India on Wednesday said that it opposed attempts to turn allegations of human rights abuses and “incomplete statistics” into “negative characterisation” of the world’s largest democracy.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Ministry of External Affairs Deputy Secretary Barkha Tamrakar said that human rights should not be used as an instrument of political pressure or selective targeting of countries.
The statement came a day after UN human rights experts flagged the repeated “heavy-handed police response to peaceful youth-led demonstrations” amid protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over his handling of the special intensive revision of voter rolls.
The UN experts had noted that earlier this month, more than 7,000 persons, including journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers and political party members, were detained in New Delhi and taken to remote detention centres.
The experts described the crackdown as part of a “broader, troubling pattern”. They said that they had repeatedly alerted the Indian authorities about the “undue restrictions on peaceful assembly, excessive force, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and the targeting of student activists”.
Tamrakar said on Wednesday that India was “anchored in the rule of law” and had signed the Convention on Enforced Disappearances.
The treaty bans state-backed abductions and classifies widespread enforced disappearances as crimes against humanity. India signed the convention on February...