UN chief on India visit

(April 27, 2012) The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon began a three-day visit to India on Thursday with several meetings with government officials and business leaders on his agenda. A U.N. statement said that in his meetings with officials, Ban praised India's success in eradicating polio. But he also said India needs to improve its dismal record on maternal health and child mortality. In a speech at a university in New Delhi, Ban pointed out that more than 1,000 women die each week in India due to pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications, and that every 20 seconds a child dies from largely preventable causes. The New York-based rights group, Human Rights Watch said it hopes Ban will also discuss the human rights record of India, where, it said, abuses including extrajudicial killings and widespread torture by troops and police are not uncommon. Ban “should not gloss over the serious domestic violations and routine impunity that affect millions of Indians, and hold back the country's development,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the group's South Asia director, said in a statement. It said Ban should press the government to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives the military sweeping powers to act in troubled and insurgency-wracked areas, including Indian-controlled Kashmir and the states of Manipur and Nagaland. Under the law, troops have the right to shoot anyone suspected of being a rebel and to arrest suspected militants without a warrant.