Srinagar
The US State Department’s human rights report criticises India for violations by police and security forces while at the same time noting the “serious abuses” by separatist insurgents and militants.
“The most significant human rights issues included police and security force abuses, such as extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, rape, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, and lengthy pretrial detention,” the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2017 released in Washington on Friday said, said a report by newsgatherer IANS.
However, it also said: “Separatist insurgents and militants in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the northeast, and the Maoist-affected areas committed serious abuses, including killings and torture of armed forces personnel, police, government officials, and of civilians, and recruitment and use of child soldiers.”
The publication of the report at a time when US President Donald Trump and his administration have been accused by adversaries in the US of trying to roll back civil rights and of attacking the media said that in India “censorship and harassment of media outlets, including some critical of the government continued”.
The report, which also criticised several other countries, was challenged by reporters for US media outlets at a news briefing by Michael G Kozak, the Ambassador of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour.
“We make quite a distinction between political leaders being able to speak out and say that story was not accurate or using even stronger words sometimes, and using state power to prevent the journalists from continuing to do their work,” he added, the report mentioned.
While critical of India on several issues, the report attempted to bring some balance by also noting the several prosecutions of officials accused of human rights abuses, the free and fair state elections, and an independent media that “generally expressed a wide variety of views”.
“Some journalists and media persons reportedly experienced violence and harassment in response to their reporting,” the report said and cited a Press Council report that at least 80 journalists had been killed since 1990 and only one conviction had been made.
The State Department report said that journalists and activists, particularly women, were subjected to online and mobile harassment, with some getting thousands of abusive tweets from trolls.
While highlighting the periodic shutdown of Internet services, particularly in Kashmir, and prosecutions for online postings, the report noted that the “mass electronic surveillance data-mining programme” of the Central Monitoring System (CMS) which “continued to allow governmental agencies to monitor electronic communications in real time without informing the subject or a judge”.(IANS)
