Amnesty says halting work in India due to govt. crackdown

Amnesty International has halted work in India, alleging the New Delhi government has been cracking down on the human rights group for reporting rights violations.

The UK-based group said on Tuesday that its bank accounts had been frozen on September 10 and that it was forced to lay off staff.

It said it had faced a crackdown over the past two years over what it said were baseless allegations of financial wrongdoing.

“This is latest in the incessant witch-hunt of human rights organizations by the government of India over unfounded and motivated allegations,” Amnesty said in a statement.

The group said the Indian government had sought to punish it for reporting rights violations in recent months in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region as well as the lack of police accountability during protests in Delhi in February.

“The constant harassment by government agencies including the Enforcement Directorate is a result of our unequivocal calls for transparency in the government, more recently for accountability of the Delhi police and the Government of India regarding the grave human rights violations in Delhi riots and Jammu & Kashmir,” Avinash Kumar, the executive director of Amnesty International India, said.

“For a movement that has done nothing but raise its voices against injustice, this latest attack is akin to freezing dissent,” he added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is accused of encouraging religious intolerance and seeking to transform India into a Hindu state.

In February, deadly violence erupted when weeks-long, peaceful sit-in protests by Muslims against a controversial citizenship law were targeted by Hindu nationalist mobs in northeast Delhi.

Critics described the new law, which was introduced by Modi’s Hindu nationalist government last December, as a grave threat to the country’s constitution.

The law allowed granting citizenship to the millions of migrants who legally or illegally came into India from Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Afghanistan before December 2014 — but not if they are Muslims.

Modi’s government is also accused of clamping down on Muslims in Kashmir. On August 5, 2019, Modi’s government announced it was removing the region’s special status. India also announced the division of the state into two territories to be directly ruled from New Delhi.

Indian security forces were accused of carrying out beatings and torture in the wake of the government’s decision.

Last month, Human Rights Watch denounced India for persisting with “its repression of Kashmiri Muslims,” calling on the authorities to reverse their “abusive policies” in the region.

Kashmir is disputed territory. It has been split between India and Pakistan since their partition in 1947. The countries have fought three wars over the territory.

Meanwhile, Indian opposition politician Shashi Tharoor described Amnesty’s exit as a blow.

“India’s stature as a liberal democracy with free institutions, including media & civil society organizations, accounted for much of its soft power in the world. Actions like this both undermine our reputation as a democracy & vitiate our soft power,” he said in a tweet.

There was no comment however from authorities in New Delhi.

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