Chai Brady
Irish organisations have called for the release of a Jesuit priest in India after he was arrested on “outrageous” and “flimsy” charges relating to terrorism.
Fr Stan Swamy from Ranchi in India was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India and imprisoned on October 8. He was accused of having links with banned extremist groups.
The priest is a human rights activist who has worked for over 50 years with the poor and marginalised of India especially its indigenous people. During July and August of this year, he was interrogated multiple times for over 15 hours by the NIA.
The priest was described to be “by all accounts among the most gentle and beneficent and self-sacrificing of people, exactly the kind of qualities you would want imbued in a priest”, according to Dr Michael Kinsella of Aid to the Church in Need Ireland.
He said the arrest was based on “the most risible, the most flimsy of charges of terrorism; an outrage, the whole thing is a house of cards”. He added there hadn’t been a warrant for his arrest.
“The epicentre of this story really is where the worst excesses of religious intolerance and extremism meet the grubby demands of corporate vulture capitalism.
“It’s kind of the nexus of where the Hindutva movement, which is by all accounts an extraordinarily racist, inhumane, brutal enforcer of a dilapidated but nonetheless dangerous caste system in India, has come down hot and heavy on the native peoples of this particular area in which the good father is domiciled,” Dr Kinsella said.
Devoted
“He is an extraordinary man who has devoted his life to do this, and of course this is where you have corporate barons who have been raping and pillaging that particular area of India for God knows how long under the pretext of economic development.”
Ireland’s Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice are also calling for his release and asking people to write to their local TDs and raise concerns about Fr Swamy’s case.
He is reported to be the oldest person in India to have been arrested on such charges. He is also in poor health.
Fr Swamy is one of many prominent human rights defenders who have been arrested recently in India following caste-based violence in 2018.
Fifteen other people have also been detained on similar charges including some of India’s most respected scholars, lawyers and academics.