Many of us have been inspired by Fr Stan Swamy SJ through his talks and writings as the former director of the Bangalore Indian Social Institute and an unflinching Adivasi human rights activist in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha, India. His recorded remarks: “I am ready to pay the price whatever be it” inspires us to engage more avowedly in the struggle for a green and just world.
As is well known by now, Fr Stan was subjected to more than 15 hours of questioning over four days in July and one day in August at the Jesuit residence in Bagicha, Ranchi. The Pune police raided his residence on 28 August 2018, and seized his laptop, tablet, camera, and other things.
The 83-year-old priest is being detained under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act that allows the state to declare anyone a terrorist and arrest them at will. Alas, Fr Stan is the 16th person arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for his alleged involvement with the Bima Koregeaon-Elgar Parishad gathering of around 345,000 people on 31 December 2018, in which organisations serving the Dalits convened an event to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the battle of Koregaon Bhima, a rare occasion when the Dalits prevailed over the dominant Brahmin. The event erupted in violence that left one person dead and several injured and arrested. Fr Stan has been charged with criminal conspiracy and sedition, terrorism, and complicity with the Maoist Communist Party of India – the penalties for which range from seven years’ imprisonment to death.
Fr Stan has consistently denied any link with extremist leftist forces or Maoists. He had also told the NIA that some so-called extracts allegedly taken from his computer shown to him by the NIA were fake and fabricated and that he disowns them.
His arrest has sparked unprecedented show of solidarity. On 12 October simultaneous rallies from civil, religious, and ecumenical groups were held in major cities across India, from Delhi to the North East, from Bengaluru to Patna and from Kochi to Mumbai.
Fr Stan joins innumerable respected academicians, activists, doctors, journalists, public intellectuals, poets, student leaders, and writers from all over India in denouncing the systemic injustices meted out against the marginal communities of the Adivasi and the Dalits.
The Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has condemned his “malicious and spiteful” arrest as an “inhuman and insincere act” of “sheer vindictiveness”. PUCL states that Fr Stan was arrested due to his courage to expose “the large scale abuse of anti-terror and sedition laws” by the former Bharatiya Janata Party government in Jharkhand. “Thousands of Adivasi were falsely implicated and arrested for exercising their fundamental right to protest in the Pathalgadi movement and kept in prison without hearing,” PUCL added.
Fr Stanislaus D’ Souza SJ, President of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia, commended Fr Stan for his “tremendous work among the marginalised, downtrodden, and vulnerable people” and for being “vocal about the indiscriminate arrest of thousands of young Adivasis by investigating agencies labeling them as Naxals (Maoists)”.
Fr Xavier Jeyaraj, Secretary of the Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat of the Society of Jesus in Rome, said: “We, Jesuits, involved in works of education, caring and defending the rights of the poor and the vulnerable all over the world, stand in solidarity with Stan and other human rights defenders in India and strongly condemn his arrest, demand immediate release, and request the state to refrain from arbitrary arrests of innocent law abiding citizens.”
Most Rev Felix Machado, Archbishop of Vasai and the General Secretary of the Indian Bishops’ Conference, has called on the concerned authorities to release Fr Stan immediately and permit him to go home to his residence.
Fr Stan remains in jail since his arrest on 8 October after the court rejected his petition for bail. He is able to make a phone call once a week but no one has yet been able to see him in person. The Jesuits in India have formed various committees both at the national and regional levels to continue Fr Stan’s advocacy. In spite of the pandemic, people have continued to come out in large numbers in all states of India and across the world to say they #standwithstan, calling for his immediate release and for the 15 other human rights defenders who have been unjustly accused and imprisoned without trial for the last two years, and for the repeal of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
The campaign is gaining momentum everyday with large support from people of all religions, cultures, languages, communities, students, NGOs, intellectuals, human rights groups, political leaders, political parties, and the media. “This is becoming a campaign not merely for the release of Fr Stan but a campaign to save democracy, which is systematically getting eroded all over the world,” wrote Fr Jeyaraj. “This is an opportunity for all of us to mobilise to save democracy and to stand for truth and justice.”
May all concerned global and local citizens stand with the Adivasi communities and their leaders to resist the systemic intimidation of tribal rights’ defenders and the covetous annexation of the indigenous peoples’ land and their resources.
Fr Jojo M Fung is a Jesuit of the Malaysia-Singapore Region. He served as Coordinator of the Jesuit Companions in Indigenous Ministry of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific for 20 years, from 1999 to 2019.