On 1 May 2021, The World Sikh News de­cided to take up the cause of 400 Pris­on­ers of Con­science as a com­mit­ment on the oc­ca­sion of the 400th Birth an­niver­sary of Guru Tegh Ba­hadur.  In­di­a’s Supreme court, UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral and the UN Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sioner have asked coun­tries to re­lease pris­on­ers to save them from the sever­ity of the Covid19 pan­demic, yet coun­tries are shame­lessly un­re­lent­ing.  In as­so­ci­a­tion with ac­tivists from across South Asia and to sup­ple­ment the amaz­ing work of hu­man rights de­fend­ers, WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh launches this Cam­paign for cre­at­ing aware­ness and pro­vid­ing a voice to Pris­on­ers of Con­science.

INDI­GEN­U­OUS RIGHTS AC­TIVIST, 84-YEAR-OLD Je­suit priest Fa­ther Stan Swamy has con­tracted Covid19 in Taloja Cen­tral Jail, Mum­bai and de­spite a per­sonal ap­pear­ance in the Bom­bay High Court, dur­ing which his body af­flicted with Parkin­son’s was fail­ing him, he could not get bail. Lawyer and ac­tivist Sudha Bharad­waj, af­flicted with many ail­ments has been de­nied bail, even on med­ical grounds, not to men­tion that her trial has not even started af­ter nearly three years of de­ten­tion.  There are 15 more in the same case in the same prison. There are many un­be­knownst in other pris­ons of In­dia and the list is vir­tu­ally un­end­ing. Like In­dia, every coun­try of South Asia has a du­bi­ous track record of hav­ing scores of Pris­on­ers of Con­science.

Four cen­turies ago, though not phys­i­cally in­car­cer­ated in prison, the Kash­miri Pan­dits were Pris­on­ers of Con­science of the au­to­cratic and in­hu­man or­ders of the Mughal em­peror of In­dia- Au­rangzeb, as he had is­sued a dik­tat that non-Mus­lims must con­vert to Is­lam or face death.

Led by Pan­dit Kirpa Ram, the Kash­miri Brah­mins had come to the Dar­bar of the Ninth Mas­ter Guru Tegh Ba­hadur at Anand­pur Sahib, who af­ter a pa­tient hear­ing, of­fered to sup­port the cause of Right to Free­dom of Re­li­gion. The Kash­miri Brah­mins told the courtiers of Au­rangzeb that “if Guru Tegh Ba­hadur con­verts to Is­lam, they too will.” Guru Sahib was ar­rested and brought to Delhi and asked to ac­cept Is­lam or per­form mir­a­cles or em­brace death. In the face of the death of his three as­so­ci­ates Bhai Dyal Das, Bhai Mati Das and Bhai Sati Das, meant to over­awe him, the Guru chose death. He was be­headed where stands tall Gur­d­wara Sis­ganj Sahib to­day, in the heart of Old Delhi.

From 1 May on­wards this year, the Sikh world is cel­e­brat­ing the fourth Cen­ten­nial Birth­day of Guru Tegh Ba­hadur and all kinds of so­cial, in­tel­lec­tual and re­li­gious cel­e­bra­tions are hap­pen­ing all around the world, al­beit on a small scale due to the Covid19 pan­demic.

The world in gen­eral, South Asia in par­tic­u­lar and In­dia specif­i­cally is fac­ing a re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion sim­i­lar to those times of the Mughal em­peror.  While there is no strict writ­ten or ver­bal dik­tat to con­vert to a par­tic­u­lar re­li­gion, se­ri­ous, sin­is­ter, covert and overt op­er­a­tions are un­der­way to con­vert the pop­u­la­tion of In­dia to one po­lit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy, one lan­guage, one re­li­gion, one wa­ter, one land­scape, one elec­tion and one flag.

Nepal, Pak­istan, Myan­mar, Sri Lanka, Mal­dives, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Bhutan -all have sim­i­lar tales of pain, per­se­cu­tion and foist­ing of a sin­gu­lar agenda against the rights and will of the peo­ple.

In pur­suance of this de­sign, in the South Asian re­gion, in­clud­ing In­dia, there are hun­dreds of pris­on­ers of con­science, many of whom are de­tained un­der ar­chaic laws, many who are in the last years of their lives, but the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to de­tain them un­der pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion laws and an in­sen­si­tive ju­di­ciary goes only by the book.

A 1961 let­ter, pub­lished in The Ob­server, Lon­don, served as a cat­a­lyst for the es­tab­lish­ment of the in­ter­na­tional hu­man rights or­ga­ni­za­tion Amnesty In­ter­na­tional. British lawyer and ac­tivist Pe­ter Be­nen­son coined the term Pris­oner of Con­science to de­scribe two Por­tuguese stu­dents who had been sen­tenced to seven-year prison terms for their al­leged “crime”—mak­ing a sim­ple toast to free­dom in spite of the dic­ta­to­r­ial gov­ern­ment of An­tónio de Oliveira Salazar that was in power at the time.

