Amnesty, for chilling effect

Silencing NGOs

Amnesty International’s decision to suspend its operations in India after its bank accounts were frozen last month is perhaps the result of yet another step of the Indian government’s methodical silencing of critics and human rights groups. Equally, it appears, the move is to harass and stop organisations such as the Nobel Prize-winning Amnesty International (AI) from carrying on its humanitarian work in India.

The Enforcement Directorate has alleged money laundering and frozen AI’s bank accounts in India. On September 29, AI announced it was shutting its offices in India, letting go of some 150 employees, and pausing all its campaign and research work.

This is the latest in the incessant witch-hunt of human rights organisations by the government over unfounded and motivated allegations, Amnesty International India said in a statement on its website. “Treating human rights organisations like criminal enterprises and dissenting individuals as criminals without any credible evidence is a deliberate attempt by the Enforcement Directorate and Government of India to stoke a climate of fear and dismantle the critical voices in India,” it said.

The Union Home Ministry, in a statement, dismissed the allegation of a witch-hunt and said that successive governments had rejected Amnesty’s repeated applications for permission to receive foreign funds.

“As the human rights reporting of Amnesty India and worldwide is based on hard evidence, the regime is not able to find any way of countering that. Their only way out is to fabricate financial allegations,” said Salil Shetty, who was secretary-general of AI from 2009 to 2018.

Amnesty in India and the world over has external auditors and rigorous internal procedures to ensure financial probity. It is a Nobel Prize-winning people’s movement that has earned the highest regard for its work and is unusual in the sense that the vast majority of its funding is from millions of ordinary people making small donations. This includes tens of thousands of Indians.

A couple of weeks before their accounts were frozen, AI had come out with two reports — one to mark the first anniversary of the change in status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, and another on the Delhi riots in February. Both were critical of the central government, with the report on the riots also alleging human rights violations by Delhi Police, which reports to the Union Home Ministry.

“The current so-called ‘Hindu’ fundamentalist regime is particularly angry that Amnesty India has uncovered its massive human rights violations in Kashmir. Most recently, Amnesty India’s brilliant expose of the abuse of state machinery in the Delhi riots pained the BJP government at the Centre,” said Shetty.

Amnesty is also a strategic choice, to create a chilling effect to silence other less powerful and smaller organisations and individuals to not fight for human rights issues and hold this regime accountable, he added.

India is ranked 129 on the Human Development Index, along with some of the poorest countries in the world; it is also the twelfth most unequal country in the world. At the bottom of the Indian societal pyramid are the Dalits, Adivasis, backward castes and minorities, particularly women. In the last few years, there has been a systematic campaign to attack minorities in order to unite the otherwise caste-divided Hindu vote. Amnesty is a powerful voice against these human rights violations.

On every single global index for democracy, whether it is V-Dem, Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, or Economist Intelligence Unit, etc., India is seeing a shocking backsliding.

“Amidst this pervasive culture of fear, silence and permanent propaganda-mongering, the role of Amnesty as an independent voice to fight for democracy and rights is crucial at this juncture,” emphasizes Shetty.

The fact that Amnesty has huge influence on the international stage (at the UN and other world bodies) and in the West -- with governments, with the media and the populations at large -- is a real bugbear for India’s hyper-sensitive regime that has so much to hide. Particularly when it is continuing to peddle the country’s democratic credentials on the world stage to contrast it from China and would like to become a permanent member of the Security Council.

The US State Department has said that the matter has been discussed at the highest levels both in the administration and in the US Congress and that they are very concerned. The European Union has already raised its concern through diplomatic channels, the New York Times has published a long piece on the shocking behaviour of this regime, and this is just the beginning.

Using the provisions of the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act, scores of organisations have been de-licensed or put on watch lists. Greenpeace was brought to its knees, with its accounts also frozen (again unfrozen by the courts), and other large organisations have been intimidated and shut down. People’s Watch and Henri Tiphagne have been hounded, as has activist Teesta Setalvad and her organisation. But it is the smaller ones that are unsung and unheard.

Paradoxically, while AI has functioned for over 15 years under authoritarian regimes, such as in Russia (AI finally suspended its operations there in 2016), operating in India, which claims to be a democracy, has been a perennial struggle.

Amnesty is a people’s movement with membership of millions of people, operating in over 70 countries. Successive heads of AI have tried their best to establish a strong Amnesty with membership in the global south and started (or boosted) chapters in, apart from India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Kenya. None of the others have been shut down.

With Amnesty India challenging the freezing of its accounts in the courts, it remains to be seen how long it will take for the human rights watchdog to resume operations and continue to raise its voice against injustice.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Bengaluru)