Indian authorities exploited FATF’s recommendations to stifle dissent, says rights groups
Saturday, November 04, 2023
Global human rights organizations have urged the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to call on India to stop prosecuting and intimidating human rights activists, defenders and non-profit organizations in the country under the guise of fighting terrorist financing.
Amnesty International, Charity & Security Network and Human Rights Watch said in a joint statement that the global terrorist financing and money laundering watchdog will conduct its fourth periodic review of India's anti-illegal financing record on November 6 (Monday).
Human rights watchdogs said Indian authorities have used FATF recommendations aimed at preventing terrorist financing as part of a coordinated campaign to restrict civil space and suppress rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.
“Draconian laws introduced or amended for this purpose include the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Their actions violated both FATF standards and international human rights law,” the groups said.
"Indian authorities have introduced laws to crack down on the human rights work of human rights defenders, activists and non-profit organizations in the country," said Aakar Patel, Chairman of Amnesty International India.
"The authorities are using false foreign financing and allegations of terrorism to target, intimidate, harass and silence critics, in clear violation of FATF standards."
Too broad a definition of "terrorist act"
During its third FATF review in 2010, the Government of India itself recognized the risk posed by the non-profit sector as "low".
Since Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, authorities have used overly broad provisions in domestic law to silence critics and shut down their operations, including revoking their foreign financing licenses and prosecuting them with anti-terrorism measure. law and financial regulations, according to the statement.
The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, first enacted in 1976, was aimed at preventing and regulating foreign interference in Indian politics. But in 2010, the government overhauled the legislation with a greater focus on nonprofits while loosening oversight of foreign funding of political parties, rights groups said.
"Over the past 10 years, authorities have used this law to revoke the licenses of more than 20,600 nonprofits, including 6,000 in 2022, blocking their access to foreign funding."
In July 2022, the groups reported that India's Ministry of Home Affairs had deleted the list of non-profit organizations whose FCRA licenses had been revoked without any explanation and stopped publishing the data.
The Indian government has particularly targeted human rights groups and activists who seek to protect the rights of the most socially and economically marginalized populations.
According to media reports, in 2023 the Home Office revoked the FCRA licenses of a leading research group, the Center for Policy Research, and a social justice advocacy organization, the Center for Equity Studies.
Indian authorities also frequently use the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), India's primary counter-terrorism law, to arbitrarily arrest and detain human rights defenders and activists.
The law was introduced as a reform of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2004, but the government amended it in 2008, 2012 and 2019 to include many problematic provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
These include its overly broad definition of a "terrorist act", the abolition of the presumption of innocence and provisions for long-term detention without trial or charge.
To qualify for FATF membership, India amended the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in 2012 to include threats to economic security and also expanded the definition of "person" who can be charged under the Act to include international and intergovernmental organizations.
India's 2019 amendment extended the scope of the law from organizations and groups to individuals as well.
The anti-terrorism funding provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act were misused against several student activists who organized protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
The government accused the students of "organising" the February 2020 riots in Delhi that killed at least 53 people, mostly Muslims; and used the law against 16 human rights activists, eight of whom remain detained without trial as of 2018 in the Bhima Koregaon case.
11% of cases were closed for lack of evidence
Counter-terrorism funding and other measures were also misused to detain Khurram Parvez, a prominent Kashmiri human rights activist who is the program coordinator for the Jammu Kashmir Civil Society Coalition, and Irfan Mehraj, a journalist associated with the coalition.
Despite increased use of the Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act, only 2.2% of cases registered under the Act between 2016 and 2019 resulted in a court conviction.
Police closed nearly 11% of cases for lack of evidence, while the rest remained pending.
The delay in filing charges and the few acquittals in these cases show that the government is using the anti-terrorism law to keep critics locked up for years, using the trial itself as a tool to persecute and punish government critics.
The Government of India also enacted the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002 to meet the FATF membership requirements. In recent years, authorities have used the law to attack, intimidate, and harass human rights defenders, activists, and non-profit organizations by filing FCRA charges, seizing their assets, and imposing strict bail conditions.
Amnesty International India was subject to PMLA measures following the freezing of its bank accounts in September 2020, suspending its work for the past three years without the means to secure effective legal representation.
"Together, India's three laws have created a dangerous arsenal with debilitating consequences for civil society and human rights activists," said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
"The FATF should not allow the Indian government to use the organisation's recommendations for its own political ends - to silence all forms of dissent," he added.
