India Goes Backwards on Human Rights

Raveendran/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Protests were held in New Delhi on India’s Republic Day, Jan. 26, in the wake of the gang rape of a young woman last month.

The protection of human rights in India took a turn for the worse in 2012, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.

India experienced continued incidents of violence against women, failed to provide protection for freedom of speech and continued to not hold public officials accountable for wrongdoing, the rights group said.

The sharply critical assessment of India comes as part of 655-page annual review of human rghts across more than 90 countries by Human Rights Watch. It was released on Friday.

India’s major problem in protecting human rights is the gap between noble intentions and action, Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in an interview.

“There are often very good intentions, and the right things are said at the very highest level of government, but we don’t often see it translate on the ground,” Ms. Ganguly said.  “The strong statements made by the government have to make a difference for people interacting with the lowest level of government” for human rights to improve, she said.

In its report, Human Rights Watch condemned the unabated sexual violence against women in India, which has garnered national and international attention in the past month. Reflecting on the Dec. 16 gang rape and subse! quent death of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi, Ms. Ganguly said that the government’s effort to respond swiftly, by releasing the Verma Commission report outlining recommendations for changes in how sexual assault was handled in the country, was laudable. But that effort needs to be combined with more systemic change, she said.

“At the Prime Minister’s level and the cabinet level there might be much desire for change,” Ms. Ganguly said, but the police officer on the ground who is supposed to register a case of rape is the face of the state. “What happens when he doesn’t” she asked.  India needs a stronger system of accountability for public officials and better training and sensitization of the police , she said.

The execution of Ajmal Kasab, onvicted for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and the renewed calls for the death penalty to be applied for those convicted of the New Delhi gang rape, showed a regression in criminal justice in India, Human Rights Watch said.

The lack of protection for freedom of speech and the misapplication of a  colonial-era sedition law continues to undermine the development of civil society and the space for dissent in India, the report said. In 2012 there were various incidents of the state curbing free speech, including the use of sedition laws to attack civil society activists in Maoist insurgent areas, sedition charges lodged against a! cartooni! st for a work that mocked corruption in the Indian government and the application of draconian Internet laws.

“There is always this argument from the top level of government in India that we believe in total freedom of speech but are concerned about law and order,” Ms. Ganguly said. “However, whenever certain interest groups attempt to curb freedom of speech the government submits to these threats of violence.”

Rather than trying to understand and embrace social media as a platform for debate, the Indian government is heavy handed, she said, and is worried about what is said on Twitter while it arrests people for Facebook posts, she said. The ban on YouTube and Facebook in Kashmir and the arrest of two young women in Mumbai for their Facebook activity are two such incidences.

Moving forward, the report said that India needs to revoke the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which allows soldiers to commit serious human rights violations, in order to tackle the culture of impunity within the country’s defense establishment. The report also pointed to abuses by government and opposition forces in India’s conflict-torn areas such as Jammu and Kashmir, and in the northeastern states and villages considered Maoist insurgent areas.

There have been some positive steps taken by the government in the past year, Human Rights Watch said, including the protection of children from sexual abuse, encouragement of medical care centers, the! convicti! on of suspects in the 2002 Gujarat riots and support for the protection of human rights in other countries.

The report noted India’s effort to support United Nations resolutions to promote human rights in countries such as Sri Lanka and Syria. However, Ms. Ganguly said that while India harbors ambitions to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, the country fails to express a clear policy on various international situations.

India’s policy tends to be reactive, Ms. Ganguly said, with the only constant an  insistence on not interfering in the matters of other countries. “If India is going to be an emerging power, its global role cannot be ‘We will not speak for the human rights of citizens of other countries,’ ” she said.