Last December 10th was exceptionally calm in Indian-ruled Kashmir. Unlike other years, International Human Rights Day did not see protests or occupations in the conflict region. Even the offices of human rights organizations were closed.
Also empty was Pratap Park, in the capital Srinagar, where hundreds of parents of the disappeared usually gather to ask for the return of their children. NGOs are falling by the wayside in Kashmir due to fear sown by the frequent blitzes launched by Indian state bodies.
In November, the National Bureau of Investigation arrested well-known activist Khurram Parvez, 44, and charged him with breaking an anti-terrorism law. He has been indicted for conspiracy and for allegedly waging war against India, charges he denies and sees as unfounded.
The detention took place at a time when civilian deaths by the Indian Armed Forces in controversial or false confrontations are increasing in the region. In December, the Interior Ministry admitted to Parliament that from 2017 to November 2021, between 37 and 40 civilians died each year in Kashmir.
With India, China and Pakistan embroiled in border conflicts, violations of the human rights of the civilian population there have been ignored. There is no global reaction, except from activists, who document these abuses. In 2018, the UN released its first report on such disrespect in Kashmir – the Indian Foreign Ministry called the document “fallacious and biased”.
In July 2019, the UN released a second report, in which it called on the UN Human Rights Council to “study the possibility of creating a commission of inquiry to carry out a broad and comprehensive international investigation into allegations of human rights violations in the United Nations”. Kashmir”.
For an activist working with the Civil Society Coalition of Jammu and Kashmir (JKCCS), which includes Parvez, a central figure in nearly 20 years of campaigns against abuses by state agents, the fact that the reports, produced with the help of the organization, have caused embarrassment to Prime Minister Narendra Modi explains the consequences that human rights defenders now face.
Harassment of activists is nothing new in Kashmir, but it intensified after the right-wing government of the BJP party, led by the prime minister, came to power in 2014. In 2019, fulfilling a campaign promise, Modi nullified Kashmir’s limited autonomy. To avoid public protest, he arrested thousands of people, including three former chief ministers in the region.
An activist says, on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, that civilians have been killed in false clashes and that hundreds of Kashmiris are languishing in prisons, incarcerated on arbitrary, fact-less charges. For him, India links activists to militants, seeking to ignore the violations committed by the country’s Armed Forces.
Human rights entities have already been the target of several blitzes by the National Investigation Agency, during which phones, computers and reports documenting violations are confiscated.
The crackdown caused NGOs to stop releasing annual reports on human rights in Kashmir. In general, these documents bother the military, because they accuse them of committing rapes and murders and of carrying out the disappearances of detainees. Another activist says Indian security forces refuse to hand over the bodies of people killed by them to families.
In 2009, the JKCCS highlighted the case of unidentified graves in Kashmir and claimed that they “received the bodies of people killed in clashes, false confrontations and summary and arbitrary extrajudicial executions”. Two years later, the local government recognized the presence of at least 2,156 unidentified bodies in unmarked graves at 38 sites in the region.
Parvez’s organization also investigated mass rapes alleged to have been committed by members of the Indian army in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora, in southern Kashmir, in 1994, and in a series of reports released between 2012 and 2016, the JKCCS identified the name of at least 1,500 members of the Armed Forces cited for involvement in human rights violations.
In September 2016, Parvez was not allowed to travel to Geneva, Switzerland, for the 33rd UN conference on human rights. The following day, he was detained under the controversial Public Security Act, being released after 76 days in prison only when the High Court ruled the detention illegal.
The activist’s most recent arrest is seen as part of a growing crackdown since New Delhi revoked the region’s limited autonomy. The National Investigation Agency, for its part, says NGOs use funds for “secessionist and separatist activities in Kashmir”, echoing the speech of institutions and government officials who question human rights activism.
At an event in Hyderabad, national security adviser Ajit Doval described civil society as “the new frontier of war”, saying it can be “manipulated to harm the interests of a nation”. Even the country’s National Human Rights Commission organized a debate around the question “are human rights an obstacle to combating evils such as terrorism?”.
“Anyone who has ever gone to Kashmir to research human rights must have met Parvez or paid a visit to JKCCS headquarters,” said anthropologist Shrimoyee Nandini Ghosh, who worked for the collective as a research associate. “It’s an organization embedded in society.”
Since the arrest, NGO offices across Kashmir have been closed. Before, says an activist for the Association of Parents of Missing Persons, the region welcomed volunteers and interns from all over India. It was, he says, a vibrant place. “But for a year now, we haven’t had any interns. They are afraid to come to our headquarters. It seems that human rights activism in Kashmir is dead.”
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Source: Folha
