By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, June 1, 2022. An international organization that honors human rights defenders across the world has chosen late Jesuit Father Stan Swamy for this year’s Martin Ennals Award.
“This is an acknowledgement of the work and legacy Fr Stan Swamy has left behind for all of us to carry on,” says a press note from Henri Tiphagne, member of the national working secretary of Human Rights Defenders Alert-India.
The award will be given at a function on June 2 in Geneva and Jesuit Father Xavier Soreng will receive it on behalf of Father Swamy.
The award is managed by the Martin Ennals Foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland. More than 60 defenders from 34 countries, including HRDA-India, are associated with the award that honor human rights defenders – individuals and organizations –that have shown “exceptional commitment to defending and promoting human rights, despite the risks involved, Tiphagne’s note says.
The award strives to provide the defenders “with much needed protection, raising their public profile and gathering international support for their work.
Father Swamy, who had dedicated his life the tribal people of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, died July 5, 2021 as undertrial prisoner in a Mumbai hospital. He was then 84.
The National Investigation Agency, India’s primary counter-terrorist task force, arrested Father Swamy on October 8, 2020, from Bagaicha, his center in Namkum near Ranchi, the Jharkhand state capital. The agency accused him of having links with outlawed Maoist groups.
He was among 16 people arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for their alleged role in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence. Father Swamy had denied all charges. As he suffered from Parkinson’s disease, he had requested bail on medical grounds, which was rejected multiple times. While incarcerated, his health deteriorated and he died.
During the three decades he was in Jharkhand, Father Swamy worked on various issues of the adivasi communities such as land, forest and labor rights. He questioned the non-implementation of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, which stipulated setting up of a Tribes Advisory Council with members solely of the adivasi community for their protection, well-being and development in the state.
In a statement given two days before his arrest, Swamy had said that he had challenged the “indiscriminate” arrest of thousands of young adivasis and moolvasis (original inhabitants) with investigating agencies labeling them as “Naxals” or Maoists.
Father Swamy had filed a public interest petition in the Jharkhand High Court against the state, asking for all such undertrial prisoners to be released on a personal bond, and the conduct of a speedy trial. He had also sought the appointment of a judicial commission to investigate the reasons for delays in the trial process.
Swamy’s work also involved opposition to the setting up of “land banks,”, which he argued would free up land belonging to the community to set up small and big industries.
The Martin Ennals Award is set up in honor of Martin Ennals, a British human rights activist who served as the secretary general of Amnesty International from 1968 to 1980.
He cofounded the human rights organizations Article 19, founded in 187, to defend and promote freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide, and HURIDOCS (Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems).