Clear need in India to redouble efforts to uphold rights of all minorities: UN rights chief

'Muslims are often the target of such attacks, most recently in Haryana and Gurugram, in northern India. In Manipur, other communities have also been facing violence and insecurity since May,' United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk on Monday said that there is a clear need in India to redouble efforts to uphold the rights of all minorities in the country.

Speaking at the 54th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Turk said that his office in India frequently receives information that marginalised minority communities are subjected to violence and discrimination.

"Muslims are often the target of such attacks, most recently in Haryana and Gurugram, in northern India. In Manipur, other communities have also been facing violence and insecurity since May," he said in his global update.

"There is a clear need to redouble efforts to uphold the rights of all minorities, by dealing in a forthright manner with intolerance, hate speech, religious extremism and discrimination,"' he added.

India in the past has said that the Indian authorities at all levels, including the judiciary, are seized of the situation in Manipur and are taking steps to maintain peace and harmony and law and order.

Earlier this month, India strongly rejected comments by UN experts on Manipur, terming them “unwarranted, presumptive and misleading” and asserting that the situation in the Northeast state is peaceful.