INDIA ARRESTS PROMINENT KASHMIR RIGHTS ACTIVIST UNDER TERROR LAW

Tue 23 November 2021:

India’s National Investigation Agency arrests Khurram Parvez under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for ‘terror-funding’.

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – India’s top anti-terrorism investigation agency has arrested prominent Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez under a stringent terror law following a day-long raid at his office and residence in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Parvez on Monday evening after carrying out searches for more than 15 hours at his home and the office of the Jammu-Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) in the region’s main city of Srinagar.

Parvez, 42, is the programme coordinator at JKCCS, which he founded with another activist Parvez Imroz in 2000. He is also the chairman of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD).

“They confiscated his phone, laptop, my phone and some books from the library. Our two children are in trauma … We were all asleep when the raid started,” Parvez’s wife Sameena Mir told Al Jazeera.

Mir said Parvez was summoned to the NIA office in Srinagar on Monday afternoon for questioning from where he was formally arrested under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code for “terror funding” and other charges.

Human rights abuse

The UAPA is vaguely-worded legislation that effectively allows people to be held without trial indefinitely and convictions under the law are rare.

“He has been booked under so many cases in the past and now there are new cases. More than a shock, this is all very normal here now,” Mir said. “It is all because of his human rights work.”

For more than 20 years, Parvez had been vocal about highlighting human rights abuses in Indian-administered Kashmir by the Indian forces. His organisation has published a series of reports detailing the “impunity enjoyed by the armed forces” in the disputed region.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir is claimed in its entirety by India and Pakistan, who rule over parts of it.

An armed rebellion against New Delhi’s rule began on the Indian side 30 years ago, with the rebels demanding either the region’s merger with Pakistan or independence.

The conflict intensified after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped the region’s limited autonomy and split it into two federal territories in 2019.

The controversial move was followed by the imposition of a months-long security lockdown, and the arrests of hundreds of Kashmiri politicians, lawyers and activists.

Since 2019, at least 2,300 people have been arrested under the UAPA in the region. Almost half of them are still in prison.

While the NIA did not immediately issue a statement over Parvez’s arrest, a local official confirmed the charges against the activist to Al Jazeera.

This was not the first NIA raid at Parvez’s office and residence. In October last year, the agency conducted similar searches at the JKCCS office and his residence.

The home and office of another rights activist Parveena Ahanger, who is the founder of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) that fights cases of enforced disappearances in Indian-administered Kashmir, was also raided.

In its many reports, the JKCCS has exposed human rights violations by the Indian security forces including torture, extrajudicial killings, and unmarked mass graves.

‘Impunity enjoyed by the armed forces’

Last week, the group had raised questions on the killing of four people, including two civilians, during a gunfight with suspected rebels in a shopping complex in Srinagar.

The bodies of the four people were hurriedly buried by Indian authorities in a graveyard 80km (50 miles) away from Srinagar, as part of a recent practice of denying bodies of suspected rebels or their alleged “associates” to their families for burial.

On Thursday night, following angry protests by the families of three of the victims of last week’s shoot-out, Indian authorities exhumed two of the bodies and returned them to their families for proper burial according to Islamic traditions.

 

Parvez had been vocal about highlighting alleged rights abuses in India’s only Muslim-majority region by the Indian security forces. His organisation has published a series of reports detailing the “impunity enjoyed by the armed forces” in the region.

In February 2019, the JKCCS came up with a detailed report on torture by the security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir. In December the same year, the group’s annual Human Rights Review Report highlighted rights abuses committed by authorities after the region’s special status was scrapped.