• The UN body also noted that some of these detainees were “elderly and in poor health”. Varvara Rao, an 80-year-old poet and activist, and 83-year old tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, are among many jailed in the case.
• It reiterated Michelle Bachelet’s, the UN human rights body’s high commissioner, earlier call to the Centre to ensure that no one was “detained for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly – and to do its utmost, in law and policy, to protect India’s robust civil society”.
• Bachelet had in October expressed concern over the use of “vaguely defined laws” such as the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act to “stifle the voices” of activists and non-governmental organisations in India.
• In a statement, she had highlighted Swamy’s arrest. “Most recently, the 83-year-old Catholic priest Stan Swamy, a long-standing activist engaged in defending the rights of marginalised groups, was charged and reportedly remains in detention, despite his poor health,” read her statement. Bachelet had asked the government to ensure that arrests were not made for exercising rights to freedom.
• The UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders had criticised the government’s treatment of human rights activists such as Swamy,.
• “India is a state which doesn’t properly protect human rights defenders,” Mary Lawlor had said. “I am appalled by the treatment of human rights defenders such as Father Stan Swamy, who embodies solidarity.”
• Lawlor had said that she and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had written to the Indian government in November over the arrest of human rights activists but had not received a reply yet. “Governments are given a 60-day period during which they are expected to reply,”.
• Further, rights group Human Rights Watch in its “World Report 2021”, released on January 20, said the Narendra Modi-led government harassed, detained and prosecuted its critics through “politically motivated” cases and regulations in the last year.
• The report took note of the Union government’s decisions and the ruling BJP’s involvement in several incidents like the clampdown in Jammu and Kashmir, violence in Delhi in February, cases against activists in the Bhima Koregaon case, and crackdown on foreign funds of non-governmental organisations.
• The report had mentioned the arrest of activists in the Bhima Koregaon case, stating that the police investigations was “biased and aimed at silencing dissent”.
• “Indian authorities brought politically motivated cases, including under draconian sedition and terrorism laws, against human rights defenders, student activists, academics, opposition leaders, and critics,”.

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