The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that the US State Department designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) in the Commission’s 2020 Annual Report released on 28 April.
This is the first time in over 15 years that USCIRF has recommended that the country be put on the list, the last time being in 2004. Other countries recommended for CPC designation include Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam. The External Affairs Ministry in India was quick to reject the findings of the report, calling it a “new level of misrepresentation” and “biased.”
According to the report, a CPC is defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) as a country in which “the government engages in or tolerates particular ‘severe violations’ of religious freedom. “Severe violation” means “systematic, ongoing, [and] egregious violations…, including violations such as torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; prolonged detention without charges; causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction or clandestine detention of those persons; or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty or the security of person.”
While Article 25 of the Indian Constitution provides for the “freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion,” religious minorities in the country continue to experience a severe deterioration in this freedom; facing growing harassment, targeted attacks by non-state actors, state-sanctioned violence and discriminatory policies and laws which categorically single out particular communities. The USCIRF report states that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has “used its strengthened parliamentary majority to institute national level policies violating religious freedom across India, especially Muslims...[and] allowed violence against minorities and their houses of worship to continue with impunity, and also engaged in and tolerated hate speech and incitement to violence.”
CSW’s Chief Executive Mervyn Thomas said: “CSW welcomes and echoes USCIRF’s recommendation that India should be designated as a CPC. It has come at a very significant time, as concerns about freedom of religion or belief in India have escalated since the BJP took the helm of power seven years ago. The fact that the largest democracy in the world has been recommended as a CPC is a deeply concerning indicator of the extent to which freedoms and human rights have deteriorated in the country. We hope that the findings will prompt the international community to apply greater pressure on India to take measures to protect and promote the religious minorities.”