Human rights defender Khurram Parvez has spent over 570 days arbitrarily detained by the Indian authorities. Yesterday, he spent his 14th marriage anniversary behind bars, separated from his wife Sameena and his family.
Khurram’s birthday on the 19th of June will also mark 575 days – almost nineteen months – of arbitrary detention by Indian authorities who have held him under the oppressive Unlawful Activities Prevention Act 2019. The authorities are forcing the issue to intensify repressions against Khurram and his colleagues in the JKCCS and APDP. These are all politically motivated acts by the Indian government, persecuting key human rights defenders of Jammu and Kashmir, to stifle dissent and criticism.
Ironically being behind the bars of injustice, Khurram has unwaveringly dedicated his life to the advocacy of truth – exposing heinous acts of enforced disappearance and other human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir and in other parts of Asia.
Enforced disappearance and other human rights violations by authoritarian states in Asia are evils that must be ended. Rights defenders who work to protect and fulfill human rights are targeted by the very states who fail on such mandated duties. Khurram’s incarceration is just one of the many acts of authoritarian states to protect–not human rights, freedom, and democracy–but their own self-serving interests.
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances and its member organizations in ten countries challenge these inhumane actions of the state and demand for the release of Khurram and colleague Irfan Mehraj. Let them be united with their families. Let them exercise the individual democratic rights to advocate, express and organize.
Release Khurram Parvez! Release Irfan Mehraj!
Protection, not persecution, of human rights defenders!
Jose Marie “Joey” Faustino
Secretary-General
AFAD