Amnesty International’s halting of operations in India highlights the dangers of dissent

The government’s targeting of the human rights NGO is part of an ongoing campaign that has also involved the arrest of activists, intellectuals and journalists, and is a sign of how bad things have become

Akanksha Singh

Published: 9:15am, 7 Oct 2020

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Amnesty International India announced on September 29 that it was halting its operations in the country due to government reprisals. The human rights organisation said that New Delhi’s freezing of its bank accounts was “the latest in the incessant witch-hunt of human rights organisations by the government of India, over unfounded and motivated allegations”.

In September, Aakar Patel, Amnesty International India’s former executive director, was arrested for allegedly posting offensive tweets. Last year, Amnesty’s secretary general said that “the Modi government has made a very big attempt to crush Amnesty in India”, putting their staff under stress.

While Amnesty International India has a troubled past, with former employees alleging prejudice on the grounds of caste, the latest developments point to how bad things have truly become. It appears that the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government is succeeding in being answerable to no one. Those questioning the government can expect to be harassed and imprisoned.

This year, India has seen journalists, intellectuals and political leaders rounded up and imprisoned at an alarming rate. There have been troubling reports of crimes against minorities even as India’s Covid-19 case numbers have been surging, with investigative journalists pointing to discrepancies in data on both testing and death rates.

01:54

Amnesty halts operations in India citing government ‘witch hunt’ targeting human rights groups

During the country’s lockdown, between March 25 and May 31, 55 journalists were arrested for reporting on the pandemic. Even as Covid-19 raged in the country, three female student activists – one of whom was pregnant –were arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act earlier in the year.

While these women were denied bail, a BJP minister, who once incited a crowd at his election rally against protesters by chanting “shoot the traitors”, has not been so much as reprimanded. In 2017, another BJP minister, who had been arrested over her alleged role in a terror attack in which six people were killed, was granted bail on “health grounds”.

Even as Time magazine celebrated 82-year-old Bilkis, who sat with other Muslim women in protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in New Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh neighbourhood, a special court acquitted all 32 Hindu nationalists accused of the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992.

While such double standards are obvious, Indian politicians unfortunately do not see themselves as being answerable to the public. The targeting of NGOs that keep a watch on the government and advocate for human rights will only worsen the situation.

On September 29, a 19-year-old woman from the marginalised Dalit community, who had been raped by four upper-caste men leaving her paralysed, died in hospital. Her family has accused the police of cremating her body in the early hours without their consent.

02:01

Protests in India continue over second gang rape against low-caste woman

After the gang rape and murder of student Jyoti Singh, who became known as “Nirbhaya” (meaning “fearless”), in 2012, the government set up a 10 billion rupee (US$85 million) fund in her memory. In 2017, an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court revealed that 90 per cent of the funds remained unused.

When Singh’s rapists were executed in March this year, over seven years after the crime was committed, Amnesty International India issued a statement on the ineffectiveness of the death penalty in deterring sexual violence against women.

It has been over a year since the government revoked Kashmir’s special status. Amnesty International India has continually condemned the government’s human rights violations in Kashmir and the ongoing intimidation of journalists in the region.

So, it’s hardly surprising that the BJP responded to the news of Amnesty International shutting its operations in India by insisting that the NGO was involved in “multiple illegalities”.

If Amnesty International, a sizeable, well-known NGO, cannot sustain operations in India, what hope is there for the grass-roots organisations?

The world should realise that there are two Indias – one that is served by and for the BJP and advocates of Hindu nationalism, and another in which free speech, a constitutional right, is continually infringed upon, in which dissent is dubbed “antinational”, and in which violence against women and minorities is excused or ignored.

Akanksha Singh is a writer and culture journalist based in Mumbai, India

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