Indian Minority Foundation condemns USCIRF's international religious freedom report
Jun 27, 2024
New Delhi [India], June 27 : The Indian Minority Foundation (IMF) has strongly condemned the report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on international religious freedom.
The IMF, in a statement on Thursday, said that this "mischaracterization" undermines USCIRF's credibility and understanding of India's religious freedom landscape.
https://x.com/Minoritiesfdn/status/1806344833499316582
"The USCIRF's attempt to lump India with countries like Afghanistan, Cuba, North Korea, Russia and China highlights the misdirected nature of its activism. Its failure to recognise that the world's largest democracy not only has a robust constitutional framework, a vibrant civil society and a long history of pluralism is a telling commentary on how the USCIRF has lost its way over the years," the statement said.
It further said that the flawed comparisons with non-democracies highlight the USCIRF's failure to understand the nuanced reality of India's religious freedom landscape and discredits genuine concerns about human rights violations globally.
The IMF statement said that the USCIRF's report appears to be unduly influenced by NGOs and activists who have been at the receiving end of regulations that have nothing to do with religion or religious identity.
It also said that the USCIRF report exposed itself as batting for foreign funding to NGO activism in India by "mixing up the secular issue of strict monitoring" of foreign funding to NGOs and activists under FCRA regulations, with allegations of violence against minorities.
The IMF further said that the USCIRF "suffers from anti-India bias" and claimed that the USCIRF repeatedly tries to designate India as a "country of particular concern", but since 2020, the US State Department has consistently refused to endorse this designation.
This indicates a disconnect between USCIRF's claims and the State Department's understanding of India's situation, it added.
It also said that the USCIRF "appears to operate with a magnifying lens, searching for violations" across the globe while "losing sight of the bigger picture of harmony and coexistence in many societies."
The IMF also referred to the report to be a "case of American Diplomacy" making a mistake reminiscent of the early years of the Second World War when the fighter aircraft of the allied forces failed to tell "friend" from "foe."
