by Mathew Jacob, June 02, 2016.

The middle ground for human rights
work throughout India is eroding fast. Social activists, civil
society leaders and “right to information” activists—who have
always stood against the exploitation of Dalits, tribes and other
marginalised communities—are increasingly facing the wrath of the
state, despite it being the largest democracy in the world. 

Instead
of treating these activists as partners in a very vibrant democratic
process, the state more often perceives them as threats to “national
security” and “national interests”. 
As a result, the state is
increasingly targeting, harassing, imprisoning—and sometimes even
killing—many of these defenders. 



The situation is even worse in the
conflict zones of central and northeast India, as well as in Kashmir,
where anyone critical of the state is immediately subject to
suspicion, intimidation, harassment, torture and death.


It is against this backdrop that Human
Rights Defenders Alert – India (HRDA) intervened in 104 cases of
human rights defenders with the National Human Rights Commission of
India (NHRC) and various United Nations (UN) human rights mechanisms
in 2015. 

During the same year, HRDA intervened in 11 cases of murder,
60 cases of harassment, physical assault, physical and verbal threat,
and 33 cases of arbitrary arrest and detention. Nearly 80% of these
cases were of human rights defenders working on protecting land,
natural resources, tribal rights and exposing corruption. 
Twenty-four
cases were those who used Right to Information (RTI) applications and
11 cases were reprisals against journalists, writers and
socio-political thinkers. 
In seven cases, peacefully protesting
citizens faced severe crackdowns and excessive use of force by state
officials. 
The most common tactic that the state uses to threaten and
silence human rights defenders is arrests in false and fabricated
cases.


In the first quarter of 2016, HRDA has
intervened in more than 60 cases. This period has witnessed
systematic attacks on journalists, lawyers, researchers and activists
in the state of Chhattisgarh. In other parts of India, crackdowns on
student movements are becoming common, including charging them under
fabricated cases.


HRDA was initially conceived as a
national desk on human rights defenders, which matured to become a
national network of human rights defenders with a membership of more
than 1,000 individuals and organisations. 
HRDA is a network of
concerned citizens, acting as volunteer human rights defenders, who
are willing to stand up for human rights in the country, while
focusing on strengthening and protecting human rights defenders.


People’s Watch, a national
organisation with headquarters in Madurai, initiated HRDA in 2009
based on engagements with human rights defenders in 18 states. 
People’s Watch itself faced reprisals from the government when its
Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) license was wrongly
suspended for 540 days in 2012-2014. It needed an order of the Delhi
High Court to restore the license.


HRDA has five regional desks run
primarily by volunteers and part-time workers, functioning from New
Delhi, Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Bangalore and Guwahati. 
Volunteerism in
HRDA strengthens the solidarity among human rights defenders,
building a network that is engaging in human rights protection as a
political choice rather than a career path. Each desk identifies and
fact-checks cases of attacks, threats, detention and disappearances
of human rights defenders in their regions. 

The desks then send
urgent appeals for action to the NHRC, concerned police and
administrative authorities at the state level and in severe cases, to
the concerned UN Special Rapporteurs and specialised international
organisations working for human rights defenders. The goal is to
create a nationwide network of human rights defenders reaching to
every corner of the country, so that monitoring of human rights
defenders’ cases becomes accessible and human rights defenders can
connect to each other in solidarity and support.


HRDA also conducts periodic regional
and state level trainings for human rights defenders, to create
awareness and knowledge with regard to available national and
international protection mechanisms. HRDA identifies human rights
defenders from each district in a state and train them to document
and disseminate information about human rights defenders in distress.
This enables grassroots human rights defenders working to connect and
communicate issues to a larger audience which otherwise find no or
very limited space in media. 

HRDA also initiates fact-finding
missions and trial observations in selected cases. 
Based on a needs
assessment, HRDA facilitates pro bono legal, medical and relocation
assistance to the defenders.

Interventions by HRDA, with the NHRC
and UN Special Rapporteurs, have made significant inroads in certain
cases. However, the majority of the cases with the NHRC continue to
be pending given the bureaucratic nature of the institution. 

Recently, based on HRDA’s interventions, NHRC has ordered an
independent investigation into the systematic attacks on human rights
defenders in the state of Chhattisgarh. 
In many instances,
communication by NHRC alarms the state and can provide immediate
relief to human rights defenders—such as releasing them from
custody or moving them to a safer location.  But the NHRC still
has a long way to go to shed its image of just another toothless
government body.


Given the severe shrinking of
democratic space in India, HRDA, along with several other
organisations, is conceptualising a people’s commission that will
attend to the issues of attacks on human rights defenders, freedoms
of expression, association, assembly, protest and dissent, through a
people’s tribunal. We will finalize and publicize the procedures
and structure of this commission during the first national convention
later this month.


For HRDA, using the national and state
human rights institutions strategically means recognising their
powers and roles, despite the fact that they are politically
influenced by the government. A collective effort, keeping aside all
differences, is critical for human rights defenders. 
Initiatives like
HRDA can only be successful when they are led by human rights
defenders themselves and not by one organisation or group.

SOURCE: Open democracy