The Jesuit priest, activist and indigenous rights defender Fr Stan Swamy, aged 84, is “gravely ill” in prison, possibly with Covid-19.
Fr Swamy, who has been confined in overcrowded and substandard conditions in Taloja prison since 2018, has been denied both a Covid test and vaccine. He lacks access to regular medical care. The prison has no medical staff other than a lone Ayurvedic practitioner.
The ageing Jesuit has spent 40 years advocating for the rights of indigenous people in the Indian state of Jharkhand, whose land, resources and civil liberties have been under sustained attack by state and private actors.
Recent sweeping “anti-terrorism” legislation from the current nationalist BJP government (the so called Unlawful Activities Prevention Act or UAPA), has seen over 5000 young indigenous activists arrested for the most tenuous of alleged connections with violent Maoist groups that operate in many areas of India, especially amongst threatened and marginalised indigenous groups. Eventually, in 2018 he was one of the most improbable victims of the new security laws, imprisoned despite his advanced age and poor health, and constantly refused bail or release on medical grounds.
Fr Swamy suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and was already in no fit state to endure the poor conditions of India’s prison system, but his previously precarious situation has become dire, with close friend Fr Joseph Xavier SJ, reporting that in a telephone conversation on Saturday 14th May, Fr Swamy said: “I feel bad, I have a severe headache, fever and cough. I feel very weak.”
Fr Joseph Xavier described how he was “very alarmed” by this, saying of his friend of many years: “He never complains about anything. In the six months that he has been in prison, he has never complained, despite the obvious difficulties. It is not easy, but I manage, he used to say... However, in this last conversation, he said, ‘I have to tell you that I do not feel well. I feel very weak, very fragile.’
“What is happening is a matter of grave concern. I call on the State and prison authorities to recognise that they cannot afford to provide medical treatment for the detainees. We will take over and look after them.”
Fr Xavier Jeyaraj, Secretary for Social Justice and Ecology, said: “The Society of Jesus is deeply anxious about the deteriorating health of Fr Stan Swamy and all other accused in the BK-16 case. We earnestly appeal to all concerned authorities in India to consider the health of Fr Stan and other prisoners a priority and release them without any delay.
“Even when the multi-speciality hospitals have not been able to provide proper health care, how can the prisons do? Keeping them in congested prisons during the pandemic would be a criminal injustice and a murder of collective judicial conscience.”
As serious as Fr Swamy’s situation is, he is far from alone, with families of imprisoned indigenous activists calling incarceration in India’s Taloja prison a “death sentence” in the context of the prison’s severe overcrowding, poor conditions and the super-infectious Indian variant of coronavirus.
“There is no plan in place. Even the prison staff is being infected. It seems that in prison, life has no value,” said Dr Jenny Rowena, the wife of Dr Hany Babu, who has been diagnosed positive for Covid and has a severe eye infection.
Fr Swamy vehemently rejects the accusations against him, and in a video message made two days prior to his arrest, spoke out against both his accusers and on behalf of other activists: “What is happening to me is not something unique happening to me alone. It is a broader process that is taking place all over the country… Many activists, lawyers, writers, journalists, student leaders, poets, intellectuals, and others who stand for the rights of Adivasis, Dalits, and the marginalised and express their dissent to the ruling powers of the country are being targeted and put into jail.”
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