UN Human Rights Committee

In Final Report, UN Human Rights Committee Notes Concerns Over Minority Discrimination in India

The report specifically recommended the adoption of national legislation to expressly outlaw violence and lynching by “cow vigilantes”.

New Delhi: The UN Human Rights Committee has expressed concern about discrimination and violence against minorities, while cautioning that there was regression in India in its attitudes towards foreigners and that special powers for disturbed areas and counter-terror legislations were not in line with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

On Thursday, the UN Human Rights Committee, a body of independent experts that monitors the implementation of the ICCPR, released its report on India’s adherence to the covenant.

Since becoming a state party in 1979, India has undergone three ICCPR reviews, with the last one in 1997.

The fourth review took place about two weeks ago, led by attorney general R. Venkataramani and solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who headed the Indian delegation to Geneva.

Over two days, July 15 and 16, the Indian delegation engaged in a “constructive dialogue” with the UN Human Rights Committee.

“During the discussions, the members of the Human Rights Committee spoke appreciatively of the traditions and ethos of India, rooted in principles such as pluralism, non-violence, and diversity, which are in line with the essence of human rights,” said the external affairs ministry’s press note.

On July 25, ten days later, the Human Rights Committee published its report outlining its findings on India’s implementation of the ICCPR.

While the report acknowledged some legislative advancements by the Indian government, it primarily focused on “principal matters of concern” and “recommendations”.

One of the concerns highlighted was that India’s National Human Rights Commission had not been accredited with ‘A’ status by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions since 2023.

“The Committee is concerned by the impact on the independence of the Commission of the involvement of police officers in investigations of human rights violations, by the Commission’s lack of authorisation to investigate human rights violations allegedly committed by the armed forces and by the one-year temporal limitation from the date of the alleged violation, applicable to complaints,” said the report of the committee’s concluding observations.

A large part of the report was devoted to concerns over the treatment of minorities in India.

“The Committee is concerned about the very high levels of violence against religious minorities, such as the incidents in Manipur since May 2023, and the riots in Gujarat in 2002, and the resulting lack of accountability for human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings,” it wrote.

Additionally, it expressed alarm over the “demolitions of religious minorities’ places of worship and private homes following the riots during Ram Navami processions in 2022, most of them belonging to Muslims, and the reports of violence and lynching by “cow vigilantes” against Muslims and Christians”.

The report specifically recommended the adoption of national legislation to expressly outlaw violence and lynching by “cow vigilantes”.

The committee also highlighted its apprehension about the “application of national security and counter-terrorism laws to target religious minorities and about reports of public officials engaging in hate speech and inciting public violence against religious minorities”.

There were also concerns expressed about widespread internet shutdowns. “The Committee is also concerned about the misuse of vague and broadly formulated provisions of legislation, such as on counter-terrorism, which according to information received is misused for the arbitrary arrest and prosecution of minority groups, journalists and other individuals expressing minority or dissenting views and exercising their right to peaceful assembly”.

The UN committee expressed particular disappointment with India regarding its treatment of foreign nationals seeking refuge over the past two decades. “Despite the tradition of the State party of openness and of welcoming refugees and asylum-seekers, the Committee regrets that the situation has seriously deteriorated since the previous Concluding Observations”.

It voiced concern over the increasing anti-migrant hate speech, including by public officials, which has become increasingly violent, particularly towards Muslims, including Rohingyas from Myanmar, who are publicly identified as threats to national security.

Besides, the committee was troubled by deportations to Myanmar, including plans to deport more than 5,000 asylum-seekers from the Kuki and Chin communities.

It raised concerns about certain provisions of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts and counter-terrorism legislation, stating they do not comply with the covenant.

It highlighted that the prolonged application of counter-terrorism laws in “disturbed areas” such as Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir, and Assam has resulted in widespread and severe human rights violations.

The committee urged India to meet its obligations under the covenant and to ensure that counterterrorism and other security measures in these areas are temporary, proportionate and subject to judicial review. Additionally, it called for India to establish a mechanism to acknowledge responsibility and uncover the truth regarding human rights violations in these regions.

Incidentally, the UN Human Rights Committee noted that India’s new criminal code, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, did not have any offence of ‘torture’.

“Amend the new Criminal Code, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 to establish a specific crime of torture, in accordance with article 7 of the Covenant with sanctions commensurate with the gravity of such offence,” said the report.

At UN Human Rights Review, PEN International Questions Crackdown on Dissent in India

The writers’ body cited a growing number of writers, journalists, academics and other critics of the government being subjected to legal harassment in the form of arbitrary arrests and prolonged detentions without trial.

