Significant human rights abuses in India: US report

The US State Department’s 2023 Human Rights Report (HRR) has highlighted multiple human rights abuses in India.

The report, a country-wise compilation of human rights practices, has flagged “credible reports” of more than a dozen different kinds of human rights abuses in India, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest or detention, torture to coerce confessions, repeated imposition of Internet shutdowns and blocked telecommunications, surveillance of civil society activists and journalists, intimidation and Internet trolling of human rights defenders, punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative, and “crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of ethnic and caste minorities,” among others.

The report, released by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, highlighted that “the outbreak of ethnic conflict between the Kuki and Meitei ethnic groups” resulted in “significant human rights abuses.” It also noted that “the government took minimal credible steps or action to identify and punish officials who may have committed human rights abuses.”

Stating that “there were several reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings, during the year, the report pointed out that “the country registered 813 cases of extrajudicial killings between 2016-2022, with the most reported in Chhattisgarh, followed by Uttar Pradesh.”

In a section titled ‘Transnational repression,’ the HRR referred to reports of the Indian government engaging in repression of “journalists, members of the diaspora, civil society activists, and human rights defenders.”

The report, observing that “other governments and diaspora communities” have alleged that the Indian government has “killed persons or used violence or threats of violence against individuals in other countries, for reprisal,” cited the statements of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that his government was probing allegations of a link between Indian government agents and the killing of a Sikh Canadian citizen, Harjeet Singh Nijjar.