Amnesty slams ‘human rights abuses’

NEW DELHI: Religious minorities in India faced increasing “demonization”, global rights group Amnesty International said on Thursday, accusing Indian authorities of using laws to stifle freedom of expression in the country.

In its latest annual report, the group paints a bleak picture of the human rights situation in south Asia. With reference to India, it said incidents like cow vigilantism and lynchings in the name of beef-eating plagued India over the past year.

“At least 10 Muslim men were lynched and many injured by vigilante cow protection groups,” the report said, adding many of them seemed to operate with the support of the ruling BJP.

The report also speaks about threats to journalists and the killing of Gauri Lankesh, an editor who was shot dead outside her residence in Bengaluru last year.

Minar Pimple, Director Operations, Amnesty, said the politics of populism and demonisation was spreading across the world but was being met by resistance in the US and in India with the ‘Not in My Name’ campaign.

Biraj Patnaik, Regional Director South Asia, said space for civil society in the whole of South Asian region was shrinking and “India’s neighbours are learning all bad things” from the country like variants of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, Cybersecurity Act were being initiated in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The report cites examples and of caste-based discrimination, communal violence, and crimes against women and children.

In Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), impunity for human rights abuses continued and security forces continued to use inherently inaccurate pellet-firing shotguns during protests, blinding and injuring several people, the report said. The report said that hate crimes against Dalits remained widespread as official statistics released in November stated that more than 40,000 crimes against SC were reported in 2016.