New Delhi: US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that he raised human rights issues during his meeting with Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar.
The two ministers met on the sidelines of the G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting.
Asked whether he raised issues related to rights of minorities and media freedom, including the tax ‘survey’ on BBC, Blinken did not say that he specifically talked about the official raid on the British public broadcaster. However, he said that human rights issues certainly figured on the agenda.
“We have to work together to show that our democracies can deliver on our people’s needs and we have to continue to hold ourselves to our core values like respect for human rights, freedom of religion, freedom of expression and freedom of assemble which makes our democracies stronger…. We regularly engage to encourage the Indian government to uphold its own commitment to human rights just as we look to ourselves to do the same. I and my Indian counterpart regularly discuss such issues just as we did today,’’ said Blinken.
To another question about whether he brought up funding restrictions on US NGOs, Blinken replied that it had been previously discussed with his Indian interlocutors. “We have had discussions about the importance of NGOs in civil society and that they be allowed to function effectively and freely here and in the US,” he said.
On his part, Jaishankar described his meeting with Blinken in a tweet as an “opportunity to review bilateral ties and discuss global issues.”
Blinken’s choice of words has not gone unnoticed in the US media,. “No matter how many opportunities the Biden administration gets, officials just can’t get themselves to criticize India,” writes Politico. “The latest example comes from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who in New Delhi today dodged a question about human rights abuses committed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.”
During his last visit to India in 2021, Blinken had talked to civil society representatives who had told him about the harassment being meted out to various NGOs. Publicly, he called for strengthening values. The Indian response was to say that New Delhi had the right to correct “historical wrongs” and ensure “governance”.
Last year, Blinken twice raised concerns about human rights issues in India. India stated that it also had concerns about human rights in the United States.
Earlier, US state department spokesperson Ned Price said that the bilateral meeting between Blinken and Jaishankar had an extensive agenda to discuss the US-India Strategic Partnership.
Secretary Blinken and Minister Jaishankar also discussed “how to mitigate the global impacts of Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, the United States and India’s cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, the successful launch of the initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), and regional issues,” he said.
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