Wani urges UN chief to take effective notice of illegal profiling campaign, initiated under guise of census

Chairman Kashmir Institute of International Relations Altaf Hussain Wani has urged the UN secretary general Mr. Antonio Gutters to help stop illegal profiling campaign, initiated under the guise of the census, by police in the Indian held territory of Jammu and Kashmir. In his joint letter addressed to the UN secretary general and other UN special rapporteurs Wani, while highlighting the illegal, unconstitutional and human rights aspects of the move, said, “The lack of transparency in this campaign, which was launched without a formal announcement of the competent authorities, has unsettled people of the region who have already been living under heightened fear and insecurity since the Modi government stripped the region of its special status in a brazen violation of the UNSC resolutions”. He said that under the guise of census sensitive information was being obtained from residents that included the details of head of family and family members living outside the region, along with their ages and contact details. He pointed out that the “census forms” distributed amongst the residents also obtain exclusive details of residents including Aadhar numbers, vehicle registration numbers and information about CCTV cameras installed and enquires about family members associated with the ongoing freedom struggle. He said that residents were being asked to provide photographs and longitude and latitude coordinates (geo-tagging) of their residencies. “This insidious campaign, which lacks transparency, has raised serious concerns amongst the Kashmiri people who are already living in a state of excessive surveillance”, the letter said, adding that the invasive nature of the questions, sensitive data gathering by the police have left residents completely shell-shocked. Referring to the Indian security forces’ growing interference into the residents’ private lives, the letter pointed out that since 2019 Indian security agencies have been involved in creating databases of prominent citizens especially journalists, academicians, civil society and human rights activists who played a key role in documenting human rights violations committed by the Indian army and other security agencies. He said that the Indian army had conducted similar surveys in the past as well. “In the 1990s, the Indian army and the Border Security Force conducted door-to-door surveys to maintain a database of all households and monitor the movements of residents to gather information on resistance groups”, he added. Terming these insidious campaign as illegal, unconstitutional and against the spirit of international law, Wani said, “India’s own law strictly prohibits the police or any other agency, public or private, from carrying out such an exercise on its own”. Referring to the India’s Census Act, he said that according to the Actonly the office of Registrar General of India and Registrar of Census was authorized to conduct a census in the country or in a particular region or state. “The Census Act 1948 not only guarantees the confidentiality of information provided by respondents during the census but specifically prohibits other agencies from conducting the census or population enumeration themselves”, he said. ” Even the law does not allow this information to be provided as evidence in court”, he said. “The so-called census drive, which enables the government to create a detailed profile of each individual, not only runs counter to India’s own law but also blatantly violates people’s fundamental rights to privacy and dignity. The move, he said, was an unconstitutional expansion of police powers and an attempt to turn the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir into a surveillance state. The creation of a database of an entire population by the Indian security agencies, he said, was not just a violation of fundamental rights of the people but this intrusive mass surveillance mechanism would negatively affect the citizens’ fundamental freedoms and other human rights in addition to opening up floodgates for unjustified interferences into citizens’ private lives. Seeking the UN Secretary General’s immediate attention and intervention in this matter, the KIIR chief appealed the UN SG to help stop this illegal campaign to protect the people of Kashmir from the dangers of this intrusive mass surveillance scheme launched by the Indian government.