Justice For All Condemns Manoj Sinha’s Chicago Visit, Calls for U.S. Scrutiny of Kashmir Rights Record

CHICAGO 

Justice For All, a human rights organization accredited by the United Nations, strongly condemns the visit to Chicago by Manoj Sinha, the Lieutenant Governor appointed by New Delhi to administer Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. We call on U.S. officials, elected representatives and civic institutions not to allow international platforms to be used to sanitize the continuing repression of Kashmiris.

Sinha appeared at the IIT (BHU) Global Alumni Meet in Chicago on Sept. 7, where he presented Jammu and Kashmir as a development success story. He described the years since India revoked the region’s special constitutional status as a period of “renaissance.” He also urged members of the Indian diaspora to help promote what he called an accurate narrative of India’s transformation.

For Kashmiris, however, the record of Sinha’s administration cannot be separated from arbitrary detention, restrictions on journalism and political activity, interference with Muslim religious life, punitive demolitions, changes to land and domicile protections, and the continued concentration of policing and public-order powers in the hands of an official appointed by New Delhi.

International human rights organizations have repeatedly documented arbitrary and preventive detention in Kashmir. Human Rights Watch reported that hundreds of Kashmiris, including journalists and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned under counterterrorism and preventive-detention laws. Detainees have been held incommunicado, denied lawyers and family access, and beaten or otherwise subjected to torture and ill-treatment. Amnesty International has warned that such laws have been used to create a climate of fear.

Journalists have faced police questioning, raids, criminal cases, travel restrictions and other forms of pressure, while major Muslim congregational prayers at Srinagar’s historic Jamia Masjid have repeatedly been restricted. At the same time, the administration has exercised expanding control over institutions central to Kashmiri political, economic and religious life.
A public-relations campaign abroad should not erase this record.

Chicago has a long tradition of civic engagement and human rights advocacy. We call on Members of Congress, Illinois elected officials and Chicago-area public officials to refuse to provide political legitimacy to Sinha’s narrative without publicly raising the human rights situation in Kashmir. Manoj Sinha should not be able to come to a U.S. city and speak of a Kashmiri “renaissance” without being confronted with the experiences of the people living under occupation.