GENEVA: UN experts condemned on Monday the Indian government’s “slow and inadequate response” to reported serious rights violations, including sexual violence, amid deadly ethnic clashes in the country’s remote northeast.
“We have serious concerns about the apparent slow and inadequate response by the Government of India, including law enforcement, to stem physical and sexual violence and hate speech in Manipur,” they said in a statement.
The nearly 20 independent United Nations rights experts, including the Special Rapporteurs on violence against women and girls and on torture, responded to the abuses reported since clashes broke out in Manipur in May.
Reports indicated that by mid-August, around 160 people had been killed and 300 others injured in the violence, they said, also pointing to tens of thousands of people displaced, thousands of homes and hundreds of churches burnt down and farmland destroyed.
In particular, the experts said they were “appalled by the reports and images of gender-based violence targeting hundreds of women and girls of all ages, and predominantly of the Kuki ethnic minority”.
“The alleged violence includes gang rape, parading women naked in the street, severe beatings causing death, and burning them alive or dead,” they said.
Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2023