New Delhi: PEN International, a global writers’ association, on Wednesday raised concerns about India’s response to questions around freedom of expression at the review of India’s human rights record by the United Nations Human Rights Committee held this week.

PEN International had submitted a report to the rights committee as part of its periodic review of India under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The report highlighted the crackdown on dissent in India citing a growing number of writers, journalists, academics and other critics of the government being subjected to legal harassment in the form of arbitrary arrests and prolonged detentions without trial.

The writers’ body expressed concern over “how the country’s legal system has been increasingly weaponised to suppress peaceful expression, particularly when it relates to criticism of the government of India or its policies,” in the context of the right to freedom of expression (Article 19 of the ICCPR).

In its statement, the association said that many of the issues highlighted by PEN International were brought up by committee members but the Indian delegation “failed to to substantively engage with many of the concerns raised regarding undue restrictions on the right to freedom of expression.”

The writers’ body mentioned the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) being used as a tool to “unjustly prosecute” the government’s critics. Citing the detention of those accused in the Bhima Koregaon/Elgar Parishad case, the report highlighted the ill treatment of professor Hany Babu and poet Varavar Rao, and denial of bail despite medical grounds.

Using the example of the raids against independent media organisation NewsClick, the report pointed to the “ongoing efforts to clamp down on independent media and censor criticism of the government online.”

It also questioned the use of internet shutdowns, especially in areas like Jammu and Kashmir, to suppress dissenting views towards the government.

PEN International’s full report can be found here.

Sri Lanka Reinstates Death Penalty, HRW Terms It ‘Extremely Disturbing’

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena last week announced an end to a moratorium on the death penalty inspired by the Philippines’ murderous “drug war”

Sri Lanka has ended a moratorium on the death penalty and hired two hangmen to execute four persons convicted of drug offences. In an interview with DW, Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Meenakshi Ganguly says the government’s move is regressive.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena last week announced an end to a moratorium on the death penalty that has been in force in the South Asian country since 1976. The president also said he had signed the death warrants for four drug convicts and they would be executed soon.

Sirisena’s office has said the president wanted the hangings to send a powerful message to anyone engaged in the illegal drugs trade. Sri Lanka has been grappling with drug-related crimes for years and the country is believed to be a transit hub for drug peddlers.

Also read: Sri Lankan Finance Minister Protests Anti-Muslim Remarks of Top Buddhist Monk

The decision to reinstate capital punishment, however, has been criticised by human rights groups as well as the international community.

Sirisena said on Monday he had rejected a telephone appeal by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres to reconsider his push to reintroduce the death penalty.

Sirisena also accused the European Union (EU) of interfering in the internal affairs of his country, saying that EU diplomats had threatened him with tariffs if Sri Lanka went ahead with the executions.

Sirisena’s decision to reinstate capital punishment has been slammed by the human rights groups. Credit: Reuters/Kirill Kudryavtsev

In a DW interview, Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at HRW, said that the alleged deterrent effect of the death penalty has been repeatedly debunked.

What are your views on the Sri Lankan government’s move to end a moratorium on the death penalty?

Sri Lanka’s decision to issue death warrants is extremely disturbing. HRW opposes the death penalty because it is inherently cruel. Sri Lanka, with a 43-year de facto moratorium, was an example to others. It is unfortunate that even as many other nations are committing to abolish the practice, the Sri Lankan government has chosen to be regressive. We hope that the government will revoke the death warrants, reinstate the moratorium on capital punishment, and take steps to abolish it altogether.

Also read: Why Demands for the Death Penalty Are Unwarranted

Some say the decision to reinstate capital punishment after over 40 years of a moratorium was an electoral gambit, aimed at boosting Sirisena’s chances of reelection as president. What’s your take on this?

Apart from the fact that the death penalty is inhumane, it is also irreversible. To reinstate the practice, if motivated by a political calculus, is particularly irresponsible. President Sirisena renewed calls for the death penalty following a visit to the Philippines in January, during which he called President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” an “example to the world.” A decision to restore the death penalty because he was inspired by the Philippines’ murderous “drug war” may be the worst possible justification and a violation of international law.

Ganguly: ‘Apart from the fact that the death penalty is inhumane, it is also irreversible’. Photo courtesy: Human Rights Watch

President Sirisena has signed death warrants for four drug offenders and says he wants the hangings to send a powerful message to anyone engaged in the illegal drugs trade. Is this the right way to go about tackling illegal drugs?

