Last month, along with Pakistan and Iraq, India was elected to the UN Human Rights Council from Asia. The UNHRC says it ‘is responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe’, which presumably includes inside India as well
. India’s government made much of being elected (as may be expected), and its statement said the election reflects India’s unwavering commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms. We look forward to serving this objective during our tenure.’ Yes,
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I wanted to focus on a particular case that will illustrate the condition of human rights in India because there is no point in talking in abstract terms. India’s conduct on this front should be judged with respect to those whose rights it intentionally violates.
On 22 November 2025, Khurram Parvez marked four years in detention without trial. He sits hundreds of kilometres away from his home in Srinagar, held in Delhi’s Rohini jail, while his wife and two young children wait in Kashmir for a justice system that has refused to move. His imprisonment has become one of the most emblematic examples of how India’s counter-terrorism law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA, is being used to silence human rights defenders.
Even in New India, Jammu and Kashmir remains one of the most heavily militarised regions in the world. It continues to witness unlawful killings, punitive home demolitions, arbitrary arrests under abusive administrative detention laws, unlawful surveillance, and travel bans. It is a place where people already been denied basic rights have been further stripped of dignity. Residents live under a government they elected, but the central government has hollowed out its powers, as we can see in the bulldozing of a journalist’s house this week. For these reasons, Khurram Parvez’s work documenting these abuses was not only necessary it was indispensable.
For two decades, Parvez had been one of Kashmir’s most respected and renowned human rights voices. I can vouch for this because I have been on global panels where his incarceration has been discussed with concern.
As Program Coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), Parvez helped build one of the region’s most credible human rights groups. Through painstaking documentation of torture, indefinite detention, and enforced disappearances, JKCCS produced work so rigorous that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights relied extensively on it in its 2018 and 2019 reports on Kashmir.
It is precisely this work that made him a target. On 21 November 2021, the National Investigation Agency arrested him on charges of “terror funding,” “conspiracy,” and even “waging war against the state.” Four years later, despite a long list of accusations, the trial has not yet begun in his case. Parvez remains jailed with no clarity on when, or whether, he will ever see a courtroom.
He isn’t alone. In March 2023, journalist Irfan Mehraj, who was also associated with JKCCS, was arrested in the same case. In August that year, the NIA raided the home of JKCCS founder Parvez Imroz and summoned him to Delhi for interrogation. Raids and summonses without a lawful basis strike at the heart of freedom of association and expression, and when accompanied by detention, threaten the rights to privacy, liberty, and
International human rights bodies have repeatedly raised concerns. In June 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Parvez’s detention was arbitrary and called for his immediate release. To date, Indian authorities have neither complied nor provided any updates to the Working Group. This is not the first time Parvez has faced reprisals for engaging with the UN. In September 2016, he was blocked from travelling to Geneva to attend a Human Rights Council session and was arbitrarily detained for 76 days. His case has been included in the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on reprisals every year since 2018. In October 2023, UN human rights experts again raised concerns about UAPA, particularly its 180-day pre-trial detention period, which can be further extended. They called this excessive and urged India to reform the law in line with international human rights standards.
The world also owes this to Parvez and to JKCCS. Their work illuminated the human rights violations faced by hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris for nearly two decades. Today, he is one of the most striking casualties of the expanding misuse of counter-terrorism laws in India. His case is emblematic of the threats faced by human rights defenders everywhere who challenge power and are swiftly branded as enemies of the state. When those who investigate, document, or speak about abuses must do so under fear of reprisal, India cannot credibly claim to be a country governed by the rule of law.
Khurram Parvez should never have been arrested in the first place. A single day in detention would have been an injustice for a human rights defender whose only “crime” has been to document human rights abuses. Yet he has now spent more than four years behind bars. Every additional day of his detention is a reminder of why his immediate release is long overdue. His cruel detention should educate Indians about the actual position of human rights in India. It is contrary to the bombast put out by our government, preening on its perch on the UN Human Rights Council and pretending it is ‘strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe’.
