KARACHI: A US panel on religious freedom has said the treatment of minorities in Pakistan and India is deteriorating, and it recommended sanctions be imposed on the former’s officials and government agencies and the latter’s external spy agency over its alleged involvement in plots to assassinate Sikh separatists, Dawn.com reported.

Released on Tuesday, the annual report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said, “In 2024, religious freedom conditions in Pakistan continued to deteriorate. Religious minority communities — particularly Christians, Hindus and Shia [Muslims] and [Ahmadis] — continued to bear the brunt of persecution and prosecutions under Pakistan’s strict blasphemy law and to suffer violence from both the police and mobs, while those responsible for such violence rarely faced legal consequences. Such conditions continued to contribute to a worsening religious and political climate of fear, intolerance, and violence.”

The commission is a bipartisan US government advisory body that monitors religious freedom abroad and makes policy recommendations.

The report pointed out that accusations of blasphemy and subsequent mob violence continued to severely impact religious minority communities in the country, as it listed several incidents in the last year.

The commission recommended that the US administration “impose targeted sanctions on Pakistani officials and government agencies responsible for severe violations of religious freedom” by freezing those individuals’ assets and/or barring their entry into the US.

The panel recommended that Pakistan should be re-designated as a “Country of Particular Concern” for engaging in “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom”, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act.

Hateful rhetoric

Regarding India, the report said: “In 2024, religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate as attacks and discrimination against religious minorities continued to rise.”

Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP “propagated hateful rhetoric and disinformation against Muslims and other religious minorities” during last year’s election campaign, it said.

Since 2023, India’s alleged targeting of Sikh separatists in the US and Canada has emerged as a wrinkle in US-India ties, with Washington charging an ex-Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, in a foiled plot.

In April last year, Modi referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” who have “more children”.

US State Department reports on human rights and religious freedom have noted minority abuses in recent years.

Rights advocates point to rising hate speech, a citizenship law the UN called “fundamentally discriminatory”, anti-conversion legislation that critics say challenges freedom of belief, the revoking of Muslim majority Indian-occupied Kashmir’s special status and the demolition of properties of Muslims.

The panel recommended the US government to designate India as a “Country of Particular Concern” for religious freedom violations and impose sanctions against Yadav and RAW.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2025