Despite the deterioration of relations between India and the United States over Ukraine, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated that he is monitoring the growing human rights violations in India. This is being reported as a rare instance of the United States issuing a direct warning to India on the issue of human rights. Ilhan Omar, a US congresswoman, had previously slammed the Modi government’s policy on Muslim human rights.
“We keep talking to our Indian allies about these shared values,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a joint press conference with Indian Secretary of State S Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh (human rights). We are keeping an eye on some concerning developments in India in this regard. Some governments, police officers, and prison officials are increasingly violating human rights.
After Blinken’s statement, Jaishankar and Rajnath talk.
Blinken did not elaborate further on this. After the press conference, Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh spoke with Blinken but made no statement about human rights violations. The US Secretary of State made this statement at a time when India and America’s relations with Russia are at a standstill. Simultaneously, US congresswoman Ilhan Omar questioned why the US government had not criticised India’s Narendra Modi government for alleged human rights violations.
Omar, a member of Biden’s party, recently stated that the Modi government is violating Muslims’ human rights. According to a previous US State Department report, India has a slew of serious human rights issues, including extrajudicial killings, restrictions on freedom of expression and the press, corruption tolerance, and religious freedom violations.
The US State Department also had something to say about India.
In the ‘2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices’ to the US Congress, the State Department made a comment on India. More than a dozen major human rights issues in India have been identified by the US State Department, including police murders, illegal homicides, torture by some police and prison officers, cases of cruelty, inhumanity, or degrading treatment or punishment, and government officials. In some states, political prisoners and arbitrary arrests are common.