Counterview / by Counterview Desk

In a letter to the Government of India (GoI), three senior United Nations (UN) officials – Elina Steinerte, vice-chair of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; Mary Lawlor, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; and Fernand de Varennes, special rapporteur on minority issues – have said that the arrest of veteran activist Father Stan Swamy in October 2020 marks “the escalation of harassment the human rights defender has been subjected to since 2018.”
The letter, sent to GoI on November 3, 2020 but made public Mary Lawlor through a tweet on January 11, after giving two months time to send across a reply, expresses “serious concern” over the manner in which National Investigative Agency (NIA) officers have treated a senior human rights defender, suspecting, the intention appears to be to delegitimise “his peaceful human rights work.”
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