Afridi urges UNSC to stop India from harassing human rights organizations

ISLAMABAD: Chairman, Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir, Shehryar Khan Afridi Tuesday urged the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to provide adequate security to human rights organizations working in India as it was running an ‘incessant witch-hunt’ campaign against them over ‘unfounded and motivated’ allegations.

“I fear that the officials of the Amnesty and other human rights groups may be targeted by Hindutva gangsters. The world needs to immediately provide security to them,” he said in a meeting with journalists here.

He expressed grave concern over reports of ‘continuing crackdown’ and ‘harassment’ by Indian government of the Amnesty International officials leading to halting of its operations just because it had largely covered India’s systematic genocide of Dalits, Christians and Muslims and Kashmiri Muslims.

Amnesty and other groups have accused police of complicity in the riots in Delhi in which at least 50 people were killed, most of them Muslims, and also its reports have uncovered Indian forces atrocities in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

Shehryar Afridi said that the human rights watchdog had blamed the right-wing government of India for freezing the bank account of its India branch, forcing it to lay off staff and stop campaign and research work in India.

Afridi said that the Amnesty officials claim that they had been facing a ‘crackdown’ over the past two years over ‘baseless allegations’ of financial wrongdoing.

The Chairman of Kashmir Committee said that he was shocked to learn from Amnesty India officials that the constant harassment by Indian government agencies including the Enforcement Directorate was a result of its unequivocal calls for transparency in the government, more recently for accountability of the Delhi police and the government of India regarding the grave human rights violations in Delhi riots and Jammu and Kashmir.