Why Amnesty Has Irked Indian Govts & Why It Is Hard To Remove – By Aakar Patel
….To illustrate what sort of actions governments take, let us consider what has happened under this government. On 15 August 2016, a sedition case was filed against Amnesty India by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the youth wing of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party….
Amnesty’s accounts were frozen and it was accused of offences under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. A writ was moved in high court seeking relief on the grounds that the freezing was unlawful. This was granted and the accounts could be accessed. On 15 November 2019, the Central Bureau of Investigation conducted a search and seizure (‘raid’) at the Amnesty office….
The US State department’s 2020 report on human rights in India, the recent United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s report which marks India as a ‘country of particular concern’, the European Union’s members of parliament’s motion on India and United Nations Special Rapporteurs’ frequent interventions on India all make reference to material gathered by Amnesty. This may be seen as a reflection of the organisation’s credibility and may also be seen as a reason why a government might want it to be shut down….
