Antony Blinken warns India about human rights

Antony Blinken did not take the Indians by surprise. He had warned before his departure that he wanted to tackle the sensitive issue of human rights. The head of American diplomacy, who made a twenty-four hour trip to New Delhi on Wednesday July 28 – his first visit to India since the election of Joe Biden – kept his promises, breaking with the silence of Westerners observed in recent years on the weakening of freedoms and rights under the Modi government.

The US Secretary of State began his day with two symbolic meetings, one with a representative of the Tibetan government in exile in India, Ngodup Dongchung, the other with civil society and representatives of different religious communities, to emphasize the “Human dignity, equal opportunities, the rule of law, fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion”.

All of these values ​​have been shaken by Hindu nationalists. Since coming to power in 2014, and even more since his re-election in 2019, Narendra Modi has continued to exacerbate religious antagonisms and promote ” hindutva “(” Hinduism “), an ideology aimed at securing the supremacy of the Hindus. Muslims, who represent 14% of the population, are particularly stigmatized, but so too are Catholics and other minorities. Several pillars of democracy have collapsed, freedom of the press, independence of justice, human rights, threatened by the use of the law on sedition, which allows imprisonment, without trial, any opponent of the regime.

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Until then, the Indian Prime Minister had been generally spared by his Western hosts, who paid little attention to the question of human rights but in a hurry to conclude deals with the Asian giant, the second most populous country on the planet with its 1.3 billion inhabitants. Barack Obama, the former Democratic President, had been one of the few to worry about interfaith violence. “India will be held back in its development as long as it is religiously divided”, he warned on January 27, 2015, after a three-day official visit.

Turbulent political climate

On Wednesday, the seven participants in the round table swept before Mr. Blinken the topics of tension that have shaken India for months: the peasant protest movement; the citizenship law, passed in December 2019, which marginalizes Muslims; freedom of speech and of the press; minority rights; interfaith relations and the Pegasus affair, which uncovered widespread espionage of citizens and opponents by the Modi government. The visit of the Secretary of State took place in a particularly turbulent political climate. For more than a week, the opposition has effectively blocked the parliamentary session to demand a judicial inquiry into the Pegasus affair and the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Amit Shah.

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