India, Amnesty International: increasingly harsh crackdown on dissent in Jammu and Kashmir

ROMA – On the eve of the first elections in a decade in Jammu and Kashmir, Amnesty International urged Indian authorities to stop issuing travel bans and making arbitrary arrests under anti-terrorism legislation, which have the sole purpose of creating a climate of fear to silence people expressing dissent.

Cases of arbitrary arrests. Since the annulment of the special autonomous region status through the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, decided by the government in 2019 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2023, there have been increasing incidents of arbitrary arrests and passport confiscations, a rather opaque “no-fly list” has been created, and denials of entry to India and arbitrary cancellations of the status of “citizen of India abroad” have been recorded. The Indian government continues to resort to the Public Safety Act, which allows arbitrary detention for a period of two years without charge or trial, and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which authorizes similarly arbitrary arrests.

There is no official data. In the absence of official data, media sources believe that “98 to 200” passports were confiscated after the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution. Masrat Zahra, a Kashmiri journalist who won a 2020 photojournalism award from theInternational Women’s Mediahas been in a de facto stateless condition since July 10, 2023, when she was in the US to continue her university career, her passport was canceled. The provision was notified to her family on September 24, with the notice to contest the decision by July 20, a date prior to the date on which she learned the news.

“I can’t leave the US, I can’t go back to India!. “I resort to self-censorship,” Masrat Zahra wrote, “I don’t write anything on social media, it’s of no use. I miss my family and I would like to work in Kashmir, to be the voice of my voiceless people. Nothing comes out of Kashmir now.” In March 2021, before she left India, Zahra had been charged with “publishing anti-nation posts with the intent to incite young people” but had not been arrested.

And the threats continue. Zahra also continues to receive death threats and the charges against her remain: “Even though I have never received a copy of the notice of initiation of investigation, the authorities retain the power to arrest me at any time if I decide to return. Waheed Para, an activist and politician associated with the opposition Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party, was accused of posing “a threat to state security” and had his passport confiscated in May 2023, before he left for a fellowship at Yale University, USA

Waheed Para writes again: “They didn’t give me any explanation, they just cited national security reasons. I lost a huge academic opportunity. I couldn’t even travel within India to be with my father, who was struck by cancer and later passed away. It was all very traumatic.”

Never any guarantees for arrested people. In the context of his research, Amnesty International examined the number of requests for you have a bodyi.e. appeals against the lawfulness of detentions under the Public Safety Act, filed in the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Courts, comparing the data for the period 2014-2019 with that of the period 2019-2024. It was found that in the second period, the appeals increased seven-fold and that the number of appeals filed on behalf of Muslim prisoners in Srinagar, Kashmir, is higher than those filed on behalf of Hindu prisoners in Jammu.

The conviction rate is only three percent. According to official data from 2022, about 37 percent of investigations under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act are opened in Jammu and Kashmir but the conviction rate is only three percent. This confirms that the law is being used to suppress dissent and human rights activities.

A further threat to human rights. It is the decision taken by the federal government on 12 July 2024 to give the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir absolute control over the exercise of state jurisdiction over local government bodies, prisons, law enforcement officials, prosecutors and jails, thereby strengthening central power at the expense of the broad autonomy traditionally exercised by the local government, including the prime minister and parliament.