US Monitoring Some Recent 'Human Rights Abuses' In India: Antony Blinken

Blinken’s remarks came after the US Representative Ilhan Omar had questioned the alleged reluctance of the US government to criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government on human rights.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (ANI Image)

New Delhi: Targeting India over the issue of human rights, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was monitoring what he described as a rise in "human rights abuses" in India by some officials.

The comments come after the conclusion of the fourth 2+2 Ministerial meet between India and the US on Monday.

"We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values (of human rights) and to that end, we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials," Blinken said on Monday, according to news agency Reuters.

Blinken raked up the issue during a joint press briefing with US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh.

However, Blinken did not elaborate on the issue. Singh and Jaishankar, who spoke after Blinken at the briefing, did not mention anything on the human rights issue.

Blinken’s remarks came after the US Representative Ilhan Omar, who belongs to President Joe Biden's Democratic Party, had questioned the alleged reluctance of the US government to criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government on human rights.

"What does Modi need to do to India's Muslim population before we will stop considering them a partner in peace?" said Omar last week, as per the agency report.

Several Indian states have paved way for anti-conversion laws that challenge the constitutionally protected right to freedom of belief.

In 2019, the government cleared citizenship law that was criticised on the grounds that it undermined India's secular constitution by excluding Muslim migrants from neighbouring countries.

The law aimed at granting Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs who fled Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before 2015.