Human Rights Watch demonizes India via false propaganda about discrimination against minorities

New Delhi, Jan 16: The latest annual report of Human Rights Watch (HRW) released on Thursday, January 12 took notice on how Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in India is increasingly discriminating against minorities. The report further mentioned that India is using abusive policies similar to China's authoritarian government to repress Muslims and other minorities.

The Indian government 'mimicked many of the same abuses that have enabled Chinese state repression - systematic discrimination against religious minorities, stifling of peaceful dissent, and use of technology to suppress free expression - to tighten its grip on power,' the group said in its annual report.

The comments were made while it asked the West to be circumspect in shifting supply chains from China to India.

The report has been authored by Tirana Hassan, the acting executive director of HRW. She was earlier associated with Amnesty International and several other organisations.

Futher, the report cited "BJP supporters increasingly committed violent attacks against targeted groups, particularly Muslims," the report stated. It alleges attack on freedom of speech because the govt has taken action against NGOs violating various norms including foreign funding norms, and for actions of people accused of links with terror groups.

"The government's Hindu majoritarian ideology was reflected in bias in institutions, including the justice system and constitutional authorities like the National Human Rights Commission." To substantiate its findings, the report criticized the Gujarat state government's decision to release 11 murderer-rapists in the Bilkis Bano case and the "public celebration" that followed, the "online auction" of over 100 Muslim women on an online platform and the demolition of properties mostly owned by Muslims.

The report also made mentions about arrests of fact-checking website Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair and journalist Siddiqui Kappan, the targeted killings in Jammu and Kashmir, and the raids by tax officials on non-governmental organizations.

The US-based global human rights observer in its annual report said deepening ties with India without pressure on PM Narendra Modi to respect rights "squanders valuable leverage to protect India's increasingly endangered civic space".

In some portions, undoubtedly the HRW's language was identical to that of the US State Department, including a flawed assessment of the world's mobilisation' around Russia's war in Ukraine. While criticising India and its entire neighbourhood, it opted to warn Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK, the EU, and the US only regarding India.

The HRW also hit out at the majoritarian biases in the functioning of state institutions that are supposed to enforce human rights. The report also raised concern over the alarming rate of violence against women and girls that it said continued to grow even in 2022.

For the unversed, Human Rights Watch is a nonprofit, nongovernmental human rights organization made up of more than 280 staff members around the globe. Established in 1978, Human Rights Watch pressures governments, policymakers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners. It was co-founded by Robert L. Bernstein, Jeri Laber, and Aryeh Neier as a private American NGO in 1978, under the name Helsinki Watch, to monitor the then-Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki Accords.

Meanwhile, the allegations against India are routine and reported year after year, and this report by HRW has been no different. Citing a couple of isolated cases where the victims were Muslims, it is evident that the Islamist-left-liberal ecosystem has been able to create the propaganda that Muslims are oppressed in India groups like Human Rights Watch are furthering their propaganda. Though Indian government has made it clear several times, the international organisation like HRW, they are hell bent on tarnishing India's image.