The message was delivered at Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, under which member states of the United Nations undergo periodic evaluation of their human rights record conducted by 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva recently.
Indian diplomat Mohammed Hussain, in his remarks at the council, urged Canada to “further strengthen the domestic framework to prevent misuse of freedom of expression for inciting violence and disallow activities of groups which are promoting extremism”.
New Delhi also asked Canada to “effectively prevent attacks on places of worship of religious and racial minorities” as well as “strengthen legislative and other measures to address hate crimes and hate speech”.
India asked Canada to stand up for indigenous rights and stop any discrimination against the community. “Put an end to structural discrimination against children belonging to indigenous groups… Address disparities in access to services by all children,” he said.The UPR Working Group, which carries out a regular assessment of the human rights records of all UN member states, consists of 47 member states of the UN Human Rights Council. However, when it comes to reviewing human rights records for any country, each one of the 193 UN member states can participate.India’s statement at UNHRC comes amid fresh barbs by PM Justin Trudeau against New Delhi. The Canadian prime minister was addressing the media at the launch of a countrywide smart energy grid over the weekend.
Responding to a question on whether the US should take up the matter with India on Canada’s behalf, Trudeau said: “From the very beginning, when we learnt of credible allegations that agents of the Indian government are involved in the killing of Canadian citizens on Canadian soil, we reached out to India to ask them to work with us in getting to the bottom of this matter. We also reached out to our friends and allies, like the United States, and others to work on these really serious violations of international law and sovereignty of a democracy. This is something we are taking very, very, seriously, we will continue to work with all partners as law enforcement and investigative agencies continue to do their work.”