New Delhi: India on Tuesday rejected observation in US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) annual report, which designated India as a country of "Particular Concern" (CPC).
The report stated that the country was “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations.”
“We reject the observations on India in the USCIRF annual report. Its biased and tendentious comments against India are not new. But on this occasion, its misrepresentation has reached new levels,” Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said in a statement.
“It has not been able to carry its own Commissioners in its endeavour. We regard it as an organization of particular concern and will treat it accordingly,” he added.
The report said that the “national government allowed violence against minorities” and also “engaged in and tolerated hate speech and incitement to violence.”
The USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan US federal government commission. It makes policy recommendations based on its review of global religious freedom to the US President, the Secretary of State and the US Congress.
The list includes 14 nations that have been flagged as “countries of particular concern”. These include nine countries that the State Department designated as CPCs last December -- Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan -- as well as five others -- India, Nigeria, Russia, Syria, and Vietnam.
The annual report makes a mention of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC).
It added that the “BJP leaders have continued to advocate for nation-wide NRC” and coupled with the CAA “Muslims alone would bear the indignities and consequences of potential statelessness”.
The USCIRF has recommended that the US government impose targeted sanctions on “Indian government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States”.
While discussing India, USCIRF Chair Tony Perkins said, “We are seeing impunity for violence by non-state actors committed against religious minorities.”
