Manipur tops the India chapter of the US Human Rights Violation report; report also cites harassment of media and minorities

The Manipur violence has topped the India chapter of the United State Department’s annual report on Human Rights violations. “The outbreak of ethnic conflict between the Kuki and Meitei ethnic groups during the year in India’s northeastern state of Manipur resulted in significant human rights abuses”, read the opening remarks in the executive summary of the report under the title “2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices”.


The report has claimed at least 175 persons were killed and more than 60,000 displaced between May 3 and November 15. The violence began on May 3, 2023 and has lasted for close to 11 months since then. While the intensity of the violence had gone down briefly between October and December last year, but then there has been a spike in January and furthermore, multiple sporadic incidents of violence have been reported, as recent as in April 2024.

“Activists and journalists reported armed conflict, rapes, and assaults in addition to the destruction of homes, businesses, and places of worship. The government deployed security forces, implemented daily curfews, and internet shutdowns in response to the violence. The Supreme Court criticized the failure of the central government and the Manipur state government to halt the violence…”, the report observed.

The 80-page-long report has also focussed on other law and order issues, alleged extra-judicial killings and had even referred to the killings of former Samajwadi Party parliamentarian and convicted prisoner Atiq Ahmed and his brother on April 15 last year. While the US State Department report acknowledges that the Uttar Pradesh Government had constituted a three-member judicial commission to investigate the incident, but added… “Because reports of extrajudicial killings in UP became so widespread, the Supreme Court on August 12 asked the UP police to provide details regarding investigations into 183 killings from more than 10,900 cases of extrajudicial violence in the state since 2017, some of which activists alleged police staged”.

Taking a sharp dig at press freedom in India, the US State Report has stated that according to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2023, “authorities intensified efforts to silence civil society activists and independent journalists by using politically motivated criminal charges, including terrorism, to jail those exposing or criticizing government abuses. The report referred to the Income Tax raids at the BBC India office last year after the channel aired a documentary, now banned, on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Although tax authorities described the search as motivated by irregularities in the BBC’s tax payments and ownership structure, officials also searched and seized equipment from journalists who were not involved in the organization’s financial processes. The government invoked emergency powers to ban the screening of the documentary, forced media companies to remove links to the video, and detained student protesters who organized viewing parties”, read the report.


The US State Department observes that the “government took minimal credible steps or action to identify and punish officials who may have committed human rights abuses. Terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir, northeastern states, and Maoist terrorism-affected areas committed serious abuses, including killings and abductions”, in its report summary.