Islamabad:
In a joint call for action, Amnesty International, the Charity and Security Network and Human Rights Watch urged the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to pressure the Government of India to stop the persecution, intimidation and harassment of human rights defenders, activists. , and non-profit organizations under the guise of combating the financing of terrorism.
According to a recent report by the global human rights watchdog, FATF members are set to begin their fourth periodic review of India’s efforts to combat illicit financing on November 6.
The report reveals that Indian authorities are using FATF recommendations as part of a concerted effort to restrict political space and suppress the fundamental rights of freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.
The actions of the Indian government are particularly aimed at human rights groups and activists who are dedicated to defending the rights of the most socially and economically marginalized sections of the population.
Read more: Experts call for intense scrutiny as FATF assesses India
This joint call highlights growing international concern about restrictions on civil liberties and the targeting of those working to protect human rights in India, and calls on the FATF to play a role in addressing these critical issues in its review.
“Draconian laws introduced or adapted for this purpose include the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Their actions have violated both FATF standards and international human rights law,” it said.
“Indian authorities have weaponized the laws to crack down on human rights work by HRDs, activists and non-profit organizations in the country,” said Aakar Patel, Amnesty International India’s board chair.
They used false accusations of foreign financing and terrorism to target, intimidate, harass and silence critics, in clear violation of FATF standards, he added.
The Indian government also enacted the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002 to satisfy the conditions of participation set by the FATF.
He also added that the authorities used the law to attack, intimidate and harass human rights defenders, activists and non-profit organizations by supplementing charges under the FCRA, freezing their assets and imposing strict bail conditions on them.
“Amnesty International India has been subjected to action under the PMLA through the freezing of its bank accounts in September 2020, putting its work on hold for the past three years, with no resources even to secure effective legal representation,” it added.
Meenakshi Ganguly, Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, said: “India’s three laws together have created a dangerous arsenal with debilitating consequences for civil society and human rights activists.”
The FATF should not allow the Indian government to exploit the organization’s recommendations for its own political purposes – to silence any form of dissent, he stressed.
Read more: India exploits FATF standards to target civil society: Amnesty
Amnesty International further reported that since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, authorities have used excessive provisions of domestic law to silence critics and shut down their operations, including by revoking foreign funding licenses and prosecuting them using anti-terrorist legislation and financial regulations.
The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, first enacted in 1976, aimed to prevent and regulate foreign interference in Indian politics.
However, in 2010, the government reformed the law with a greater focus on non-profit organizations, while loosening oversight of foreign funding for political parties.
Over the past 10 years, authorities have used this law to cancel the licenses of more than 20,600 nonprofits, including 6,000 by 2022, blocking their access to foreign funding.
Indian authorities have also frequently used the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), India’s main counter-terrorism law, to arbitrarily arrest and detain human rights defenders and activists, it said.
The law was introduced as a reform to the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2004, but the government amended it in 2008, 2012 and 2019 to include many problematic provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on Anti-Terrorist Financing have been abused against several student activists who had staged protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Anti-terror funding and other provisions have also been misused to arrest Khurram Parvez, a prominent human rights activist from Kashmir who is a program coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Civil Society Coalition, and Irfan Mehraj, a journalist associated with the coalition, it said. the exhibition.
The delay in filing charges and many acquittals in these cases showed that the government was using the anti-terrorism law to keep critics locked up for years and to use the judicial process itself as a tool to prosecute and punish government critics.
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