Title: Honoring the life and legacy of Father Stan, a prominent human rights activist who died while in custody of the Indian state on July 5, 2021, and encouraging India to pursue an independent investigation into his arrest, incarceration, and death.
Policy area: International Affairs

Summary:
This resolution encourages India to pursue an independent investigation into the arrest, incarceration, and death of Father Stanislaus Lourduswamy (also known as Father Stan), a prominent human rights activist who died while in custody on July 5, 2021.
The resolution also states that (1) the mistreatment and incarceration of individuals advocating for human rights cannot persist, and (2) freedom of expression is a fundamental human right.

[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1219 Introduced in House (IH)]

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117th CONGRESS
  2d Session
H. RES. 1219

 Honoring the life and legacy of Father Stan, a prominent human rights 
activist who died while in custody of the Indian state on July 5, 2021, 
 and encouraging India to pursue an independent investigation into his 
                   arrest, incarceration, and death.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              July 5, 2022

 Mr. Vargas (for himself, Mr. McGovern, and Mr. Carson) submitted the 
 following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign 
                                Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
 Honoring the life and legacy of Father Stan, a prominent human rights 
activist who died while in custody of the Indian state on July 5, 2021, 
 and encouraging India to pursue an independent investigation into his 
                   arrest, incarceration, and death.

