G20 leaders must hold Indian government to account for its human rights violations and political persecution

• Immediately and unconditionally release human rights defenders arrested and detained solely for peacefully exercising their human rights to freedom of expression, opinion, assembly and association;

• Impose an immediate moratorium on its de-facto policy of demolishing the homes and businesses of marginalized groups over the suspicion of criminal offences, which amounts to collective punishment and legal prohibition on mass forced evictions;

• End discriminatory policies and practices against minorities and persons from other marginalized groups;

• Ensure the prime minister takes the lead in publicly condemning any discrimination, hostility or violence against religious minorities and other targeted persons, including by his supporters and party leaders, and call on local authorities to end any bias in investigating and prosecuting such attacks;

• End broad, indiscriminate internet shutdowns. Ensure any restriction on internet comply with the requirements of legality, necessity, proportionality and non-discrimination and is limited in temporal scope, and publish every shutdown order in line with the Indian Supreme Court directives;

• Repeal the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021;

• Withdraw the draft bill on data protection, and draft a new bill in meaningful consultation with civil society groups to ensure it is in line with international standards on safeguarding the right to privacy of users and other human rights, and is accompanied by surveillance reform;

• Take urgent measures to implement the recommendations accepted by India in its previous UPR processes but is yet to take any meaningful step to implement them

In India, not everybody is targeted but journalists who are considered inconvenient or dangerous are targeted. Although even worse than the killing perhaps is the fact that the killers know that they enjoy impunity under the law. We also have other cases. Independent media players, digital players, and news publishers like The Wire were raided by the police on completely ridiculous charges, based on a complaint given by the ‘IT’ head of the ruling party.

Finally, I must add that we have one of the world’s largest disinformation industries, mostly operated by the followers of the present dispensation. They’re known as bhakts (paid and unpaid fanboys and trolls). We have the largest number of Facebook users in the world, the largest number of WhatsApp users in the world, the largest number, perhaps, of Instagram users and so on. They really descend on journalism that they don’t like.

Indian police in Manipur state have filed criminal charges against four journalists, accusing them of misrepresenting facts in a report about the violent clashes between ethnic groups earlier this year.

An internet shutdown ordered in the state governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) contributed to biased reporting by local media aligned with warring ethnic groups, the journalists' report said. Some local media groups have rejected the allegation.

The hallmarks of fascism are everywhere. School textbooks are being rewritten to reinforce the fake history behind BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda. Topics like the theory of evolution and the periodic table have been replaced with traditional Hindu theories, and academics have been silenced for calling out the BJP’s election malpractices. The government has weaponized education in the manner typical of fascist regimes such as Russia. There are other clear indications of India’s slide towards fascism. On press freedom, India ranks 161st out of 180 countries, sandwiched between Venezuela (at 159) and Russia (at 164).

Modi and the BJP have proven themselves to be fluent hypocrites on the world stage. Under the banner of anticolonialism, the party is replicating Britain’s colonial practices.

In 2005 Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat, was denied entry to the US because of his role in ethnic violence that left over 1,000 people dead, the vast majority of them Muslims. According to a recently declassified report from the British Foreign Office, the Hindu mobs’ “systematic campaign of violence has all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing” and “Narendra Modi is directly responsible.”

Never before have attacks on Muslims been so geographically dispersed, continuous, or chillingly unpredictable.

The mayhem in Gurugram was a direct result of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s growing sense of political insecurity. Two recent setbacks had rattled him and the Hindu-supremacist movement he leads. In May, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party suffered a chastening defeat in a high-stakes election in Karnataka, the southern-Indian state that is home to Bangalore and a powerhouse of India’s information-technology sector. With Karnataka, the Hindu right lost its only foothold in southern India, the country’s most prosperous and wealthy region.

India and the UK are respectively the fifth and sixth biggest economies in the world, and the two countries’ leaders had been scheduled to meet a day earlier, at Modi’s grand residence in New Delhi. But diplomacy can be brutal and Sunak found himself, if not exactly snubbed, certainly shunted down the pecking order.

Instead of the glorious photo op that had been in prospect, the two leaders met in a soulless conference room in the concrete complex where India had been hosting the G20 conference. The prized trip to the Indian prime minister’s house, with all its rich splendour, was reserved for US president Joe Biden.

For those who argue that Britain is now more isolated on the world stage after Brexit, the delay and change of location offered a powerful example.India and the UK are respectively the fifth and sixth biggest economies in the world, and the two countries’ leaders had been scheduled to meet a day earlier, at Modi’s grand residence in New Delhi. But diplomacy can be brutal and Sunak found himself, if not exactly snubbed, certainly shunted down the pecking order.

Instead of the glorious photo op that had been in prospect, the two leaders met in a soulless conference room in the concrete complex where India had been hosting the G20 conference. The prized trip to the Indian prime minister’s house, with all its rich splendour, was reserved for US president Joe Biden.

For those who argue that Britain is now more isolated on the world stage after Brexit, the delay and change of location offered a powerful example.