Mike Levin: “I was in India during the winter, and I just wanted to comment briefly on the Burton amendment. It misses what is…”

“I was in India during the winter, and I just wanted to comment briefly on the Burton amendment. It misses what is happening in the Indian subcontinent. I was in the Punjab. The Indian record on human rights is not a perfect one, but as the State Department has mentioned in its annual report, India is clearly moving in the right direction and is making substantial progress. Mr. Chairman, the atmosphere in the Punjab was not one basically of repression, but one of democracy growing under difficult circumstances. We had a chance to read about and to view the work of the Human Rights Commission of India. It, again, is performing a function that is a valuable one and a real one in a democratic society, what is basically a democratic society. On this 50th anniversary of Indian independence, our country needs to be taking constructive, not destructive, steps in terms of our relationship. And what the Burton amendment does, in my judgment, is to move in a destructive rather than a constructive fashion. We need to, with India and other democracies where there are problems, work with those countries as they need to work with us when we have problems here in America. That should be the spirit between our two great nations, the two great democracies; not the negative import and context of the Burton amendment. So I very much oppose it. India, on its 50th anniversary, has a record much more to be proud of than ashamed of.”