“The rising crackdown clearly exhibits the authorities’ blatant disregard for human rights and rule of legislation.”
As India’s right-wing authorities cracks down on opposition forward of subsequent month’s common elections, Amnesty Worldwide on Friday urged authorities to “cease weaponizing the felony justice system to intimidate and harass” political candidates, activists, and others.
Protests broke out within the capital New Delhi and different Indian cities after police on Thursday arrested Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, an opposition chief from the Aam Aadmi Occasion, over corruption allegations AAP members say are politically motivated. Two different AAP leaders have been beforehand arrested in reference to the identical case, which includes the alleged favoring of sure alcohol distributors and unlawful marketing campaign financing.
Authorities additionally froze the financial institution accounts of one other main opposition occasion, the Indian Nationwide Congress, over a tax dispute that dates again to 2018. Occasion chief Sonia Gandhi accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP) occasion of perpetrating “a scientific effort to cripple the occasion financially.”
“They wish to know we’re corrupt like them, which isn’t the case.” – AAP chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar on the BJP’s crackdown on opposition politicians.
AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal was arrested simply as we speak on costs of corruption.
The India Report: https://t.co/rxPr6zKnWx pic.twitter.com/P3eSbxVTVm
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 21, 2024
Gandhi, Kejriwal and others have repeatedly accused of Modi’s authorities of misusing federal companies and assets to repress opposition figures as elections loom. The BJP denies the allegations.
“The Bharatiya Janata Occasion-led Indian authorities’s crackdown on peaceable dissent and opposition has now reached a disaster level,” Amnesty Worldwide India board chair Aakar Patel stated in a assertion.
“The authorities have repeatedly exploited and weaponized numerous monetary and terrorism legal guidelines to systematically crack down on human rights defenders, activists, critics, nonprofit organizations, journalists, college students, teachers, and political opposition,” Patel added. “The arrest of Arvind Kejriwal and the freezing of Indian Nationwide Congress’ financial institution accounts a number of weeks earlier than India holds its common elections present the authorities’ blatant failure to uphold the nation’s worldwide human rights obligations.”
Patel continued:
What we’re witnessing is a brutal crackdown on human rights together with by the misuse of central investigative and monetary companies, assaults on peaceable protests, arbitrary arrests, use and export of invasive spyware and adware for illegal surveillance, [and] systematic discrimination in opposition to non secular minorities to feed into their majoritarian Hindutva politics and focused suspension of opposition leaders from the Parliament who dare to carry the authorities to account.
“The rising crackdown clearly exhibits the authorities’ blatant disregard for human rights and rule of legislation,” Patel added. “Authorities should respect, defend, promote, and fulfill the human rights of everybody within the nation together with human rights defenders, activists, and opposition candidates earlier than, throughout, and after the overall elections that are on account of start in April 2024. Authorities should additionally guarantee entry to justice and efficient cures for victims of human rights violations.”
On Thursday, the U.S. Home of Representatives’ bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Fee held a listening to on the scenario in India.
The fee famous that lately, as Modi and the BJP have consolidated energy, “issues about human rights abuses in India have grown” over “a variety of great rights points, together with restrictions on non secular and press freedoms, violence or threats of violence focusing on members of nationwide/racial/ethnic and non secular minorities, harassment of and restrictions on civil society and human rights organizations, corruption, and lack of accountability.”
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