The US-based NGO Human Rights Watch has equated India with China in their suppression of dissent and free expression and “systematic discrimination against religious minorities”.

The report came on a day families of jailed Indian dissenters said the spirit of the accused remained unbroken despite the crackdown they faced for opposing government policies.

In the preface, titled “A new model for global leadership on human rights”, to the NGO’s World Report 2023, its acting executive director Tirana Hassan wrote: “...And the Biden administration, despite its rhetoric about prioritising democracy and human rights in Asia, has tempered criticism of abuses and increasing authoritarianism in India, Thailand, the Philippines, and elsewhere in the region for security and economic reasons, instead of recognising that all are linked.”

She added: “Meanwhile, as discomfort around the Chinese government’s repressive ambitions has grown, governments, including those of Australia, Japan, Canada, the UK, EU, and US have looked to cultivate trade and security alliances with India, taking cover behind its brand as the ‘world’s largest democracy’.

“But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has mimicked many of the same abuses that have enabled Chinese state repression — systematic discrimination against religious minorities, stifling of peaceful dissent, and use of technology to suppress free expression — to tighten its grip on power.”

The report reiterates the adverse view Human Rights Watch holds of the human rights violations by security forces, and the crackdown on journalists, in Jammu and Kashmir.

The chapter on India also says: “The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government continued its systematic discrimination and stigmatisation of religious and other minorities, particularly Muslims. BJP supporters increasingly committed violent attacks against targeted groups. The government’s Hindu majoritarian ideology was reflected in bias in institutions, including the justice system and constitutional authorities like the National Human Rights Commission.

“Authorities intensified efforts to silence civil society activists and independent journalists by using politically motivated criminal charges, including terrorism, to jail those exposing or criticising government abuses. The government used foreign funding regulations and allegations of financial irregularities to harass rights groups, political opponents, and others.”

The activists’ collective, Campaign Against State Repression, held a meeting titled “Conspiracy of conspiracy cases” at the CPM party school building here on Thursday. There, relatives of those jailed in a 2013 Maoist links case, the 2018 Elgaar Parishad-Maoist conspiracy case and the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case reaffirmed the resolve of the accused to keep up their dissent against what they see as unjust acts by governments.

Miranda House assistant professor Jenny Rowena P. said: “It has been very tough but they have continued reading, writing and thinking. We are not defeated, We should not fear, and must keep fighting for justice and make them get the message that we are not afraid.”

Rowena is married to Delhi University associate professor Hany Babu M.T. who is in a Navi Mumbai jail, awaiting trial in the Elgaar Parishad case.

Among the speakers were A.S. Vasantha Kumari, wife of academic G.N. Saibaba, and Nargis Saifi, wife of Khalid Saifi who is in prison in a 2020 case that links the protests against the new citizenship matrix to an alleged conspiracy behind the 2022 Delhi riots.

Saibaba, a former professor at Delhi’s Ram Lal Anand College who is paraplegic, is serving a life sentence in Nagpur for his association with banned Maoists in a 2013 case. He was first arrested in 2014.

Nargis said: “We have always celebrated Independence Day like Id. Why do we have to constantly prove that we are patriots?”

Joseph Xavier, Bangalore-based convener of the Fr Stan Swamy Legacy Committee of the Jesuits, cited how Boston-based firm Arsenal Consulting had found fabricated evidence planted on the computer of Ranchi priest Stan Swamy. Arrested in the Elgaar Parishad case, Swamy died of post-Covid complications while in judicial custody.

In a message read out at the gathering, Xavier said: “What shocked me from the Arsenal report was that Stan was under surveillance since 2014. What changed in this country in 2014? Who masterminded targeting Fr Stan? Was it Pune police or the NIA or someone who controlled all these agencies? Why was Stan targeted? While I may not know the answers to all the questions, I know why Stan was targeted and killed.”

He added: “Stan was considered by the State a thorn in the flesh. The crony capitalists and the junta of the State considered an 82-yearold Jesuit priest, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, an enemy of the state. Why? He joined hands with the Adivasis and challenged the ruthless rape of nature by the corporate (world) in connivance with the State.... The State must ask itself whether it was following constitutional provisions or behaving as an institution above the Constitution.”