Irfan Mehraj, a journalist from Kashmir, has been detained by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India on suspicion of “terrorism” as New Delhi keeps up its campaign against journalists in the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory.
NIA, India’s top “anti-terror” agency, said in a tweet on Tuesday that Mehraj’s cooperation with the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), an organization run by imprisoned human rights campaigner Khurram Parvez, was the reason the arrest occurred a day earlier.
In November 2021, Parvez was detained on suspicion of “terrorism” and other offenses.
The JKCCS “was sponsoring terror activities in the [Kashmir] valley and had also been in propagating a separatist agenda in the Valley under the garb of protecting human rights,” the NIA said in a statement on Tuesday.
It further stated that organizations, including JKCCS, were being investigated for receiving both domestic and foreign donations while maintaining connections to “terrorist” organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen, which are prohibited (HM).
In October 2020, the agency began what it referred to as “an NGO-terror funding case.”
Mehraj, who founded Wande Magazine, collaborated with the website TwoCircles.net. He has written for numerous foreign news outlets, including as Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera.
In 2019, the Hindu-nationalist government of India removed the region’s semi-autonomy, claiming that this was done to combat “terrorism”. To put an end to the decades-long armed struggle, New Delhi has stationed tens of thousands of its soldiers. India has accused Pakistan of funding the armed organizations; Islamabad has refuted this accusation.
The disputed region is claimed by both India and Pakistan, but only a portion of it is actually under their control.
The United Nations Human Rights Council called for an international investigation into the claims of rights violations in 2018, and Indian soldiers have been accused of severe human rights abuses.
Since 2019, the Hindu-nationalist government of India has increased its crackdown on media freedom by imprisoning a number of journalists. While Asif Sultan has been imprisoned for more than five years, Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah, who owned the website Kashmir Walla, was detained in February of last year. He was detained in accordance with the UAPA, also known as the Illegal Activities (Prevention) Act, which makes obtaining bail virtually impossible.
Mehraj’s father, Mehraj-ud-Din Bhat, told India’s The Wire that while on duty on Monday evening, Mehraj received a request from the national “anti-terror” agency to appear at its offices in Srinagar.
“My son is a good kid. His output says volumes about him. I really believe that the truth will triumph and that he will receive justice, Bhat added.
These arrests, according to a top journalist living in Srinagar, the region’s capital and largest city with a Muslim majority, are being made to “perpetuate fear.”
“There are times when you feel like no journalists are speaking, and nobody will be touched. Nonetheless, arrests like this demonstrate that the situation is abnormal, the journalist noted while requesting anonymity.
“No one is speaking or writing about anything, yet there is still a great deal of anxiety.”
An independent group that supports press freedom in India, The Free Speech Collective, stated that the arrest was “an worrying sign of how far the authorities will go to clamp down on independent media.”
According to co-founder Geeta Seshu, “Mehraj has been consistently researching and writing on important issues, from the plight of Kashmiri Pandits to encounter killings, and these charges, under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), will silence the kind of stories he wrote about.
Journalists in Kashmir are harassed and defamed for being ‘anti-national’ by being detained, searched, served with show cause notes, and removed from aircraft. The government must cease persecuting Kashmir’s independent journalists, who wish to do their trade without fear or favor.
Amnesty India demanded the journalist’s immediate release, describing the arrest as “a farce” and related to a “terror funding case.”
Irfan Mehraj and other human rights advocates should be supported and protected, not attacked, according to Aakar Patel, head of the board at Amnesty International India.
“The oppression needs to end. The criminalization of legitimate human rights activity is exceedingly concerning, and it needs to stop right away.
The UN’s Mary Lawlor expressed “grave concern” at Mehraj’s arrest and demanded his “immediate release.” Mary Lawlor is a special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.
Lawlor’s appeal was supported by the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. Mehraj was “targeted in revenge for his efforts exposing human rights breaches,” the organization claimed.
Mehbooba Mufti, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, denounced the arrest on Twitter and claimed that regulations like the UAPA are “constantly” being violated.
The Kashmir Journalist Federation also denounced the NIA’s arrest and claimed Mehraj had been transferred from Srinagar to New Delhi.
Last year, a group of UN specialists denounced the detention of Parvez, the founder and president of JKCCS, saying it had a “chilling effect” on the region’s civil society, human rights advocates, and journalists.
Irfan Mehraj has been arrested under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act
Parvez was renowned for his work capturing and reporting on grave human rights abuses, including as the forcible disappearance and unlawful killing in Kashmir under Indian administration.
Under UAPA, which human rights organizations have branded “draconian,” the NIA Special Court in New Delhi five times extended his incarceration.
The UN experts claimed the law “allows the identification of any individual as a terrorist, avoiding the necessity to show membership or association with prohibited groups,” when they presented their findings to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
We urge the Indian government to stop harassing activists and civil society groups, including Mr. Parvez, who provides information and testimony about human rights abuses to UN human rights bodies and procedures, they continued.
Together with two other campaigners from Venezuela and Chad, Parvez earned the Martin Ennals Award in January, one of the most renowned human rights awards in the world.
