illegally colonizing the internationally recognized disputed territory, transforming the indigenous Kashmiri into a minority, and disenfranchising them of their distinct religious, cultural, and linguistic rights and identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom arbitrary restrictions on religious gatherings to curbs on burial rights; from illegal detentions of Kashmiri leaders and activists to changes in status of languages associated with Kashmiris; and from illegal land garbs to plans for building Hindu temples in place of mosques, the \u201cHindutvatization\u201d of the occupied territory remains unabated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GENEVA, Mar 11 (TNS): A United Nations human rights expert has accused the Indian government of tacitly allowing incitement to violence against Muslims in a report that documents the state-driven and tolerated hatred, discrimination and violence against minorities in India. The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Ahmad Shaheed, who presented the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,952],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104335,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104333\/revisions\/104335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/104334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}