Washington-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said that the Indian authorities continued to restrict free expression, peaceful assembly, and other rights in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir in 2023.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the HRW in its World Report 2024 maintained that reports of extrajudicial killings by Indian forces’ personnel continued throughout the year in 2023. It said that critics and human rights defenders faced arrests and raids based on spurious terrorism allegations.
The report said that on March 22, prominent Kashmiri human rights activist Khurram Parvez, already detained since November 2021 on accusations of terrorism, was charged on allegations of financing terrorism under draconian law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). It said that on March 20, Irfan Mehraj, a journalist formerly associated with Parvez’s human rights organization, was also arrested in the same case. The UN human rights experts have repeatedly called for Parvez’s release and condemned the use of the UAPA to target civil society and human rights defenders, it added.
The HRW report said that in April 2023, six UN human rights experts wrote to the Indian government over the alleged arbitrary detention and ill-treatment of human rights defender Muhammad Ahsan Untoo, saying that his detention “appears to be part of a strategy to disrupt, intimidate, detain and punish those engaging in journalism and human rights advocacy.”
The report said, in May, the G20 Tourism Working Group held a meeting in occupied Kashmir, prompting the UN special rapporteur on minority issues to say that “the G20 is unwittingly providing a veneer of support to a facade of normalcy at a time when massive human rights violations” continued to escalate.
The HRW report also expressed concern over the persecution of minorities and dissenters in India by the Modi government. It said the Indian government undermined its aspirations for global leadership as a rights-respecting democracy during 2023 with its persistent policies and practices that discriminate and stigmatize religious and other minorities. It pointed out that the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led Modi government also arrested activists, journalists, opposition politicians, and other critics of the government on politically motivated criminal charges, including terrorism.
Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the BJP government’s discriminatory and divisive policies have led to increased violence against minorities, creating a pervasive environment of fear and a chilling effect on government critics. “Instead of holding those responsible for abuses to account, the authorities chose to punish the victims, and persecuted anyone who questioned these actions,” she added.
The report said that the Indian authorities harassed journalists, activists, and critics through raids, allegations of financial irregularities, and use of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, which regulates foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations.
The HRW said in February, Indian tax officials raided the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai in an apparent reprisal for a two-part documentary that highlighted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat state in 2002 when he was chief minister. It said the Modi government blocked the BBC documentary in India in January, using emergency powers under the country’s Information Technology Rules.
“On July 31, communal violence broke out in Nuh district in Haryana state during a Hindu procession and swiftly spread to several adjoining districts. Following the violence, as part of a growing pattern, the authorities retaliated against Muslim residents by illegally demolishing hundreds of Muslim properties and detaining scores of Muslim boys and men. The demolitions led the Punjab and Haryana High Court to ask the BJP-led state government whether it was conducting “ethnic cleansing”,” It added.
The HRW report said “Over 200 people were killed, tens of thousands displaced, hundreds of homes and churches destroyed, and the internet shut down for months, after violence erupted in May in Manipur state between the majority Meitei and the minority Kuki Zo communities. BJP’s state chief minister, N. Biren Singh, fueled divisiveness by stigmatizing the Kuki, alleging their involvement in drug trafficking, and providing sanctuary to refugees from Myanmar, it maintained.
The rights organization pointed out that in August, the Indian Supreme Court said the state police had “lost control over the situation,” and ordered special teams to investigate the violence, including sexual violence. In September, over a dozen United Nations experts raised concerns over the ongoing violence and abuses in Manipur, saying the government’s response had been slow and inadequate, it added.—KMS
