Religious freedom: US body red-cards India, pussyfoots around Israel

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, May 2

India on Thursday hit out at the US Commission on International Religious Freedom's (USCIRF) annual report for recommending to the federal government that India be named as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for its severe violations of human rights and religious freedoms.

The USCIRF report has made this recommendation for the fifth consecutive year and it has been rejected four times by the US State Department.

“USCIRF is known as a biased organisation with a political agenda, they continue to publish their propaganda on India masquerading as a report and try to interfere in the world’s largest electoral exercise, which they will never succeed,’’ hit back MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.

It was not just Indians but people from all over the world who have accused the USCIRF report for pussyfooting around Israel’s ongoing brutal depredation in Gaza. In 34 references to Israel in its report, a big majority relate to harassment of Jews in countries like Iran and Russia after Tel Aviv’s undiscriminating military assault on Gaza which entered its 210th day on Thursday.

The CPC label is a designation reserved for the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. While USCIRF has named India, it has failed to pull up Israel which stands indicted by several global bodies ranging from the UN General Assembly to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In January too, the USCIRF lent itself to claims of partisanship when it did not mention Israel even once in its reaction to the US State Department releasing a list of countries that are in its Red List or Countries of Particular Concern CPC). “Unsurprising but kind of wild that Israel doesn't even appear as a country on the USCIRF website,’’ noted writer Dean Dettloff had said in a X post.

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