India Raids Home of Prominent Kashmiri Human Rights Defenders

On 1st August, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India, which has led the crackdown against human rights defenders and pro-freedom activists in Kashmir, raided multiple locations in Kashmir including the residence of Advocate Parvez Imroz.

Imroz is a prominent human rights defender who has been awarded with Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize and also the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize. He was given these awards for his documentation of the human rights abuses that take place in Kashmir.

Imroz’s residence was only one of the many that were raided, as numerous other activists and civilians also informed us of the agency’s raids on their homes on the same day.

Indian authorities maintain that the human rights organizations are being investigated for “terror-funding”, a charge that the human rights defenders vehemently deny. The concocted nature of the charge is revealed in the case of prominent human rights defender, Khurram Parvez, who has been under illegal detention for almost two years now. No charge against him has been proven in the court.