Amnesty International report documents sweeping assault on civil liberties in India

NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) – India’s human rights situation deteriorated sharply over the past year as authorities weaponized sedition and anti-terrorism laws against journalists, comedians, academics and students, while religious minorities — particularly Muslims — faced escalating discrimination, mass evictions and targeted violence, according to Amnesty International’s annual State of the World’s Human Rights report.

The report documents a sustained crackdown on freedom of expression, with the government ordering social media platforms to block accounts critical of its policies. In July, authorities ordered the platform X to block more than 2,000 accounts in India, including the international news service Reuters.

The government also banned 25 books in Jammu and Kashmir, accusing their authors — respected journalists, historians, feminists and peace scholars — of glorifying terrorism.

A Maharashtra state comedian faced criminal charges for a stand-up routine containing a veiled reference to the state’s chief minister, while a university professor was arrested for social media posts about a military operation.

Counterterrorism laws were used to keep human rights defenders behind bars without trial. Three of the so-called “Bhima Koregaon 16” activists remained imprisoned at year’s end after years in pretrial detention.

Umar Khalid and at least five other Muslim students and activists also remained in pretrial detention over alleged involvement in 2020 communal violence in North-East Delhi, in which 53 people were killed including 38 Muslims.

Discriminatory legislation

Muslims bore the brunt of discriminatory legislation. Multiple states advanced laws criminalizing interfaith marriage under the pretext of preventing so-called “love jihad” — a baseless claim that Muslim men seduce Hindu women into converting. Uttarakhand enforced a Uniform Civil Code requiring live-in relationships to be registered with state authorities.

Parliament passed the Waqf Amendment Bill centralizing state control over Muslim religious assets and endowments, with protests against the law met with security force deployments that resulted in at least three deaths and 150 arrests.

Forced evictions of Muslim communities in Assam continued despite a 2024 Supreme Court directive ordering a halt to such actions. Between July and August alone, approximately 3,800 mostly Muslim households were rendered homeless across two separate eviction drives in Goalpara and Golaghat districts.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the family home of a man accused of involvement in a car bombing was demolished without warning while his elderly parents were asleep inside.

A journalist’s home was also demolished a day after he exposed an alleged cross-border drug trafficking operation.

The government forcibly deported at least 40 Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar in May following the Pahalgam tourist attack, which revived anti-Muslim sentiment.

They were blindfolded, flown to the Andaman Islands, transferred onto a naval vessel and forced overboard to swim to a Myanmar island. Amnesty described the move as a serious violation of the principle of non-refoulement.

India’s climate record also drew sharp criticism.

The Climate Action Tracker rated the government’s policies as “highly insufficient” and inconsistent with the 1.5°C global warming limit. India slipped 13 places in the 2025 Climate Change Performance Index due to continued coal reliance.

In October and November, New Delhi was ranked the world’s most polluted city.

On the international accountability front, at least 19 visit requests from UN special procedures remained unanswered at year’s end, including a request from the Special Rapporteur on torture first submitted in 1999.