Fol­low­ing the over­whelm­ing re­sponse to the let­ter, pub­lished world­wide, Be­nen­son founded Amnesty In­ter­na­tional. The founders of Amnesty In­ter­na­tional pro­claimed that Amnesty would cam­paign for those who were “im­pris­oned, tor­tured or ex­e­cuted be­cause [their] opin­ions or re­li­gion are un­ac­cept­able to [their] gov­ern­ment”.

Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tional and Eu­ro­pean law at Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don Ro­nan Mc­Crea, writ­ing in The Irish Times early this year, sug­gests that by broad­en­ing its arena of work from the re­lease of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers to up­hold­ing the whole spec­trum of hu­man rights, “Amnesty has lost fo­cus on rights of pris­on­ers of con­science. ”

“A per­son who has been im­pris­oned for one’s con­sci­en­tiously held so­cial, re­li­gious or po­lit­i­cal be­liefs or dis­si­dence against a gov­ern­ment or be­cause one be­longs to a par­tic­u­lar race, re­li­gion, caste, re­gion, gen­der and who has not ad­vo­cated or in­dulged in vi­o­lence is a Pris­oner of Con­science.”

Dwelling on the di­lu­tion of the fo­cus of Amnesty In­ter­na­tional, the au­thor notes that ear­lier, “They used to ar­gue that it did not mat­ter what the sub­stance of a per­son’s views was, the im­por­tant thing was that peo­ple should not be im­pris­oned for peace­fully hold­ing and ex­press­ing them.”

It is this view that would be the fo­cus of WSN work for Pris­on­ers of Con­science.

There is no men­tion of the term Pris­on­ers of Con­science in any of the UN de­c­la­ra­tions, treaties and con­ven­tions.  For our cam­paign, we would say, “A per­son who has been im­pris­oned for one’s con­sci­en­tiously held so­cial, re­li­gious or po­lit­i­cal be­liefs or dis­si­dence against a gov­ern­ment or be­cause one be­longs to a par­tic­u­lar race, re­li­gion, caste, re­gion, gen­der and who has not ad­vo­cated or in­dulged in vi­o­lence is a Pris­oner of Con­science.”

The United States Com­mis­sion for In­ter­na­tional Re­li­gious Free­dom has cre­ated the con­cept of Re­li­gious Pris­on­ers of Con­science. It de­fines them as “in­di­vid­u­als who are im­pris­oned, de­tained, un­der house ar­rest, or dis­ap­peared for their re­li­gious be­liefs, non-be­lief, iden­tity, ac­tiv­ity and/​or ad­vo­cacy for Free­dom of Re­li­gious Be­lief or re­lated rights, pro­vided that they have not used or ad­vo­cated vi­o­lence”.

Last year, when the pan­demic broke out, the UN High Com­mis­sioner for Hu­man Rights -Michelle Bachelet, made a clar­ion call to coun­tries for the re­lease of pris­on­ers from jails. She said, “Gov­ern­ments are fac­ing huge de­mands on re­sources in this cri­sis and are hav­ing to make dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions. But I urge them not to for­get those be­hind bars, or those con­fined in places such as closed men­tal health fa­cil­i­ties, nurs­ing homes and or­phan­ages be­cause the con­se­quences of ne­glect­ing them are po­ten­tially cat­a­strophic.”

Last year, on 18 July Nel­son Man­dela Day, 197 or­gan­i­sa­tions from across the world, in an open let­ter to world lead­ers called for “Im­me­di­ate and un­con­di­tional re­lease of all hu­man rights de­fend­ers and pris­on­ers of con­science in jail solely for their peace­ful hu­man rights ac­tiv­i­ties, and stop all ju­di­cial per­se­cu­tion against them.”

We all be­lieve that there is a need for fur­ther strength­en­ing the voice of hu­man rights de­fend­ers, civil lib­er­ties ac­tivists, po­lit­i­cal dis­si­dents by iden­ti­fy­ing and gar­ner­ing sup­port for 400 Pris­on­ers of Con­science, which would be a be­fit­ting way to cel­e­brate the 400th Birth an­niver­sary of the Guru and what he stood for.

The list of Pris­on­ers of Con­science is long and wind­ing and will soon find a place on the web pages of The World Sikh News. An ad­vi­sory fo­rum of lawyers and hu­man rights ac­tivists has been con­sti­tuted.

We all be­lieve that there is a need for fur­ther strength­en­ing the voice of hu­man rights de­fend­ers, civil lib­er­ties ac­tivists, po­lit­i­cal dis­si­dents by iden­ti­fy­ing and gar­ner­ing sup­port for 400 Pris­on­ers of Con­science, which would be a be­fit­ting way to cel­e­brate the 400th Birth an­niver­sary of the Guru and what he stood for.

In the true let­ter and spirit of the teach­ings of Guru Tegh Ba­hadur, we are com­mit­ted to a peace­ful world or­der in a spirit of mu­tual co­ex­is­tence, in­clu­sion, com­pas­sion and em­pa­thy not uni­lat­er­al­ism, ex­clu­sion, bar­barism and ha­tred.