This World Report summarizes human rights conditions in nearly 100 countries and territories worldwide in 2020. Find your country in the human rights listing.
India
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government increasingly harassed, arrested,
and prosecuted rights defenders, activists, journalists, students, academics,
and others critical of the government or its policies. The government continued to impose harsh and discriminatory restrictions on Muslim-majority areas in Jammu and Kashmir since revoking the state’s constitutional status in August 2019 and splitting it into two federally governed territories. Attacks continued against minorities, especially Muslims, even as authorities failed to take action against BJP leaders who vilified Muslims and BJP supporters
who engaged in violence. Human Rights Watch.
The Covid-19 lockdown disproportionately hurt marginalized communities due to
loss of livelihoods and lack of food, shelter, health care, and other basic needs.
Jammu and Kashmir Hundreds of people remained detained without charge in Jammu and Kashmir under the draconian Public Safety Act, which permits detention without trial for
up to two years. In June, the government announced a new media policy in Jammu and Kashmir that empowers the authorities to decide what is “fake news, plagiarism and unethical
or anti-national activities” and to take punitive action against media outlets,
journalists, and editors. The policy contains vague and overbroad provisions that are open to abuse and could unnecessarily restrict and penalize legally protected speech. The government also clamped down on critics, journalists, and human rights activists.
The restrictions, including on access to communications networks, since August
2019 adversely affected livelihoods, particularly in the tourism-dependent Kashmir
Valley. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries estimated that the
first three months of the lockdown to prevent protests since August 2019 cost
the economy over US$2.4 billion, for which no redress was provided. Human Rights Watch
Losses nearly doubled since the government imposed further restrictions to contain the spread of Covid-19 in March 2020. The pandemic made access to the internet crucial for information, communication, education, and business. However, even after the Supreme Court said in January that access to the internet was a fundamental right, authorities permitted only slow-speed 2G mobile internet services, leading doctors to complain that the lack of internet was hurting the Covid-19 response.
The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act continued to provide effective immunity from prosecution to security forces, even for serious human rights abuses. In July, security forces killed three people in the Shopian district, claiming they were militants. However, in August, their families, who identified them from photographs of the killings circulated on social media, said they were laborers. In September,
the army said that its inquiry had found prima facie evidence that its troops exceeded powers under the AFSPA and it would take disciplinary proceedings against those “answerable.” Human Rights Watch
The security forces also continued to use shotguns firing metal pellets to disperse crowds, despite evidence that they are inherently inaccurate and cause injuries indiscriminately, including to bystanders, violating India’s international obligations.
Impunity for Security Forces
In the early weeks of the nationwide lockdown announced in March to contain
Covid-19, in several states, police beat people who violated the lockdown, including
those trying to get essential supplies. In West Bengal, police allegedly
beat a 32-year-old man to death after he stepped out of his home to get milk. A
video from Uttar Pradesh showed police forcing migrant workers, who were trying
to walk home, to hop on the street to humiliate them. Police in several states
also arbitrarily punished people or publicly shamed them for breaking the lockdown.
New cases of torture in police custody and extrajudicial killings highlighted continued
lack of accountability for police abuses and failure to enforce police reforms.
For the first 10 months, until October, the National Human Rights
Commission reported 77 deaths in police custody, 1,338 deaths in judicial custody,
and 62 alleged extrajudicial killings. Human Rights Watch
In June, a father and son died in police custody in Tamil Nadu state after being detained for allegedly violating Covid-19 lockdown rules. In September, the Central Bureau of Investigation, which was asked to investigate the deaths following nationwide outrage, charged nine policemen with murder and destruction of evidence. In July, Uttar Pradesh police killed a suspect Vikas Dubey, saying he was trying to escape police custody, making him the 119th person to be killed in an alleged extrajudicial killing since the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh led by Ajay Bisht, who uses the title Yogi Adityanath, took office in March 2017. In September, the Uttar Pradesh government announced it would set up a special police force that would be empowered to search and arrest without warrant, raising further concerns about police abuse.
Dalits, Tribal Groups, and Religious Minorities
At least 53 people were killed in communal violence that broke out in Delhi in
February. Over 200 were injured, properties destroyed, and communities displaced
in targeted attacks by Hindu mobs. While a policeman and some Hindus
were also killed, the majority of victims were Muslim. The attacks came after
weeks of peaceful protests against the Indian government’s discriminatory citizenship
policies.
Violence broke out soon after a local BJP politician, Kapil Mishra, demanded that
the police clear the roads of protesters. Tensions had been building for weeks,
with BJP leaders openly advocating violence against the protesters, whom some
called “traitors” to be shot. Witness accounts and video evidence showed police
complicity in the violence. A July report by the Delhi Minorities Commission said
the violence in Delhi was “planned and targeted,” and found that the police
were filing cases against Muslim victims for the violence, but not taking action
against the BJP leaders who incited it.
In Uttar Pradesh, authorities continued to use allegations of cow slaughter to target
Muslims. By August, the Uttar Pradesh government had arrested 4,000 people
over allegations of cow slaughter under the law preventing it and also used
the draconian National Security Act against 76 people accused of cow slaughter.
The NSA allows for detention for up to a year without filing charges.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric surged following the outbreak of Covid-19. In March, after
Indian authorities announced that they found a large number of Covid-19 positive
cases among Muslims who had attended a mass religious congregation in
Delhi, some BJP leaders called the meeting a “Talibani crime” and “CoronaTerrorism.”
Some pro-government media had screamed “CoronaJihad” and social
media platforms were flooded by calls for social and economic boycotts of Muslims.
There were also numerous physical attacks on Muslims, including volunteers
distributing relief material, amid falsehoods accusing them of spreading
the virus deliberately.
According to 2019 government data, crimes against Dalits increased by 7 percent.
This, Dalit rights activists said, was in part a backlash by members of
dominant castes against any efforts toward upward mobility or what they might
perceive as a challenge to caste hierarchy. In August, 40 Dalit families in Odisha
were socially boycotted when a 15-year-old girl plucked flowers from the backyard
of a dominant caste family. In July, a Dalit man was stripped and beaten
along with his family members in Karnataka for allegedly touching the motorcycle
of a dominant caste man. In February, a Dalit man was beaten to death by
members of the dominant caste in Tamil Nadu for defecating in their field. In September,
a Dalit lawyer was killed over his social media posts critical of Brahminism.
In August, several United Nations experts raised concerns over the government’s
proposed revision to the environmental impact assessment process that exempts
several large industries and projects from public consultation and allows
post-facto clearance for projects that began without obtaining the required permissions.
Environmental activists worry that diluting the provisions for public
consultation and allowing post-facto clearances would undermine the rights of
tribal communities, already facing a violation of rights due to the illegalities in
forest clearances.
