A United Nations human rights expert has said that the Indian government is tacitly allowing incitement to violence against Muslims in the country.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Ahmad Shaheed, presented the report to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council on Thursday. In the report that documents the state-driven and tolerated hatred, discrimination and violence against minorities in India, he also denounced the wide-ranging Indian atrocities in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
On his part, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva, Ambassador Khalil Hashmi, echoed the report’s references about human rights situation in IIOJK and called upon the UN expert to continue monitoring and reporting on the situation, especially the denial of Kashmiri people’s inalienable right to self-determination by India.
In his report, the Special Rapporteur said that the Indian authorities had failed to address impunity for human rights violations in Kashmir – including extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and rape – and have enacted special laws to impede accountability and obstruct victims’ access to remedies.
In fact, he wrote that India had increased restrictions on movements of the predominantly Muslim Kashmiri population, already under strict military siege since the 2019 revocation of Kashmir’s special status, and sent more troops. “These measures, combined with Internet shutdowns, have hampered Kashmiris’ ability to protect themselves from the virus or receive outside help,” the special rapporteur said.
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’ dispatch to quell protests and unrest sparked by the Government’s introduction of controversial amendments to the Indian Constitution.
In India, the report said that the spread of derogatory slurs against Christians and Muslims, such as “rice bag converts” and conspiracy theories that Muslim men marry Hindu women to convert them (“love jihad”), foster an environment where discrimination is not just tolerated but sanctioned by political leaders.
“Various authorities in the country have adopted anti-conversion bills that target Christians and Muslims in recent years. Online activities can also inflict intersectional harm, such as websites in India that promote mock ‘auctions’ of Muslim women, especially those who are politically outspoken, as a means to compel their withdrawal from public life,” it added.
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’s Supreme Court took up judicial notice.
The Indian authorities also omitted Muslim migrants from citizenship fast-tracking and excluded Bengali-speaking Muslims from the national citizen registry, the report said. 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.
Taking note of the report’s findings, the Pakistan ambassador said many of the findings were relevant to the grim human rights conditions in UN-recognized situations of foreign occupation. —KMS
