USCIRF urged US Government to impose sanctions on India for religious freedom violations
1. US Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended US government to designate India as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC
2. India’s engagement in systematic religious freedom violations, as defined by International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) is concerning
3. UNCIRF asked Washington to “impose targeted sanctions” on individuals and entities responsible for “severe violations of religious freedom”
4. The report claimed that the religious freedom conditions in India continued their “negative trajectory’ in 2020
5. The report accused the BJP led government at the center of promoting “Hindu nationalist policies resulting in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom”
6. The USCIRF dubbed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) passed by Indian nationalist government as “religiously discriminatory”
7. USCIRF described the implementation of ‘National Register of Citizens in Assam’ - where 1.9 million residents were excluded from the citizenship register - a “chilling example”
8. USCIRF recommended that US should continue to raise religious freedom concerns in the U.S.-India bilateral relationship
9. Johnnie Moore, who gave the dissenting note to the USCIRF recommendations on India, said that India is at the ‘crossroads’ to be designated as CPC
10. He is one out of the ten-member panel of United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) commissioners who appended a dissenting note to the recommendations
#ReligiousFreedomViolationsInIndia #USCIRF
