“Detention must be carried out under procedures established by the law, children must not be kept in the same facility as adults, and untried detainees should be separated from convicted children.”
International rights watch dog, Amnesty International, on Saturday demanded immediate halt to “Wrongful” detentions in Jammu and Kashmir.
“Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir should end the use of the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA) to arbitrarily detain people, including children,” Amnesty International (AI) India, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said today.
“The PSA violates international due process standards and should be repealed,” the rights defender groups said in a joint statement issued by AI.
The rights groups observed that between 9 July – when protests and violent clashes broke out in the state following the killing of a leader of the armed group Hizbul Mujahideen – and 6 October, authorities have detained over 400 people, including children, under the PSA.
The PSA is an administrative detention law that allows detention without charge or trial for up to two years in some cases. Following an amendment in 2012, the PSA expressly prohibits the detention of anyone under 18.
“The use of the PSA to detain people, particularly children, violates a range of human rights, and its increasing use in recent weeks undermines the rule of law and further entrenches impunity in Kashmir,” said Sam Zarifi, ICJ Asia Director. “Police should end the use of the PSA; if people are suspected of committing offences, they should be properly charged and given fair trials.”
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which monitors the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – to which India is a state party – has stated that administrative detention in the name of security “presents severe risks of arbitrary deprivation of liberty” and “would normally amount to arbitrary detention as other effective measures addressing the threat, including the criminal justice system, would be available”.
Amnesty International India, Human Rights Watch and the ICJ oppose all such systems of administrative detention, as they invariably circumvent the protections of the ordinary criminal procedure, the statement added.
The PSA contains vague and overbroad terms such as “security of the state” and “public order” that are not precisely defined, and therefore do not meet the requirement of legality under international law.
The PSA does not provide for judicial review of detentions.
It also protects officials from legal proceedings for anything “done or intended to be done in good faith”, which is inconsistent with the right to remedy for arbitrary detention or other human rights violations. “The law has often been used to detain people on vague grounds for long periods, ignoring regular criminal justice safeguards,” the statement said.
The UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice say that the detention before trial of children shall be avoided to the extent possible and limited to exceptional circumstances.
“Detention must be carried out under procedures established by the law, children must not be kept in the same facility as adults, and untried detainees should be separated from convicted children.”
In the past, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has held that certain detentions under the PSA amount to arbitrary detentions.
In November 2014, Indian Vice-President Hamid Ansari said the use of laws like the PSA to commit human rights violations “reflects poorly on the State and its agents”.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders has stated that laws such as the PSA allow the state to wrongfully target human rights defenders, and called for the repeal of the law.
Amnesty International India, Human Rights Watch and the ICJ believe that anyone detained under the PSA must either be charged promptly with a recognizable criminal offence or prosecuted in a fair trial, or else be released.
“Not prosecuting people suspected of committing offences can also violate the human rights of the victims of these offences,” the rights groups said.
The Jammu and Kashmir government is led by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which also leads the Union government. “The PDP had criticized the PSA earlier, but the use of the law has continued under its administration,” the groups said.
“The central and state governments have spoken about following the principle of Insaaniyat, or humanity, in dealing with the crisis in Jammu and Kashmir,” said Aakar Patel, Executive Director at Amnesty International India. “But detaining children under the PSA is neither humane nor lawful.”
