Madurai: Indian lawyer and human rights defender Henri Tiphagne has been awarded the 8th Human Rights Award by Amnesty International Germany. “Henri Tiphagne, executive director of People Watch, Madurai has been tireless in working to safeguard human rights, including campaigning against discrimination and the use of torture in India”, Amnesty International said in a release.
“Henri Tiphagne and his organisation People’s Watch, while fighting to ensure the rights of others are themselves being harassed and hampered in their work by the authorities. And there are other civil society organisations in India that are in a similar position. This award is therefore meant to send a strong signal of support to the whole of the Indian Human rights movement,” said Selmin Caliskan, director of Amnesty International, Germany.
In recent years, many organisations have come under intense pressure by the Indian government and People’s Watch is no exception.
The organisation’s bank accounts have been frozen repeatedly since 2012. This meant some employees had to be retrenched and many programmes needed to be abandoned, said the release.
The Delhi government in power at the time used the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to justify this kind of harassment.
A complaint filed by People’s Watch against this government action is still pending, said Caliskan adding that the same legal framework is being instrumentalised for political ends by the present government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The award comes at the time when we restored the civil society space through court order. This is a reward for number of people who are in the fight against for restoration of their rights to association,” said Henri Tiphagne to Deccan Chronicle.
Besides fighting to safeguard human rights, the People Watch also has been actively supporting human rights education.
Tiphagne founded an institute offering training for teachers as well as mentoring around school human rights education programmes. So far People Watch has managed to reach out to around 5 lakh children in 18 states.
