Amnesty demands repeal of Public Safety Act in Indian-administered Kashmir

In this April 24, 2017 file photo, a member of the Indian security forces throws a stone during cashes with Kashmiri students in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk area. Rights organizations have frequently criticized Indian security forces for using brutal tactics to suppress dissenting voices in Indian-administered Kashmir. (AFP)

• The Act helps the government subject people to ‘revolving door detentions,’ claim rights activists
• NGOs say 70 percent victims of state torture in Indian Kashmir are civilians, not militants

NEW DELHI: Amnesty International in its latest report on Kashmir has called for the removal of an insidious Public Safety Act (PSA), a legislation imposed in Indian-administered Kashmir that allows for administrative detention for up to two years. The rights body calls it a “lawless law” that is “violative of international human rights.”
The Amnesty had originally planned to release the report in Srinagar on Wednesday in a scheduled press conference, but the authorities did not allow the global body to go ahead with the event. Later, the report was released online globally.
“We have been denied official permission to hold the event, citing ‘prevailing law and order situation,’” Nazia Erum of Amnesty International told Arab News on Thursday.
Titled “Tyranny of a lawless law: Detention without charge or trial under the J&K Public Safety Act,” the report says that the PSA circumvents the criminal justice system in the state to undermine accountability, transparency and respect for human rights. It also asserts that the legislation violates several of India’s obligations under international human rights laws, including respecting detainees’ fair trial rights.
“This Act is contributing to inflaming tensions between the state authorities and local populace and must be immediately repealed,” said Aakar Patel, head of Amnesty International India. 
The Amnesty did the case studies of 201 detainees and found gross abuses of law by the authorities, who have been using the PSA as an instrument of arbitrary detention to deny people their freedom after getting released from prison on court orders.
Some news reports, citing government data, say that between 2007 and 2016, over 2,400 people were detained under the PSA. However, the courts did not find any merit in a majority of these cases and about 60 percent of these people were released. In 2016, 525 people had been detained under the Act.
Kashmir-based Zahoor Wani, who did the lead research for the Amnesty, said the police use the law “as a safety net” to arbitrarily detain people who would be released otherwise.
The report says that even children were not spared under the Act, adding that it had become a plaything in the hands of the executive who could subject individuals to “revolving door detentions,” and used the legislation to undermine the criminal justice system.
The global human rights body also called upon the Indian government to “initiate a prompt, independent and impartial investigations into all allegations of unlawful detention and torture or other ill treatment in custody and bring to justice those responsible.”
Patel said the state High Court “routinely quashes” detention orders which failed to comply with procedural safeguards, though “it does little to tackle the impunity enjoyed by the executive authorities.”
He demanded that the new state government, which would be elected later this year, should “break with the past and show the people of Jammu and Kashmir that their rights matter. It must not waste this opportunity.”
In March this year, two NGOs based in the Kashmir valley highlighted 432 cases of suspected human rights violations and brutality by security forces in a scathing report titled “Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in J&K.”
The report claimed that nearly “70% of torture victims are civilians (not militants as claimed by the government) and 11% died during or as a result of torture.”
It added that electrocution, ‘water-boarding’ and sexual torture were some of the techniques used to violate the bodies of civilians.
The government, however, denies such charges.
In March this year, three special rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) wrote a letter to the Indian government, asking for updates on justice provided on 76 cases of torture and arbitrary killing based on a June 2018 report published by it.
The UNHRC report had alleged that 42 out of 76 civilians had been killed by Indian security forces. In 2018 alone, out of 13 cases listed by the UNHRC, 4 children were killed by security forces.
India, however, rejected the UNHRC report, doubted its “credibility and objectivity,” and announced it would no longer entertain any communication with the HRC’s Special Rapporteurs on its report.