Global concern

The United Nations human rights body intervenes forcefully against the violence in Delhi, and Western and Muslim countries raise serious concern about the Indian government’s recent actions.

- JOHN CHERIAN

THE RECENT COMMUNAL BLOODLETTING IN the National Capital Territory of Delhi, facilitated by sections of the government machinery, has finally made the international community wake up and question the powers that be about accountability. For the first time since India’s Independence, a United Nations body has chosen to intervene forcefully on a domestic human rights issue. U.N. bodies, including the Security Council, did not raise a hue and cry when in August 2019 the Narendra Modi government at the Centre abrogated Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and turned the Kashmir Valley into a virtual open-air prison. But the nationwide protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Population Register and the violence unleashed by the state and the foot soldiers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party seems to have been the last straw for theU.N.High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) and other international organisations.

In early March, Michelle Bachelet, the UNHCHR chief, announced that the U.N. body was submitting an amicus curiae intervention in India’s Supreme Court. The court is hearing a petition by the retired diplomat Deb Mukherjee and others challenging the constitutional validity of the CAA. Mukherjee had served as India’s Ambassador to Bangladesh and Nepal and has an abiding affection for the region and its people. Michelle Bachelet had served two terms as Chile’s President. A socialist, she fled Chile when the country was taken over by the brutal military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s. Her father, an air force general, was arrested and tortured by the Pinochet regime. He died in prison.