United States Representative Ilhan Omar Friday said she is profoundly concerned about the human rights situation in India’s Punjab.
Omar’s statement comes amid a manhunt for Sikh preacher Amritpal Singh in Punjab has entered its third week. Earlier, authorities shut mobile internet in the whole of Punjab state and arrested more than 100 of Sikhs.
“The Indian government has enacted a draconian communications shutdown, arrested hundreds, and blocked the Twitter accounts of civic leaders, journalists, including the BBC Punjab and a Canadian Member of Parliament. This has unmistakable echoes of the crackdown in Kashmir, and the sweeping response to the farmer’s protests. For many Punjabis and Sikhs, it also bears unmistakable echoes of the brutality against their community in 1984,” Omar said in a statement.
“We hear a lot about how our relationship with India’s government is based on mutual values of democracy and human rights, in spite of their quadrupling trade with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. We hear this in spite of their constant violations of human rights,” she said.
“With right-wing authoritarianism on the rise across the globe, the United States should stand unequivocally for the protection of universal human rights, in particular the rights of all religious and ethnic minorities,” added Omar.
Singh is a separatist leader who has revived calls for an independent Sikh homeland.
Police accuse Singh and his aides of creating discord in the state, which is haunted by the memories of a violent separatist movement in the 1980s for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan. The movement prompted a brutal military operation by the Indian government that killed thousands of people, according to official estimates.
