“The tragedy of Father Stan Swamy is his human rights were violated while all he was attempting to do was protect the human rights of Adivasis suffering from poverty and neglect,” senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said on Saturday.
The MP from Thiruvananthapuram was talking at the Father Stan Swamy Memorial Lecture on, ‘Are Human Rights Universal?’
Two years ago, on October 8, the late Father Stan Swamy, a Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) from his home in Bagaicha at Ranchi, which has a library and a computer room for tribals. He was charged under several Sections of the Indian Penal Code and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in the Bhima Koregaon caste violence case.
He died on July 5, 2021 at a private hospital’s COVID-19 intensive care unit. He was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and had lost his hearing in both ears.
“The notion of human rights has to be positive and an actual one granting not just protection from the state but protection by the state and of the state to fulfil human beings’ growth and development,” Mr. Tharoor said.
He said Father Stan’s death had brought the world’s attention to his work and commitment, adding that there were trends observed of assaults on human rights and xenophobia all over the world. Mr. Tharoor explained different schools of thoughts on human rights — cultural, philosophical, and religious.
Father Frazer Mascarenhas, Father Stan’s next of kin, who was also present, said, “Fr. Stan was fully committed to human rights, and it was unfortunate that the entire case against him was a violation of his human rights and those of others.”
Not long before his death, a special NIA court rejected his application for medical bail and held: “Prima facie, it can be gathered that Fr Swamy, along with other members of the banned organisation, hatched a serious conspiracy to create unrest in the entire country and to overpower the government, politically and by using muscle power.”