Where the death penalty is permitted, international human rights law limits the death penalty to “the most serious crimes,” typically crimes resulting in death or serious bodily harm. The UN Human Rights Committee and the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions have concluded that the death penalty for drug offences fails to meet the condition of “most serious crime.” In September 2015, the UN high commissioner for human rights reaffirmed that “persons convicted of drug-related offences … should not be subject to the death penalty.”

Also read: Review | History Flows for All: The War and its Aftermath in Sri Lanka

How do you think the death penalty will affect Sri Lanka’s relations with the international community?

The decision to reverse its moratorium on capital punishment will disappoint many of Sri Lanka’s friends in the international community. The United Nations General Assembly has continually called on countries to establish a moratorium on the death penalty, progressively restrict the practice, and reduce the offences for which it might be imposed – all with a view toward its eventual abolition.

Will diplomatic appeals help prevent executions in Sri Lanka?

We hope that the government will heed calls from human rights activists at home and abroad, as well as its friends in the international community.

What can human rights groups do to persuade the Sri Lankan government to change its course?

President Sirisena believes that his decision will be popular because he is acting against drug traffickers, but he needs to understand that the alleged deterrent effect of the death penalty has been repeatedly debunked. Instead Sri Lanka should take into account the UN Office on Drugs and Crime which has called for an end to the death penalty and specifically urged member countries to prohibit the use of the death penalty for drug-related offences while urging countries to take an overall “human rights-based approach to drug and crime control.”

This article was originally published on DW.

France’s Niqab Ban Violates Human Rights: UN Rights Panel

Under the ban, anyone wearing the full-face veil in public is liable to a fine of 150 euros or lessons in French citizenship.

Geneva: The UN Human Rights Committee said on Tuesday that France’s ban on the niqab, the full–body Islamic veil, was a violation of human rights and called on it to review the legislation.

France had failed to make the case for its ban, the committee said, giving Paris 180 days to report back to say what actions it had taken. The panel‘s findings are not legally binding but could influence French courts.

“In particular, the Committee was not persuaded by France’s claim that a ban on face covering was necessary and proportionate from a security standpoint or for attaining the goal of ‘living together’ in society,” it said.

The panel of 18 independent experts oversees compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Implementation of its decisions is not mandatory, but under an optional protocol of the treaty, France has an international legal obligation to comply “in good faith”.

Also read: A Look at Burkha Regulations Around Europe

There was no immediate reaction from French authorities.

The same committee came to similar conclusions on the 2008 case of a woman sacked by a creche for wearing a veil. In September, a top French judge was quoted by newspaper Le Monde as saying that while not binding, the panel‘s decisions might still influence French case law.

Risk of marginalisation

In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights, whose rulings are binding, upheld France’s ban on full-face veils in public, saying it did not violate religious freedom.

But the UN Human Rights Committee disagreed with this in its statement on Tuesday, saying the ban disproportionately harmed the right of women to manifest their religious beliefs and could lead to them being confined at home and marginalised.

The committee’s findings come after complaints by two French women convicted in 2012 under a 2010 law stipulating that “No one may, in a public space, wear any article of clothing intended to conceal the face.”

Also read: Un-veiling the Politics of the Veil

In its findings the panel said the ban had violated the two women’s human rights and called on France to pay them compensation.

Under the ban, anyone wearing the full-face veil in public is liable to a fine of 150 euros or lessons in French citizenship.

The committee’s chair Yuval Shany said that he and several others on the 18-member panel considered it a form of oppression.

Several countries in Europe have introduced legislation on Islamic dress. Denmark’s parliament enacted a ban on wearing of face veils in public in May. Belgium, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and the German state of Bavaria have also imposed some restrictions on full-face veils in public places.

France has the largest Muslim minority in Europe, estimated at five million or more out of a population of 67 million. The place of religion and religious symbols worn in public can be a matter of controversy in the staunchly secular country.

According to French media Metronews, some 223 fines were handed out in 2015 for wearing a full veil in public.

(Reuters)

Recording of Bangladesh Paramilitary Officer Lifts Lid on Extra-Judicial Killings and Disappearances

“Everyone is not an expert on forced disappearances. We have to make sure no clue is left behind,” the Rapid Action Battalion officer has been quoted as saying.

Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), in their distinctive black attire, stand guard on a street in Dhaka. Credit: Reuters/Files

Dhaka: A secret recording of a senior officer employed by Bangladesh’s paramilitary organisation, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), has added pressure on the government to come clean on its use of enforced disappearances, torture and extra-judicial killings.

In the recording, obtained and authenticated by Swedish National Radio, which broadcast the story on Monday (April 3), the RAB officer talks about how the organisation routinely picks people up, kills them and disposes off their bodies.

Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström condemned the practices. “There is only one thing to say about this: that it’s horrific and that it must stop and that Bangladesh must take responsibility for this.”

“We will act, in particular via the EU, but also through our bilateral contacts, to make it completely clear that this is not acceptable, and must stop immediately,” she said.

The report comes a week after the UN Human Rights Committee published a report criticising the Bangladesh government for its “reported high rate of extra-judicial killings by police officers, soldiers and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) force members and the reported enforced disappearances, as well as the excessive use of force by State actors.”

The UN committee went onto say that, it “is further concerned by the lack of investigations and accountability of perpetrators, leaving families of victims without information and redress.”

Since the Awami League came to power in 2009, human rights organisation Odhikar has identified over 325 people who were picked up and secretly detained for various degrees of time, allegedly by one of the country’s law enforcement bodies, including the RAB. After weeks or months in unlawful detention, the men are then either ‘shown arrested’ or killed. Out of the more than 90 people secretly detained in 2016, 22 dead bodies have been found.

In relation to extra-judicial killings – which happened in even greater numbers under previous governments – since 2009, Odhikar reports nearly 1,300 deaths.

Earlier this month, Anisul Huq, the Bangladesh law minister, told the UN’s Human Rights Committee that, “With regard to allegations of ‘extra-judicial killings’, ‘enforced disappearances’ and ‘torture in custody’. I would like to stress that our government has taken meaningful actions to bring such incidents of human rights violations to a very low level.”

Other government representatives claim that all the extra-judicial killings are lawful and that state bodies are not involved in any of the alleged disappearances. “Those who died during the gunfights with police and other security forces as well as during police raids are criminals. Their deaths can’t be defined as extra-judicial killings,” Hasanul Haq Inu, the country’s information minister, recently said.

In the Swedish Radio recording, the unnamed senior RAB officer, who was unaware that his conversation was being taped, said that there were three aspects to an enforced disappearance: the capture, the killing and the disposal.

“Everyone is not an expert on forced disappearances,” the officer is reported by Swedish radio to have said. “We have to make sure no clue is left behind. No ID cards that slip-off. We have to wear gloves; we can’t leave footprints behind and have to wear covers on our shoes to prevent that. We can’t smoke during these operations.”

The officer talks about how some of the picked up men are tortured. According to Swedish Radio, the officer “describes a dark room with a lamp in the middle where an arrested man was stripped naked. They hung him in handcuffs, and tied bricks to his testicles. His testicles were almost ripped off by the weight, the officer says. The tortured man fell unconscious and the RAB officer says he did not know if the man was dead or alive.”

In the recordings obtained by the radio station, the RAB officer is said to have claimed that dead bodies of the men who are killed are disposed of by throwing them into a river with blocks of concrete attached to their bodies. He says the fate of the men is decided by “high ups”.

This description of the disposal matches what happened to seven men who were picked up and killed by the RAB in April 2014, in a dispute between local leaders of the governing Awami League belonging to the district of Naranganj, close to the country’s capital city of Dhaka. A few days later their bloated bodies floated to the surface of the Shitalakkya river where they had been dumped. In January this year, a court convicted 35 people of involvement in the murders, sentencing 26 of them, including three former RAB officers, to death.

No other recent disappearances – including those of 19 opposition activists picked up in the capital city of Dhaka over a two week period four months earlier – has resulted in similar investigation or prosecution.

The Swedish Radio recording of the RAB officer is the first time that a media organisation has managed to record a conversation in which a Bangladeshi law enforcement officer has admitted to their involvement in disappearances and extra-judicial killings.

RAB’s legal and media wing director, Commander Mufti Mahmud Khan, denied the allegations contained in the secret recording. He told Bangladesh’s national newspaper Prothom Alo that “RAB do nothing going against legal provision. …Those who have been killed in RAB’s crossfire so far are armed notorious terrorists, robbers and militants. When drives are conducted to arrest them, they open fire on RAB. And RAB also open fires in self-defence,” he added. ‘Things are not as though only terrorists were killed in the RAB shooting; RAB officers and members were also killed and maimed.”

The Swedish public broadcaster is unwilling to provide any information on how it managed to undertake or obtain the recording of the conversation due to the ‘sensitivity’ of the matter and the need to protect their sources. In addition, at present, it is not willing to provide a transcript or copy of the recording.

David Bergman is a writer based in Bangladesh. He also runs the Bangladesh Politico and Bangladesh War Crimes blogs. Follow him on @davidbangladesh.