New Delhi: Indian human rights organisation People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has called for immediate released of Kashmir based Human Rights Defender/Activist Khurram Parvez and it is the continuation of the government misuse of the draconian Acts PSA, UAPA to imprison human-right voices for long periods without any trial”.
In a statement , PUCL said it was not the first time the government has gone after Parvez.
“In past few years Indian Government has repeatedly targeted Khurram Parvez, raided his office, home on multiple occasions and even arrested and jailed him.”
PUCL believes that the arrest of Khurram Pravez is not just an attack on him or JKCCS but an effort to stop any voices concerning human rights violations from Jammu and Kashmir being allowed to be heard in the larger world.
Parvez has worked extensively on documenting the crimes committed both by security forces and militants in Kashmir as coordinator of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a rights group based in Srinagar.
He was barred to travel Geneva for
33rd session in United Nations Human Rights Council UNHRC and arrested under PSA (Public Safety Act) after two days, a law, applicable only in Jammu and Kashmir, which allows an individual to be taken into preventive custody for two years without any charges or a trial.
Seventy six days later, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court quashed his detention as “illegal.” It also noted that the district magistrate of Srinagar, had acted “arbitrarily” and the “detaining authority has abused its powers.”
Now, the NIA (National Investigation Agency) has booked the activist under UAPA and other unlawful sections of the IPC (Indian Penal Code.)
Parvez’s arrest has also received international attention. Multiple United Nations special rapporteurs and the World Organisation have Again expressed concerns of torture and worry.
"This is all the more significant in the context of Jammu and Kashmir, where the Central Government steamrolled the State’s autonomy guaranteed under Article 370 of the Constitution without taking into account the democratic aspirations of the people of the State and the converting of Jammu and Kashmir into a union territory directly ruled from Delhi with complete bulldozing of all human rights of the ordinary people,’ the statement said.
"The population has been already subjected to other massive violations including total militarization, long internet shutdowns, use of draconian laws such as Public Safety Act, AFSPA and UAPA. In this context it is very crucial that alternate narratives of ground level reality be brought before the world. This is precisely what JKCCSS and Khurram were doing."
"It is also an ominous illustration of the implications of the doctrine of the national security adviser Ajit Doval that civil society is the “new frontier of war" Such arrests will have a chilling effect on any independent voice emerging from civil society and a further indication of a government mindset which is uninterested in any political resolution."
"Trust building between the people and the government needs the government to respect civil society not destroy it. This is the position of international law as articulated in the UN Declaration on human rights defenders, 1999. This government’s action of arresting important voices in civil society like Khurram demonstrates the governments contempt for international law which it has itself undertaken to respect and will only further alienate the people of Kashmir and make the political solution to the Kashmir issue that much more distant," it added.
