refugees, the Supreme Court temporarily deferred expulsions. In September, the Home Ministry said that it would grant citizenship to about 100,000 Chakma and Hajong refugees who had fled to India from Bangladesh in the 1960s. TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT Between January and August, 894 deaths in judicial custody and 74 deaths in police custody were recorded. In February, Uma Bharti, a central government minister, said she had ordered rape suspects to be tortured when she was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. In August, Manjula Shetye, a woman prisoner at the Byculla jail in Mumbai, died after being allegedly beaten and sexually assaulted by officials for complaining about food in the prison. A team of parliamentarians that visited Byculla jail reported that prisoners were routinely beaten. In November, a committee set up by the Delhi High Court said that 18 prisoners in Tihar jail in New Delhi had been beaten after they had objected to their pillow covers being taken. In September, during India’s UN UPR process before the UN Human Rights Council, the government accepted for the third time recommendations to ratify the UN Convention against Torture, which it signed in 1997. India’s Law Commission released a report in October recommending that the government ratify the Convention and enact a law criminalizing torture. WOMEN’S RIGHTS In November, statistics were published showing that over 338,000 crimes against women were registered in 2016, including over 110,000 cases of violence by husbands and relatives. Responding to petitions in courts seeking to criminalize marital rape, the central government stated that doing so would “destabilize the institution of marriage”. In August, the Supreme Court banned the practice of triple talaq (Islamic instant divorce), declaring that it was arbitrary and unconstitutional. However, in other cases, Amnesty International Report 2017/18 court rulings undermined women’s autonomy. In July, the Supreme Court weakened a law enacted to protect women from violence in their marriages, by requiring that complaints be initially assessed by civil society “family welfare committees”. In October, the Supreme Court suggested that it would review its judgment. The same month, it ruled that sexual intercourse by a man with his wife, if she was under 18, would amount to rape. Several rape survivors, including girls, approached courts for permission to terminate pregnancies over 20 weeks, as required under Indian law. Courts approved some abortions, but refused others. In August, the central government instructed states to set up permanent medical boards to decide such cases promptly. INDONESIA Republic of Indonesia Head of state and government: Joko Widodo Indonesia failed to address past human rights violations. The rights to freedom of expression, of peaceful assembly and of association continued to be arbitrarily restricted. Blasphemy provisions were used to imprison those who peacefully exercised their rights to freedom of religion and belief. At least 30 prisoners of conscience remained in detention for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression or of religion and belief. The security forces carried out unlawful killings and used excessive force during protests and security operations. Two men were caned in public in Aceh after being convicted by a local Shari’a court of samesex consensual sexual relations. BACKGROUND Indonesia’s human rights record was examined in May under the UN UPR process. Although Indonesia accepted 167 out of 225 recommendations, it rejected, among other things, calls to investigate past 193

Select target paragraph3

Add to table of contents