Amnesty International has said that it has been forced to halt its operations in India because of “reprisal” from the government.
It has also accused the government of indulging in a “witch-hunt of human rights organisations.”
Amnesty says its bank accounts have been frozen and it’s been forced to lay off staff in the country, and suspend all its campaign and research work.
The government is yet to respond to these allegations.
“We are facing a rather unprecedented situation in India. Amnesty International India has been facing an onslaught of attacks, bullying and harassment by the government in a very systematic manner,” Rajat Khosla, the group’s senior director of research, advocacy and policy, told the BBC.
“This is all down to the human rights work that we were doing and the government not wanting to answer questions we raised, whether it’s in terms of our investigations into the Delhi riots, or the silencing of voices in Jammu and Kashmir.”
In a report released by Amnesty last month, it said that the police in the Indian capital, Delhi, committed human rights violations during the deadly religious riots between Hindus and Muslims in February 2020.
Rebutting the claims Delhi police told The Hindu newspaper that Amnesty’s report was “lopsided, biased and malicious”.
Early August 2020, on the first anniversary of the revocation of Indian-administered Kashmir’s special status (Article 370), Amnesty had called for the release of all detained political leaders, activists and journalists , and for the resumption of high-speed internet services in the region.
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The watchdog testified before the US Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing on human rights in South Asia back in 2019, where it highlighted its findings on arbitrary detentions, and the use of excessive force and torture in Kashmir.
Amnesty has also repeatedly condemned what it says is a crackdown on dissent in India.
The group, which has faced scrutiny by different governmental agencies over the past few years, says freezing of its bank accounts earlier this month was the final straw.
In a press release back in October 2018 Amnesty India had said that their bank accounts had been frozen by the Enforcement Directorate. Amnesty had said that it was able to access them after seeking a court’s intervention.
The accounts of Greenpeace India had also been frozen that very month.
In August 2016, a case of sedition was filed against Amnesty India over allegations that anti-India slogans were raised at one of its events. Three years later, a court ordered the charges to be dropped.
In early 2019, the group says dozens of its small donors were sent letters by the country’s income tax department. And later in the same year, Amnesty’s offices were raided again, this time by the Central Bureau of Investigation, based on a case registered by India’s home affairs ministry.