Review India's UN Human Rights Council membership - Abim

Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (Abim) wants India's membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council to be reviewed following the recent uproar involving ruling party officials who insulted Islam.

Abim said recent developments have witnessed the Indian ruling regime Bharatiya Janata Party infringing basic elements of human rights of the people who have held peaceful protests in several regions of India.

“The atrocities can be seen in the coverage by international media showing protesters who peacefully gathered beaten, tortured and detained by the Indian authorities.

"Abim firmly views such incidents as a clear violation of the fundamental rights of the people to hold peaceful protests.

"Abim demands that India's membership in the human rights council be revised given the clear current situation that the Indian government does not respect human rights principles," the movement's president Muhammad Faisal Abdul Aziz in a statement today.

He called on the council’s leader Michelle Bachelet to condemn these blatant violations of human rights.

Abim president Muhammad Faisal Abdul Aziz

"It is a huge shame when an international human rights body such as the UN Human Rights Council tolerates the membership of a government that explicitly violates human rights.

“Such violations are not limited to recent incidents, but also previous episodes in the provinces of Kashmir, Assam, Karnataka and some other regions.

"Abim also urges Malaysia, which has been elected as a member of the council for the period of 2022-2024, to play a role in bringing this matter more assertively at the international level as a responsibility to preserve the principles of fundamental rights in the international arena," he said.

Ironically, when Malaysia was elected, human rights campaigners pointed to the country’s own poor record of rejecting the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in order to preserve a racial system.

Malaysia's crackdown on migrants during the Covid-19 lockdown, forced labour allegations against large firms, repatriation of Myanmar refugees in violation of a Court order, and custodial deaths in both police lockups and immigration detention centres were other examples cited by critics of its human rights records. - Mkini