Whereas Father Stanislaus Lourduswamy, known as Father Stan, was born on April 
        26, 1937, in a village called Viragalur in the Tiruchirappalli District 
        in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and, inspired by the work of 
        Jesuit priests from an early age, studied theology starting in 1957;
Whereas Father Stan spent his Jesuit regency in 1965 to 1967 at St. Xavier's 
        High School Lupungutu, Chaibasa, in west Singhbhum, now in the central 
        Indian state of Jharkhand, and there came to love and appreciate the 
        culture and values of India's Adivasi (Hindi: ``Original Inhabitants'') 
        community, as well as understood the problems they faced and 
        exploitation they endured;
Whereas, in 1971, Father Stan completed his master's degree in sociology in the 
        Philippines, where he met and was influenced by Brazilian Catholic 
        Archbishop Helder Camara's work with the poor, and was subsequently put 
        in charge of the Catholic Relief Services charity in the Jesuit 
        Jamshedpur Province, now in the Indian state of Jharkhand;
Whereas Father Stan served as the director of the Indian Social Institute, 
        India's leading Jesuit institution, in the southern Indian city of 
        Bengaluru, from 1975 to 1990, where he trained young people from 
        marginalized communities across the Indian subcontinent alongside 
        educationist Duarte Baretto;
Whereas, through ideas of social justice and liberation theology, Father Stan 
        and the Indian Social Institute trained a generation of young leaders 
        among communities including Dalits, indigenous communities (Adivasis), 
        fishing communities, agrarian communities, and labor movements;
Whereas, after finishing his work with the Indian Social Institute in 1991, 
        Father Stan moved to Chaibasa, in Jharkhand, where he worked for the 
        Jharkhand Organisation for Human Rights, and worked tirelessly with the 
        Adivasi people to protect their lands and homes from unfair 
        expropriation by the state and mining corporations;
Whereas, in 2006, with the support of the Jesuit society and intellectuals and 
        activists such as Xavier Dias and Ramdayal Munda, Father Stan set up 
        Bagaicha, a research, documentation, and Adivasi training center near 
        the city of Ranchi;
Whereas Father Stan played a key role in one of the most significant Adivasi 
        movements in contemporary India, the Pathalgadi movement, which used 
        Adivasi traditions of stone carving (for instance, for gravestones) to 
        spread information among Adivasi communities regarding rights guaranteed 
        to them under the Indian Constitution;
Whereas, during these decades in Jharkhand, Father Stan advocated for and raised 
        awareness regarding the implementation of provisions of the Indian 
        Constitution like the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) or the 
        PESA Act, which instituted self-governance for people dwelling in 
        Adivasi lands;
Whereas Father Stan also worked on ensuring the implementation of the Forest 
        Rights Act of 2006, which recognized the rights of forest-dwelling 
        communities to forest resources;
Whereas Father Stan also worked on ensuring the implementation of the Land 
        Acquisition Act of 2013, which guaranteed the right to fair 
        compensation, transparency in acquisition, and required the assent of 
        the community via its self-governance group called the gram sabha;
Whereas, on noticing widespread arrests of Adivasi youth for peaceful protests 
        against land acquisition starting in 2014 to 2015, in 2017 Father Stan 
        formed the Persecuted Prisoners Solidarity Committee, to expose the 
        illegal imprisonment of Adivasi activists, and filed a case against the 
        state of Jharkhand on behalf of at least 3,000 Adivasi youths 
        languishing in jail;
Whereas, over the course of his long career fighting for the underprivileged, 
        Father Stan authored over 70 books and booklets regarding the 
        socioeconomic and cultural circumstances of the Adivasis in Jharkhand, 
        their rights to development, and the violence perpetrated against them 
        by agents of the Indian state;
Whereas Father Stan published a 2015 Bagaicha report on 102 Adivasi, Dalit, and 
        ``backward caste'' youths illegally imprisoned titled ``Deprived Rights 
        Over Natural Resources, Impoverished Adivasis Get Prison: A Study of 
        Undertrials in Jharkhand'';
Whereas, in 2017, the state of Jharkhand charged Father Stan with ``sedition'' 
        for a Facebook post written in support of the Pathalgadi movement;
Whereas Father Stan was subsequently released, following the change in 
        government in Jharkhand in 2019;
Whereas, in August 2018 and June 2019, Pune police conducted raids on Father 
        Stan's one-room home in Bagaicha in a case regarding clashes near Bhima 
        Koregaon in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, and subjected 
        Father Stan to hours of intense interrogation;
Whereas, as an octogenarian and a person suffering from Parkinson's disease, and 
        in the midst of a global pandemic, Father Stan declined to travel to 
        Mumbai from Ranchi for further interrogation and on October 9, 2020, 
        India's National Investigation Agency placed Father Stan under arrest;
Whereas Father Stan was incarcerated in Taloja prison from October 9, 2020 until 
        May 28, 2021, which provoked a gradual deterioration in his health;
Whereas, after being ill-treated in prison to the extent of being denied a 
        sipper and a straw to sip water from, and in spite of repeated attempts 
        to secure bail by Father Stan's defense team, bail was consistently 
        denied to him, even after he contracted COVID-19;
Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary 
        Lawlor, along with the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to 
        the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental 
        health and the Special Rapporteur on minority issues stated in a letter 
        to the Government of India that the digital evidence compiled by the 
        forensic reports rendered ``the ongoing detention of the 15 accused [in 
        the Bhima Koregaon case, including Father Stan] as arbitrary and 
        unlawful'';
Whereas forensic analysts revealed that unidentified hackers fabricated evidence 
        on the computers of at least 2 activists arrested in Pune, India, in 
        2018, both of whom have languished in jail and, along with 13 others, 
        face terrorism charges;
Whereas researchers at security firm SentinelOne and nonprofits Citizen Lab and 
        Amnesty International have since linked that evidence fabrication to a 
        broader hacking operation that targeted hundreds of Indian activists;
Whereas SentinelOne's researchers revealed ties between the hackers and the 
        Indian police agency in the city of Pune that arrested multiple 
        activists based on the fabricated evidence, including Farther Stan;
Whereas Father Stan, while still in custody of the Indian state, passed away at 
        the age of 84 on July 5, 2021, at Holy Family Hospital, Mumbai; and
Whereas July 5, 2022, marks the one-year anniversary of Father Stan's passing 
        away: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
            (1) encourages India to pursue an independent investigation 
        into the arrest, incarceration, and death of Father Stan, a 
        prominent human rights activist who died while in custody on 
        July 5, 2021;
            (2) makes it clear to the Indian Government and all 
        governments around the world that the mistreatment and 
        incarceration of individuals advocating for human rights cannot 
        persist;
            (3) monitors the status of, and supports, the Adivasi, 
        Dalit, and minority communities in India, as well as other 
        indigenous communities around the world;
            (4) expresses concern at the misuse of antiterror laws to 
        target human rights defenders and political opponents and 
        applauds a recent ruling by India's top court to suspend a 
        controversial colonial-era sedition law and urges India's 
        Parliament to make the suspension permanent; and
            (5) makes it clear to the Indian Government and all 
        governments around the world that freedom of expression is a 
        fundamental human right, as written in Article 19 of the 
        Universal Declaration of Human Rights and adopted by the United 
        Nations General Assembly in 1948, that enshrines the rights and 
        freedoms of all human beings.
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