Amnesty International’s HRC Being Investigated by India for Sedition
Amnesty International, the human rights campaign group, is being investigated by Indian police for alleged sedition after its local activists held a public meeting to discuss abuses by Indian security forces in the troubled Kashmir valley.
The weekend meeting in Bangalore, the hub of India’s information technology industry, was intended to raise public awareness about the civilian toll of a brutal conflict between separatist militants and security forces that has claimed at least 44,000 lives since 1989.
But during the event, part of a campaign to hold Indian security forces to account for rapes, extrajudicial killings and other abuses in Kashmir, some participants shouted azadi, which means freedom and is the slogan of Kashmiri separatists seeking an end to Indian rule.
Bangalore police have launched a formal criminal investigation against Amnesty, acting on a complaint from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student arm of the rightwing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organization of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party.
The authorities are investigating whether Amnesty activists can be formally charged with sedition, as well as crimes such as unlawful assembly, rioting and “promoting enmity”, and also trying to identify those responsible for the meeting.
The investigation comes as residents of the troubled Kashmir valley endure their 39th consecutive day of a strict curfew — during which schools, businesses, public transport and all normal life has been shut down as Indian security forces try to quell violent mass protests triggered by the July killing of a prominent separatist militant. About 60 people have been killed — and scores blinded by police pellets — during the weeks of unrest.
The furore echoes recent controversies over the limits of acceptable speech in India, especially as it pertains to controversial subjects such as Kashmir, with its long-running separatist insurgency, and New Delhi’s use of the death penalty.
Amnesty’s India arm, which had notified the police about the weekend event in Bangalore, said it had yet to receive a copy of the complaint. But activists described the police probe as an attempt to curb freedom of expression.
“Merely organising an event to defend constitutional values is now being branded ‘anti-India’ and criminalised,” said Aakar Patel, executive director of Amnesty International India.
In its statement, Amnesty said it did not take a stand on demands for self-determination but believed in citizens’ right to peacefully campaign for police change, so long as such advocacy did not incite violence.
In February New Delhi police arrested eight students of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University for alleged sedition, after they led a campus protest against the 2013 execution of a Kashmiri convicted of terror offenses.
Just a month earlier, India was rocked by the suicide of a Hyderabad University PhD student who had been banned from the campus — and had his scholarship money cut off for months — after a squabble with ABVP activists over another protest against capital punishment.
Amy Kazmin in New Delhi
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