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Sunday, December 16, 2012

EU Parliament asks India to protect Dalits - Thursday Dec 13,2012


The European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday Dec 13,2012 conducted an hour-long debate over the persistence of human rights violations against Dalits in India.
While acknowledging the efforts at various levels to eradicate caste discrimination, the Parliament however, expressed alarm at the continually large number of reported and unreported atrocities and widespread untouchability practices, such as manual scavenging
On its previous resolutions on the issue (February 2007 and April 2012), the Parliament noted that while India has made enormous economic progress, caste discrimination continues to be widespread and persistent.
It called upon the European Union’s and the Member States’ representatives in India to include the issue of caste discrimination in their dialogues with the Indian authorities, and to prioritise programmes addressing caste discrimination, in education, and programmes with particular focus on women and girls.
The Parliament instructed its President to forward this resolution, which was adopted unanimously by the EP, to India’s Prime Minister, Minister for Law and Justice, Home Minister, Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, EU institutions, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, the Secretary-General of the UN and the President of the UN General Assembly.
It particularly noted the cases of a gang rape of a girl in Haryana where her father committed suicide and the police only decided to take belated action when faced with mass protests and the looting and torching of 268 Dalit houses by a 1,000 strong mob of upper castes in Dharmapuri, with no intervention from the police officers present.

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