‘Justice For All Canada’ Files For Sanctions, Urging Canada to Act on Human Rights Abuses Against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh

Credit: NBC News

Two Canadian rights groups, Justice For All Canada and the Canadian Forum for Human Rights and Democracy in India (CFHRDI), filed a joint submission with Global Affairs Canada on Monday, calling for targeted sanctions against eight Indian officials, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, over alleged serious human rights violations against Muslims in the state. The submission, lodged with the Sanctions Bureau, invokes Canada’s existing legal tools, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act and the Special Economic Measures Act, and alleges a sustained pattern of extrajudicial killings, police violence and torture, punitive demolitions, and mass arrests targeting Muslim communities in UP.

Alongside Adityanath, the submission names senior current and former police officials it links to this pattern of state-backed abuse and impunity. It also draws on prior findings by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), UN Human Rights Experts, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Panel of Independent International Experts.

Justice For All Canada’s Executive Director, Taha Ghayyur, framed the filing as a test of whether Ottawa will let trade considerations override accountability. “Canada cannot deepen trade ties with India while looking away from credible evidence of state-backed abuses against Muslims,” he said, adding that sanctions remain “among the few avenues available when domestic accountability mechanisms have failed.”

The two organisations have also urged Canadian MPs and federal officials to meet affected communities, examine the submitted evidence, and keep human rights central to Canada’s ties with New Delhi. The filing follows last week’s appeal by more than 40 Canadian civil societies, labour, and faith-based groups asking the public safety minister to bar RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat from entering the country over similar allegations.

Taken together, the two filings in a single week suggest a diaspora-led accountability push is gathering pace even as Ottawa moves to warm relations with New Delhi. If a state chief minister can be named in a formal-sanctions filing before a foreign government while remaining entirely unaccountable at home, what does that say about the mechanisms India’s own Muslims are left to rely on?