Battle within US panel on religious freedom on putting India on Red List

Sandeep Dikshit

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 14

Behind the exchange of words on the state of human rights in each other’s countries between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is a more intense battle being fought in the corridors of United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) as it prepares a report to be submitted to the US State Department on April 25.

Twice in the past successive years, the USCIRF wanted the US State Department to treat India as a “Country of Particular Concern (CPC)” which would bracket it with egregious human rights abusers such as China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. And, both times two different US administrations have rejected its recommendation and kept India a rung below the red list.

This time the battle within USCIRF on the India chapter is more intense than in the past amidst insider accounts that one USCIRF Commissioner has “been turned” and is understood to be insisting on several changes in the draft under preparation.

On Wednesday, Jaishankar held a press conference in Washington to rebut Blinken’s comments a day earlier. Stating that human rights issue was not a topic of discussion during the India-US 2+2 ministerial meeting, Jaishankar said people were entitled to have views about India but “we also take our views on other people’s human rights situation, including that of the US.”

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