USCIRF lists India as “country of particular concern” over alleged religious freedom violations

29th April: The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has designated India as a country of “Particular Concern” (CPC) in its annual report of 2020, saying the country was “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations”.

“India took a sharp downward turn in 2019,” the commission noted in its report, which included specific concerns about the Citizenship Amendment Act, the proposed National Register for Citizens, anti-conversion laws and the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

“The national government used its strengthened parliamentary majority to institute national-level policies violating religious freedom across India, especially for Muslims.” the report said.

This is the first time since 2004 that India has been placed in this category, last year India was categorised as a “Tier 2 country” in the same report.

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.

Rejecting the observations made in the report, the Indian government’s official spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, “Its (the USCIRF’s) biased and tendentious comments against India are not new. But on this occasion, its misrepresentation has reached new levels. It has not been able to carry its own Commissioners in its endeavour. We regard it as an organisation of particular concern and will treat it accordingly.”

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 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”.