India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—Jailed Kashmiri human rights activist Khurram Parvez has been named one of the 100 most influential people of 2022 by Time magazine.
Others in the list published by the Time magazine include US President Joe Biden, Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Chinese president Xi Jinping.
On November 23, National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Khurram Parvez, the programme coordinator of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and chairman of the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearance, in a terror funding case.
“He had to be silenced, for his voice that resounded around the globe for his fierce fight against human rights violations and injustices in the Kashmir region,” Time magazine said.
The magazine called Parvez a “modern-day David who gave a voice to families that lost their children to enforced disappearances, allegedly by the Indian state”.
“The attacks against him speak volumes of the truth he represents at a time when the world’s largest democracy is being called out for its persecution of the more than 200 million Indian Muslims,” said the citation,
Khurram was arrested under section 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging, attempting to wage, abetting waging of war against the government), and 121A (conspiracy to commit offences punishable by Section 121); and Section 17 (raising funds for the terrorist act), 18 (conspiracy), 18B (recruiting of any person or persons for the terrorist act) and 40 (raising funds for a terrorist organization) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Earlier, Khurram, who is a programme coordinator of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and chairman of the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearance, was arrested on the intervening night of September 15 and 16, 2016.
The then Mehbooba Mufti-led government booked him under Public Safety Act (PSA). He was arrested a day before he was scheduled to travel to Switzerland to participate in a session of the UN Human Rights Council.
A local court had ordered his release from Kupwara Jail but police re-arrested him from the premises of Kupwara sub-jail and shifted him to police station Kothi Bagh here. District authorities have directed the police to lodge Khurram in Kot Balwal jail, Jammu. He was released after 76 days of prison.
“The detention order was based on a police report which claimed that policemen had seen Khurram on September 15 standing outside a mosque inciting people to shout slogans and march towards a government building. His wife has denied the claim, saying that they were at her parents’ house in another part of the city at the time”, Amnesty International had said in a statement in 2016.
A co-author of the report on unmarked nameless graves, Khurram holds a Master’s in Mass Communication and Journalism from the University of Kashmir.
Khurram, 44, had a miraculous escape in an IED blast in Kupwara during the 2004 parliamentary elections. Khurram’s colleague died in the incident while his leg was amputated and he is now using a prosthetic leg.
Earlier, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Rupert Colville, said that there was “deep concern” at the arrest of Kashmiri HR defender Khurram Parvez under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
