HRW Slams India for Curbing Critical Speech Amid Deepening Covid Crisis

by Abbas Adil

Human Rights Watch has asked the Indian government to address the healthcare shortage and provide equitable access to treatment to all including vulnerable communities amidst the deepening Covid-19 crises in the country.

A statement by the top global human rights body called on the donors and diaspora groups to press on Indian government to end curbs on free speech and respect human rights in its response to the ongoing crisis.

The Modi government has launched a crackdown on critical social media posts by asking tech companies to censor content that questioned the response by the authorities to the pandemic situation, shortage of oxygen and hospital care costing lives.

In Uttar Pradesh, criminal charges were filed against a man for raising a request for oxygen on social media. The action came after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath warned that his government will come hard on anyone, including health workers, making complaints of shortage of oxygen.

“The Indian government should be focusing only in its efforts on responding to people desperately in need of help and dying for lack of medical care,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead, what we find is a prickly reaction to legitimate criticism of its handling of the crisis, including by trying to censor social media.”

Situation in the country continues to remain grim as the cases surge over 350,000 case-mark. On Wednesday, India crossed the 200,000-death mark since Pandemic began last year. There are also allegations of massive underreporting of deaths in several states. The hospitals in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh have been frequently raising alarm of oxygen outages.

On Friday, the Supreme Court asked the police chiefs of all states to refrain from harassing people for publicly making demands for healthcare services.

As the government has failed to come up with an effective response to the situation, civil society volunteers have stepped up to provide succor to the patients struggling for treatment.

A rights-respecting response to Covid-19 should ensure that accurate and up-to-date information about the virus, access to services, service disruptions, and other aspects of the response to the outbreak is readily available and accessible to all, Human Rights Watch said. “The government’s censoring of free speech will ultimately limit effective communication about the pandemic and undermine trust in government actions.”

The HRW statement castigates Prime Minister Modi for taking contradictory positions by organizing rallies and religious festivals when the authorities were asking people to strictly adhere to the Covid-19 protocol like using masks and avoiding crowds. “Although the authorities have advocated using masks and other public health practices, they conveyed contradictory messages by claiming that they have beaten the virus while allowing and participating in large-scale gatherings, including election campaign rallies. The government promoted a Hindu religious event in which millions of people participated.”

Human Rights Watch reminded India that it has ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights under which everyone has the right to “the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”

The right to health provides that governments must take effective steps to ensure that health facilities, goods, and services are available in sufficient

quantity, accessible to everyone without discrimination, and affordable for all, including marginalized groups, said the statement.

The government should immediately take steps to remove bottlenecks in supply chains of essential medical goods and services, and to ensure an adequate supply of oxygen, life-saving medicines, ventilators, and testing kits, Human Rights Watch said.

The statement acknowledges that the United States is allocating to India raw materials critical for vaccine production so that Indian manufacturers can address the shortage of vaccines in India and elsewhere. However, it calls on the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Australia, and others to end their opposition to India and South Africa’s proposal at the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Council, which meets on April 30.

While underlining how Indian government has ignored the calls for release of political prisoners and journalists held in jails amidst the pandemic, the Human Rights Watch said the Indian government should take immediate steps to release all those jailed on politically motivated charges.

“The Indian government should put people above politics and ensure that everyone gets the medical care they need,” Ganguly said. “The administration has called for citizens and international governments to help, but it cannot shirk its own responsibility to protect each and every life.”

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