Every August 30, the global community marks the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. While historical perceptions of this issue often focused on clandestine abductions by shadowy figures in totalitarian states, the modern era has seen the institutionalization of these tactics. Today, both authoritarian regimes and democratic nations frequently utilize formal legal machinery to achieve the same result, weaponizing counterterror statutes, imposing endless pre-trial detention, and employing procedural delays to silence dissenting voices.
India provides a poignant example of this tension between national security legislation and constitutional safeguards. The government has banned a film about Jaswant Singh Khalra, who exposed enforced disappearances in Punjab during the 1990s before becoming a victim himself. Similarly, Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez, who spent two decades documenting such violations, now faces institutional silencing. Arrested in November 2021 by the National Investigation Agency under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), Parvez has remained in pre-trial incarceration for nearly four-and-a-half years without a substantive trial. Although the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his imprisonment unlawful in 2023, state authorities have continued to challenge his release in the Delhi High Court after an initial bail order.
This procedural maneuvering highlights a growing structural concern: when special security statutes limit judicial discretion on bail, the legal process itself functions as a penalty. Such prolonged detention contradicts the core of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except through established legal procedure.
When domestic safeguards and multilateral channels fail, organized citizen solidarity becomes a vital counterweight. Public witness is not merely a moral sentiment; it is an empirical strategy. Campaigns like CIVICUS’s “Stand As My Witness” demonstrate that naming detained individuals and maintaining scrutiny prevents them from being erased. This strategy has proven successful for advocates like Sudha Bharadwaj, who spent three years in jail before being granted bail in the Bhima Koregaon case, as well as for journalist Floriane Irangabiye in Burundi, civil society leader Muhammad Ismail in Pakistan, and women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul in Saudi Arabia.
Public scrutiny acts as an indispensable shield, ensuring detainees receive medical care and signaling to the judiciary that the international community is monitoring procedural fairness. Ultimately, defending human rights advocates is a moral obligation for citizens and public servants in any democracy. Addressing the prolonged incarceration of figures such as Khurram Parvez, Umar Khalid, and Sharjeel Imam is essential to preserving constitutional heritage. As these patterns of procedural cruelty persist globally—from Belarus and China to Egypt, Israel, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and Russia—the mandate for concerned citizens and jurists is clear: recognize the names of those unjustly held and refuse to allow the machinery of silence to prevail.
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