“Dear PM, please ensure that those who do human rights work do not face a crackdown.” That’s the message from Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International's South Asia regional director. The organisation shut its India operations in September soon after the Enforcement Directorate froze its accounts.
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00:00Dear Prime Minister Modi, My name is Yamini. I am the South Asia Regional Director for Amnesty International.
00:06I am calling upon you with a sense of deep distress.
00:09And I am distressed because India was known for its values of pluralism and tradition of tolerance.
00:15However, the India that we see today looks like a very different country.
00:19In our country now, an 83-year-old father's time Swami can be put behind bars only because he has been critical of the government.
00:28Likewise, there have been several other instances of individuals who have been critical of the government,
00:34whether through a simple social media post or by participating in peaceful protests,
00:39who have been put behind prisons and have been criminalized and demonized.
00:44It has become dangerous to stand up against injustice in today's India.
00:48Amnesty India has had to close its office.
00:51Amnesty India's bank accounts have been frozen and we haven't been able to pay salary to our colleagues for months now,
00:57especially so in today's distressing COVID times.
01:00This happened because we brought out two reports.
01:04One was a report that we brought out on the Delhi violence that took place earlier this year,
01:09documenting police complicity in the violence.
01:12And the other was a report documenting human rights violations in Kashmir.
01:16Now both these have been verified by independent observers.
01:20We do understand, Prime Minister, that you want India to play an important role at the United Nations and at the Global Forum.
01:27And we want India to do that too.
01:29However, the fundamental principles of the United Nations is human rights.
01:34And how will we uphold human rights values for the whole world when in our own country we are cracking down on dissent?
01:41Our Supreme Court had said that dissent is the safety valve of democracy.
01:47I do call upon you, Prime Minister, to ensure that those who do human rights work do not face crackdown.