Activist priest's death exposes India's brutal treatment of political prisoners
National Post, 17 July 2021
A Catholic priest of the Jesuit order, Father Stan Swamy devoted his life to defending the rights of India’s Indigenous peoples.
The brutality of the assaults on religious and other fundamental liberties by the Chinese Communist Party are well known internationally. The massive internment camps for Muslims, the persecution of the Falun Gong, the banning of Christian children from going to church — all this has been denounced internationally, even if to no great effect in China.
Perhaps those atrocities have distracted from the assaults on fundamental liberties in India, the world’s second-most populous country. A third of the global population lives in China and India. International attention needs to be paid.
The death of Father Stan Swamy might help attract that attention. His might be the case that brings popular awareness to the disturbing reality that fundamental liberties are seriously at risk in India.
Father Swamy died on July 5, while incarcerated pending terrorism charges. He was 84, and was only transferred by court order to hospital in May when he got infected with COVID-19 in prison. He spent his final weeks in hospital, still a prisoner.
Fr. Swamy, a Catholic priest of the Jesuit order, devoted his life to defending the rights of India’s Indigenous peoples — usually called “Adivasis” or “tribals” — in the mineral-rich state of Jharkhand in eastern India. He was one of their most prominent and well-known defenders.
Unsurprisingly, powerful interests objected to Fr. Swamy’s outspoken activism on behalf of the poor Indigenous people. Last October, he was arrested in Ranchi by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), and accused of taking part in a Maoist plot under India’s anti-terrorism law. He was transferred to Bombay where he was held until his “custodial death.”
Fr. Swamy had a Jesuit lawyer make representations on his behalf, but to no avail, as neither he nor his “co-conspirators” qualified for bail — a particularly odious provision of the “anti-terrorism” law.
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