Khurram Parvez’s arrest follows Indian officials’ move to stop him from attending United Nations rights council session in Geneva.
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On September 16 at 12:30 am, police officers came to Khurram Parvez’s home in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir, arrested him without presenting a warrant, and took him to the Kothi Bagh police station, where he remains in arbitrary detention.
Under the Right to Reply, India countered Pakistan for raising the issue of alleged human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir, terming its “unsolicited and unwarranted comments” as “factually incorrect and bear no relationship to reality”. FIDH and OMCT are both members of ProtectDefenders.eu, the European Union Human Rights Defenders Mechanism implemented by global civil society.
An Indian official told Human Rights Watch that Parvez was stopped from traveling and detained for questioning because he is being investigated for inciting violence.
This is the first such high profile arrest of a human rights activist in Kashmir in the recent past and is seen as part of government’s crackdown on civil society in the valley that is critical of the Mehbooba Mufti led government’s use of excessive force to quell the current uprising. You have now viewed your allowance of free articles.
A security personnel maintaining vigil to enforce curfew like restrictions at Amira Kadal in Srinagar on Monday.
The latest wave of unrest was triggered by the death of Burhan Wani, a separatist militant who was cornered by Indian security officials in the remote area of Kokernang and shot in early July. Some protesters, including children, were blinded by pellets fired from riot control guns. The government shut down local newspapers for three days, blocked mobile internet services temporarily, and ordered local cable operators to block the transmission of five news channels on television.
India slammed Pakistan for continually referring to the UN Security Council Resolutions on Jammu & Kashmir, saying that Islamabad “very conveniently forgets its own obligation under these resolutions which is to acefirst vacate the illegal occupation of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir”.
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A Kashmiri engineer working in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh was charged with sedition in August for allegedly sharing or liking a Facebook post calling for the Indian government to withdraw from the former princedom.
