New Delhi
India has turned down a travel request for members of a US government panel seeking to review its religious freedom, saying such foreign agencies had no standing to assess the constitutional rights of citizens.
Since taking power in 2014, the Indian government has faced criticism for attacks on Muslims and the panel has called for the world’s biggest democracy to be designated a “country of particular concern”, along with China, Iran, Russia and Syria.
The call by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) was made in an April report urging sanctions against officials of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government after it excluded minority Muslims from a new citizenship law.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the government firmly repudiated the surveys of the commission, which had little knowledge of the rights of Indian citizens, describing it as biased and prejudiced. “We have also denied visas to USCIRF teams that have sought to visit India in connection with issues related to religious freedom,” he told a lawmaker from Modi’s ruling group in a June 1 letter.—Agencies
