US encourages India to fulfill religious freedom commitment

US encourages India to fulfill religious freedom commitment

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State Department spokesman Ned Price. State.gov
State Department spokesman Ned Price. State.gov

The United States has called upon the Indian government to uphold its commitment to protecting religious freedom for all.

The US engages officials regularly on steps they can take to advance religious freedom, State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a weekly press briefing.

“As the world’s two largest democracies, the United States and India, we’re also committed to an enduring project,” he said.

“This is the project that Secretary Blinken spoke to previously, the project that – as our founders put it – of striving to form a more perfect union. This is a project for both of our countries. We have worked together, and we can work together to show that our democracies can meet our people’s needs. We must continue to hold ourselves to our core values, including respect for human rights like freedom of religion and freedom of belief or expression. That, in turn, makes our respective democracies even stronger.”

Ned Price said that Secretary Blinken, given the totality of the facts and the circumstances, determined that religious freedom concerns in India do not warrant a Country of Particular Concern designation or placement on the Special Watch List. But of course, these are conversations that we continue to have with our Indian partners and with partners around the world, he said.

Replying to a question regarding PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry's meeting with US ambassador Donald Blome, the State Department's spokesman said that Donald Lu is in fact the assistant secretary for our Bureau of South and Central Asia at the State Department and he is a senior official at the Department of State.

“It is true that, whether in Pakistan or around the world, we meet with a range of political stakeholders in the course of our work,” he said. 

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