Emphasising that human rights defenders do the important work of documenting and exposing human rights violations, shedding light on the underlying causes of conflict and call for accountability, Türk said that they are the key to conflict resolution. “They are the messengers of dignity, justice and peace,” he said. “But the risks of this work are unacceptably high. Killings, kidnapping, detention, harassment and intimidation of journalists, humanitarian personnel, human rights monitors, and so many others are major threats,” Türk pointed out. Türk further highlighted that accross various contemporary conflicts, these attacks may even constitute war crimes. At least 220 journalists and over a thousand humanitarian workers have been killed by Israel in its ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. In a statement released in December last year, UN human rights experts have called for action against Israel for repeatedly violating international humanitarian laws and targeting civilians, journalists and humanitarian workers. India has also been accused by several rights organisations of targeting dissenters and human rights activists. Recently, the Bombay High Court granted bail to human rights activists Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale in a case related to the Bhima Koregaon violence, noting that they have spent more than six years in jail without trial. In February 2021, a report by the US-based Arsenal Consulting stated that Rona Wilson’s computer was repeatedly hacked for over two years. the report further stated that the ‘letters’ cited by the authorities to establish his ‘extremist’ links, were planted as folders in his computer through a malware. Wilson’s lawyers submitted a copy of the report to the Bombay High Court and sought to quash the case against him.Stan Swamy, a Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist who is one of the accused in the case, died while in prison on July 5, 2021, due to cardiac arrest following his contraction of COVID-19.Swamy, who also suffered from Parkinson’s Disease, was repeatedly denied bail by the court, prompting many to call his death an “institutional murder.”In a statement released on February 2022, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared Swamy’s detention arbitrary and his death “utterly preventable.”
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