New York-based rights watchdog, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said that the Indian government is using counter-terrorism operations to silence peaceful dissenters, human rights activists, and journalists.
The HRW in a statement posted on its website, said that on October 28 and 29, 2020, the Indian National Investigation Agency carried out several raids on the offices of nongovernmental organizations, rights activists’ homes, and a newspaper office in Jammu Kashmir, Delhi, and Bangalore. It said, the raids are part of a crackdown by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on civil society groups.
The statement said, the Indian authorities have increasingly brought politically motivated criminal cases, including under broadly worded terrorism and sedition laws, against activists, journalists, academics, students, and others and used foreign funding regulations to target outspoken groups for their human rights work.
HRW’s South Asia director, Meenakshi Ganguly, said, India faces serious security challenges, but instead of addressing the problems in a rights-respecting manner, the Indian authorities appear determined to crush peaceful criticism and calls for accountability. She demanded that using authoritarian tactics against outspoken critics and journalists needs to stop.
The NIA, raided the offices and homes of human rights defender Khurram Parvez, Coordinator of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society; his associates Parvez Ahmad Matta and Bangalore-based associate Swati Sheshadri; and Parveena Ahangar, Chairperson of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), whose son is among those forcibly disappeared in Kashmir. Both groups have long worked for justice for victims of Indian forces’ abuses.
Parveena Ahangar said in a statement that the NIA seized documents containing sensitive information about victims and their families and their testimonies, including about enforced disappearances, and arbitrary detention and torture by Indian forces, the HRW said. She expressed concern over possible reprisals against them, it said. The authorities confiscated the mobile phones of Parvez and other members of his household, it added.
The NIA also raided the home of Parvaiz Bukhari of Agence France-Presse; office of the English-language newspaper in Srinagar, Greater Kashmir; and the non-governmental organization Athrout, which provides education and medical aid to vulnerable communities.
“In Delhi, the authorities raided the Charity Alliance and the Human Welfare Foundation. They also raided the home of Zafarul-Islam Khan, Charity Alliance head and former chief of the Delhi Minorities Commission. Khan, who has been outspoken about the police’s biased handling of the February communal violence in Delhi, had earlier been charged with sedition for making “provocative” statements on social media. He said he feared it was an attempt to implicate him “in some terror or riot case”,” the statement said.
The HRW said, on October 19, authorities sealed the Srinagar office of the newspaper Kashmir Times in an apparent reprisal against its executive editor, Anuradha Bhasin, who filed a Supreme Court petition challenging the Indian government’s telecommunications shutdown. It said, Indian government imposed broad restrictions in Jammu Kashmir following its decision to revoke the special status of the territory and split it into two federally governed territories on August 5, 2019. Ruling on the petition, the Supreme Court declared access to internet as a fundamental right and directed the government to relax the restrictions on communications, it added.
While the Indian government has eased some restrictions in the territory over the past year, it continues to impose harsh and discriminatory restrictions on Muslim-majority areas in Jammu Kashmir, where hundreds of people remain detained without charge, critics are threatened with arrest, and access to the internet is limited, the statement said.
The HRW said, the raids have drawn condemnation in India and abroad. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership of the World Organisation Against Torture and International Federation for Human Rights, expressed concerns over “these new acts of harassment, which seem to be only aimed at punishing and intimidating” groups and individuals for their human rights activities. Eight journalist groups in Jammu Kashmir said the raids were continuous harassment “aimed at silencing reporters and curbing the freedom of press.”
The statement said, the Indian government is also increasingly using the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), which tracks grants from foreign donors, to harass organizations that question or criticize government policies, to stymie their activities, and to cut off funds from abroad. In September, Amnesty International India was forced to close its offices after the authorities froze its bank accounts over alleged violation of the FCRA, it added.
The HRW statement maintained that in October, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said she was concerned that the law “is indeed actually being used to deter or punish NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] for human rights reporting and advocacy that the authorities perceive as critical in nature.” “Bachelet also spoke out against targeting activists under the counterterrorism law for participating in protests against the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act that was enacted in 2019 and a demonstration in Bhima Koregaon in 2018 to promote Dalit rights,” it added.
The statement said, in May and October, the chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, raised concerns about seeing the “rule of law deteriorate” in India, including arrests of human rights defenders, journalists, and peaceful critics.
“The Indian government seeks to be a global leader, but instead is drawing international criticism by systematically weakening the country’s long-respected democratic institutions,” Ganguly said. “The government should alter course by upholding democratic principles and protecting the human rights of all its citizens,” she added.
Amnesty International in a statement has condemned the series of raids by counter-terrorism forces on the homes and premises of civil society groups, human rights defenders and journalists in Jammu Kashmir (J&K) region.
“The Indian government must immediately halt its intensifying suppression of dissent,” said Amnesty International in a statement.
The statement comes from Amnesty International after Amnesty India was forced to halt its work and let go of its employees in the country in October after its bank accounts were frozen by the government, shortly after it released a Situation Update on human rights in Jammu Kashmir.