During an interview with Al Jazeera, a former United Nations (UN) Special Adviser on the prevention of Genocide, Juan E. Mendez, called for intervention from the international community to protect minorities in India. He called the situation faced by Indian Muslims “dangerous” and “deeply disturbing.”
Mendez was the first to take up the position as the special adviser on Genocide. He was appointed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2004 and held the position till 2007. He was also appointed as the President and Commissioner for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and as the UN Special Rapporteur on torture.
To begin with, Mendez discussed the calls for violence against minority communities made during a three-day event in Haridwar in December. Several videos recorded at the Dharma Sansad event held from December 17 to 19 showed participants calling for violence against minorities in India.
Discussing this incident, he said that the speeches made at the religious event should be seen in the context of the “decades of hostility” faced by the Indian minority communities. Hence, the calls for “active violence” were “more dangerous” as they could provoke others. He also highlighted that in case the Indian government fails to take cognizance of the matter, the international community needed to “demand action to limit the possible effects” of such speeches.
On being asked whether the Indian authorities were acting in contravention of the Genocide Convention of 1948, he said that all signatories were obligated to do everything possible to prevent genocide. While the Convention does specify the measures countries should take to prevent genocide, Mendez said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi needed to monitor the situation and take appropriate actions against any threats of such genocidal violence.
To achieve this, he added that the Indian authorities needed to “investigate, persecute, and punish” those responsible for instigating violence against minorities. Failure to do so, he said, would amount to a violation of the Genocide Convention.
However, he clarified that even in a situation where India violated the Genocide Convention, it cannot be brought before the International Criminal Court, as it has not yet signed and ratified the Rome Statute. Nevertheless, he highlighted that it continued to be the “moral responsibility” of the international community to protect the minorities in India from harm. In this regard, he said that in case the Indian government fails to act against the calls for genocide, the UNSC “should step in to protect Indian minorities.”
Since Indian PM Modi came to power in 2014, there have been increasing concerns about religious freedoms and pluralism. In its 2020 Report on International Religious Freedom, the United States expressed concern about violence and discrimination against religious minorities in India. Furthermore, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), for the second year in a row, urged the State Department to designate India as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC). In its 2021 report, the USCIRF said that conditions for religious freedoms in India “continued their negative trajectory” in 2020 and blamed the BJP-led government for promoting Hindu nationalist policies that have resulted in “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.”