India criminalizing human rights activism

By Sardar Khan Niazi
The arrest of Teesta Setalvad, an activist and journalist who is the secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) — an organization formed to advocate for the victims of the 2002 Gujarat Riots is being condemned worldwide.
A co-petitioner in the Zakia Jafri case, Setalvad testified at the United Nations Commission on International Religious Freedom against the then Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government for its role in the communal violence.
In her petition filed with Zakia Jafri, Setalvad and her organization CJP demanded a criminal trial of Narendra Modi and 63 other politicians, alleging criminal conspiracy to fan communal tensions in the state in the wake of the Godhra Train Tragedy.
Setalvad was detained by the Crime Branch in Mumbai and taken to Ahmedabad later that night; the action followed the Gujarat Police’s First Information Report (FIR) which named Setalvad, Former Director-General of Police of Gujarat RB Sreekumar and suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt for alleged fabrication of evidence in the 2002 Gujarat riots case.
Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and J&K People’s Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti took to Twitter and said, “Appalled that standing with the victims has been criminalized and asking for justice is equated with hatching conspiracies.”
Teesta Setalvad was detained a day after India’s top court rejected a lawsuit filed by her and her NGO challenging a ruling that cleared Modi over the bloodshed.
The nastiest outbreak of religious violence saw at least 1,000 people mostly Muslims hacked, shot, and burned to death in Gujarat when Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat in 2002. Twenty years on, wounds remain fresh.
The riots began after fifty-nine Hindus died in a fire on a train returning from one of Hinduism’s most sacred sites. As a result, blame was placed on the Muslims and thirty-one of them were convicted of criminal conspiracy and killing over the incident.
Modi, a Hindu radical who ran Gujarat from 2001 until becoming Indian prime minister in 2014, was briefly subject to a travel ban by the United States over the violence.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) General SecretarySitaram Yechury, released a statement saying that the move is a threat “to all those who dare question role of State/ governments for their role in communal violence.”
The Mumbai Press Club has called for dropping all charges against Setalvad.
Terming her arrest a travesty of justice the press club said that it was unacceptable that a person who has been fighting for civil justice should be accused of fabricating evidence and misleading the Special Investigation Team.
The press club’s statement added that Setalvad and others have been made scapegoats in a chilling process of vendetta unleashed by the executive and judiciary.
Amnesty International India has also condemned Setalvad’s detention and said that the detention of prominent human rights activists by the Indian authorities is a direct reprisal against those who dare to question their human rights record. It sends a chilling message to the civil society and further shrinks the space for dissent in the country.
The Student Federation of India in a statement expressed solidarity with Setalvad, with All India President VP Sanu calling her “an impeccable human rights defender” being “badly targeted by the Indian state for speaking truth to power.”
“We condemn this naked and brazen attempt to silence and criminalize those who stand for constitutional values and who have struggled against very difficult odds to try to achieve justice for the victims of 2002,” the statement read.
The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) also expressed its solidarity with Teesta Setalvad and released a statement demanding that “the false case against her be immediately withdrawn and the harassment stopped.