WASHINGTON The United Nations has asked New Delhi to closely monitor the plight of detainees in Indian occupied Kashmir as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the world. “The Secretary-General [Antonio Guterres], as we have said earlier, believes that Member States need to take a very close look at incarcerations during a time of COVID-19. It’s something the High Commissioner for Human Rights has spoken out about,” Antonio Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters. He said Guterres believes that any political solution must take into consid eration the issue of human rights. On March 25, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on the international community to protect prisoners from the pandemic by releasing “vulnerable” ones. “COVID-19 has begun to strike prisons, jails and immigration detention centers as well as residential care homes and psychiatric hospitals and risks rampaging through such institutions’ extremely vulnerable populations,” Bachelet said in a statement. “Authorities should examine ways to release those particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, among them older detainees and those who are sick, as well as lowrisk offenders,” she said.—KMS
