AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL SLAMS INDIA IN ITS HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT

Wed 07 April 2021:

The London-based rights watchdog, Amnesty International has slammed India for its punitive lockdown in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as its handling of the anti-CAA (Citizenship (Amendment) Act) protests, farmers’ protests, Delhi riots and clampdown on civil liberties in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

According to Kashmir Media Service, the report “The State of the World’s Human Rights 2020/2021”, examines the human rights situation in 149 countries.

In the section on India, the report said: “There was widespread impunity and lack of accountability for murders and attacks carried out by vigilante mobs and police officers against religious minorities.”On lockdown, it said: “In March, migrant workers were forced by police to crawl, as punishment for breaching norms. The majority of those arrested for violating lockdown norms belonged to marginalized communities.”

India is now only ‘partly free’

Last month Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report has downgraded India’s status from a ‘Free’ country to a ‘Partly Free’ country, giving it ‘global freedom score’ of 67/100 after judging it on various political rights and civil liberties.

The report noted a “multiyear pattern” as it attributed the downgrade — from a score of 71 in 2019 and 75 in 2018 to 67 in 2020 — to “rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting the Muslim population” and “crackdown on expressions of dissent by the media, academics, civil society groups, and protesters” under the Narendra Modi government.

It said criminal charges were filed against journalists, students, and others under “colonial-era sedition laws” and the the Information Technology (IT) Act in response to “speech perceived as critical of the government, notably including expressions of opposition to the new citizenship legislation and discussion of the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic”.

The report has been published by US-based non-profit organisation Freedom House, which is funded by the US government and conducts research into democracy and political freedom around the world.