New Delhi terms USCIRF as organization of particular concern after it designates India as country of concern

Paying back in the same coin, New Delhi on Tuesday evening termed USCIRF- United States Commission on International Religious Freedom as "organization of particular concern" after the Washington headquartered body listed India as a "countries of particular concern" due to "sharp downward turn" on Religious Freedom.

The ministry of external affairs in a statement said, “We reject the observations on India in the USCIRF Annual Report." Explaining, "Its biased and tendentious comments against India are not new. But on this occasion, its misrepresentation has reached new levels."

The statement said, "It has not been able to carry its own Commissioners in its endeavour. We regard it as an organization of particular concern and will treat it accordingly.”

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The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2020 Annual Report listed India alongside 14 countries like Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea in the "countries of particular concern" list. Countries are listed in the "countries of particular concern” (CPCs) because their "governments engage in or tolerate systematic, ongoing, egregious violations" religious freedom.

The 95-page annual report said, "In 2019, religious freedom conditions in India experienced a drastic turn downward, with religious minorities under increasing assault."

Three members of the commission dissented from the majority view of listing India as a country of particular concern---Gary L Bauer, Johnnie Moore, Tenzin Dorjee.

Commissioner Gary Bauer said I must dissent from the decision of my fellow Commissioners to recommend India, the world’s largest democracy, for designation as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, placing India in a gallery of rogue nations in which it does not belong. The trend line on religious freedom in India is not reassuring.

But India is not the equivalent of communist China, which wages war on all faiths; nor of North Korea, a prison masquerading as a country; nor of Iran, whose Islamic extremist leaders regularly threaten to unleash a second Holocaust."