Prof. Heiner Bielefeldt, UN Special rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief will be visiting India soon from February 18 to 27.
He has been invited by Prof. Kamal Mitra Chenoy on behalf of the civil society organisations and Indian Social Institute, New Delhi.
Mr. Bielefeldt is a professor of Human Rights and Human Rights Politics at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He was Director, National Human Rights Institution, Germany from 2003 to 2009. Mr. Bielefeldt’s research interests include various inter-disciplinary facets of human rights, theory and practice, with a focus on freedom of religion or belief.
A number of organizations had requested him to visit different places in India and hear victims and survivors, human rights activists, CSOs, faith-groups etc.
As people have been witnessing regular attacks on the rights of minorities and violation of rights to freedom of religion, this visit brings an opportunity for the civil society, human rights defenders, and minorities to update the UN SRFORB about the situation in India. Even if it is not an official visit, he is generous enough to interact with civil society representatives as well as ethnic-religious minority groups in Bangalore on 22nd of February 2014. The rapporteur would be keen to understand the failure of the state machinery and violations of rights of the minority communities.Courtesy: Karnataka Muslims
http://karnatakamuslims.com/portal/un-rapporteur-to-visit-bangalore/