{"id":33781,"date":"2020-09-30T08:26:38","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T02:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/?p=33781"},"modified":"2020-09-30T08:26:38","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T02:56:38","slug":"eu-raises-concerns-as-amnesty-international-halts-india-operation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=33781","title":{"rendered":"EU raises concerns as Amnesty International halts India operations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The government defended its actions and said Amnesty International is in \u201cclear contravention\u201d of Indian law<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

\"AA view of Amnesty International India office at Indiranagar, in Bengaluru, Karnataka on September 29, 2020. | Photo Credit: K. Murali Kumar<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Expressing \u201cconcerns\u201d about the government\u2019s investigation into Amnesty International (AI), the European Union said it hopes the global human rights agency can continue its work in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the government defended its actions and said AI is in \u201cclear contravention\u201d of Indian law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The action against AI including freezing their funds, followed a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry, and is part of the government\u2019s scrutiny of more than 20 international NGOs including Greenpeace, Compassion International, and Ford Foundation, over the past few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have already raised the issue with our Indian interlocutors in New Delhi and in Brussels, expressing our concerns and the expectation that these issues will be solved, and we will continue to do so,\u201d EU spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security policy Nabila Massrali said, in a response to The Hindu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot prejudging the outcome of any investigation or judicial proceedings, the European Union highly values the work of Amnesty International worldwide and hopes that the matter will be resolved, allowing Amnesty to continue its activities in India without interruption,\u201d Ms. Massrali added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment on the EU\u2019s comments.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a broad defence of actions by various agencies against AI for the past decade, calling it a \u201cbipartisan and purely legal approach towards Amnesty\u201d, which has now suspended its India operations, claiming a \u201cwitch-hunt\u201d by the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn order to circumvent the FCRA regulations, Amnesty UK remitted large amounts of money to four entities registered in India, by classifying it as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). A significant amount of foreign money was also remitted to Amnesty (India) without MHA\u2019s approval under FCRA. This malafide rerouting of money was in contravention of extant legal provisions,\u201d said the MHA in a rare public statement on the NGO entitled \u201cHuman Rights cannot be an excuse for defying the law of the land\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cIndia, by settled law, does not allow interference in domestic political debates by entities funded by foreign donations,\u201d the MHA added, in a pointed reference to AI\u2019s reports on alleged human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as its reference to Delhi Police investigations into the February riots in Delhi where 53 people were killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The government said the enquiry into Amnesty International had been undertaken by both the UPA and the NDA regimes over the past decade which, it said, showed that the \u201centire fault lies in the dubious processes adopted by Amnesty to secure funds for its operations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Congress-led UPA government had blocked over \u20b95 crore foreign funds to Amnesty between 2010 and 2013 after receiving allegedly adverse intelligence reports. In 2014, the Modi government blocked Amnesty\u2019s request to receive a \u20b93 crore foreign donation as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Since Amnesty International Foundation and its three subsidiaries \u2014 Amnesty India Private Limited, Indians for Amnesty International Trust and Amnesty International South Asia Foundation \u2014 are not registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, 2010 (FCRA), a pre-requisite for civil society groups, associations and NGOs to receive foreign donations, it used the \u201cprior permission\u201d route, which meant applying to the government each time it wanted to accept a foreign donation. In 2019, the Enforcement Directorate also served a show-cause notice to Amnesty for alleged violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) involving \u20b951.72 crore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the past five years, the government has taken action against several foreign donors including U.S.-based Compassion International, Ford Foundation, World Movement for Democracy (WMD), Open Society Foundations (OSF) and National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Ford Foundation was taken off its watchlist after protests from several U.S. Congressmen and the Obama administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The same year, the registration of Greenpeace International was cancelled on the premise that it compromised the \u201ceconomic security\u201d of the country by allegedly orchestrating protests at coal plants and at other developmental projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

With inputs from The Hindu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government defended its actions and said Amnesty International is in \u201cclear contravention\u201d of Indian law A view of Amnesty International India office at Indiranagar, in Bengaluru, Karnataka on September 29, 2020. | Photo Credit: K. Murali Kumar Expressing \u201cconcerns\u201d about the government\u2019s investigation into Amnesty International (AI), the European Union said it hopes the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33757,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}