Six US lawmakers, including Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar, have sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging him to raise concerns about alleged police excesses against protesters in India and investigate human rights violations during the protests.
Six United States lawmakers, including Indian-born Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar, have urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss with Indian authorities concerns about alleged police excesses against those protesting to demand Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation and the suspension of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls. The lawmakers expressed concern about a ‘pattern of repression, wrongful detention, and excessive use of force’ by authorities during nationwide protests over these issues. This comes after around 7,000 protesters in Delhi were allegedly assaulted on October 10 while participating in demonstrations. Secretary Rubio is expected to visit Mumbai and Jamnagar between October 19 and October 22. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will travel to Mumbai to meet the Trump official on October 20. In their letter, the lawmakers have urged Rubio to press the Indian government to investigate alleged human rights violations during the protests and release any persons detained ‘for peacefully exercising the rights of freedom of expression and assembly.’ The trigger for these protests was an investigation by The Indian Express revealing that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision. On Wednesday, Jayapal said that the Indian government’s actions to ‘purge’ 13 crore persons from the electoral rolls through the special intensive revision appeared similar to measures being taken by the Donald Trump administration to ‘undermine voting rights in a democracy.’ In a social media post on Saturday, Jayapal said that the US and India have an obligation to defend human rights as the world’s largest democracies. The Democratic Party leaders also accused the Indian diplomatic missions in the US of surveilling protesters on American soil. ‘Members of US human rights organisations and the Indian diaspora who joined protests in Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco disclosed that they had been photographed by individuals who identified themselves as having been hired by the Indian embassy and the consulates general,’ read their letter.
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