Public Scrutiny Really Does Help the Unjustly Detained 

Concerned citizens and civil society groups working in tandem can help free the unjustly imprisoned. But the work is far from finished.

Every August 30, the international community observes the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Historically, any mention of enforced disappearances has evoked images of clandestine detentions and unacknowledged abductions by shadowy operatives operating with impunity in totalitarian states. In the contemporary era, however, the architecture of erasure has evolved into something far more institutionalized. 

Across authoritarian regimes and even democracies, state apparatuses frequently achieve the same outcome through formal legal machinery: weaponizing extraordinary counterterror statutes in the name of national security, imposing endless pre-trial detention, and relying on procedural delays to remove dissenting voices from the public sphere.

Nowhere is this tension between extraordinary security legislation and constitutional safeguards more evident than in India’s handling of civil society advocates exposing the most serious human rights violations. As we speak, a film dedicated to the life of Jaswant Singh Khalra – who exposed enforced disappearances in Punjab in the 1990s and who himself became a victim of enforced disappearance – has been banned by the Indian government. 

Notably, the case of Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez illustrates how thin the line between public witness and administrative oblivion has become. For over two decades, Parvez dedicated his life to documenting human rights violations and unearthing the records of enforced disappearances in Jammu and Kashmir. In an unsettling paradox, the advocate who spent his career ensuring that the vanished were not forgotten has become the target of institutional silencing himself.

Arrested in November 2021 by the National Investigation Agency under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), Parvez has spent nearly four-and-a-half years in pre-trial incarceration without the commencement of a substantive trial. The evidentiary basis for his detention was deemed so lacking that in 2023, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion declaring his imprisonment unlawful and calling for his immediate release.

When an Indian court recently granted Parvez bail in both cases against him – recognizing the fundamental injustice of indefinite pre-trial detention – state authorities moved instantly in the Delhi High Court to challenge his release. This procedural maneuvering reflects a growing structural concern within India’s criminal justice system: when special security statutes curtail judicial discretion on bail, the legal process itself becomes the penalty. Prolonged pre-trial detention strikes at the core of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.

This dynamic forms part of a wider global contraction of civic space. According to the latest data from the CIVICUS Monitor, 83 countries are currently classified as having “Closed” or “Repressed” civic space, with a mere 7 percent of the global population residing in open or narrowed environments. Within this landscape, India is currently rated as “Repressed” – reflecting severe restrictions on fundamental freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly. Special counterterrorism laws, national security directives, and procedural roadblocks are increasingly deployed worldwide to treat legitimate civic participation as a national security threat.

When formal........

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