Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for this important debate and his focus on raising awareness of the challenges faced by the people of Balochistan. As he said, the Minister of State for South Asia, Lord Ahmad, is unable to take part in the debate, so I am happy to respond on behalf of the Government, noting the right hon. Member’s questions. There are some to which I may not be able to provide a detailed answer today, but I will ensure that Lord Ahmad does so.
Specifically on the question of aid, we have a rolling programme—the AAWAZ II programme—that brings together influential community and faith leaders and minority representatives to work on resolving local issues and to change behaviours. The programme works with the Government to try to improve protection and justice services for victims of gender-based violence. In particular, the focus on women and girls’ rights and gender equality in Pakistan is at the centre of that ongoing programme, which has so far reached over 24 million people.
I will start with a few words on Pakistan. Of course, the UK and Pakistan enjoy a close and long-standing relationship, underpinned by strong links between our people. Less than two weeks ago, the people of Pakistan voted in long-awaited elections for both their national and provincial assemblies. The following day, on 9 February, the Foreign Secretary issued a statement in which he highlighted serious concerns about the fairness and the lack of inclusivity of those elections. He urged the authorities in Pakistan to uphold fundamental human rights, including free access to information and the rule of law. That includes the right to a fair trial, and to an independent and transparent judicial system.
Members will be aware that Pakistan is one of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s human rights priority countries due to our concerns over the challenges facing many of its citizens. As the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington highlighted, disturbing practices, such as enforced disappearances, torture while in custody and extrajudicial killings, are reported across Pakistan. Many of those credible reports of human rights abuses come from Balochistan, which is the subject of this debate.
Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest and most sparsely populated province. While it is rich in natural resources, it also has the highest levels of illiteracy, malnutrition and infant mortality in Pakistan. The security situation is particularly challenging, and the FCDO advises against all travel to the province except for its southern coast, where we advise against all but essential travel. There are significant levels of instability and violence, including from separatist militia groups conducting terrorist acts, some in the name of Baloch independence from the Pakistani state.
The heightened terrorist threat was demonstrated recently when dozens of people were killed in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, in attacks the day before the elections that I mentioned. On election day itself, more than 20 explosions and rocket attacks were reported outside polling stations in the province, killing four and injuring over a dozen people. Many members of Pakistan’s armed forces and police have also lost their lives in Balochistan; my thoughts are with all those affected by those acts of violence. The reality is that that fragile security situation has hampered the UK’s diplomatic and development work in the region. I will try to address that in a little more detail.
The Pakistani military maintains a strong presence in Balochistan. The Government claim that they are taking necessary action against those using violence, but local and international human rights organisations, as set out by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, allege that the Pakistani authorities are responsible for abuses, including extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. As colleagues have mentioned, the long march by an extraordinary group of Baloch women in December to Islamabad, where they participated in a sit-in protest seeking to draw attention to the situation in Balochistan, demanding justice and calling for the UN to deploy a fact-finding investigation into the region, was an extraordinary demonstration of the power of peaceful protest at its finest.
Of course, the issue is long standing. The delegation of the UN working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances visited Pakistan back in 2012. The report from that delegation of UN experts welcomed the Government’s will to tackle the issue, but noted that serious challenges remained. The UN working group at the time received over 1,000 allegations of enforced disappearances from within Pakistan between 1980 and 2019, with more than 700 people still missing. Pakistan has made some efforts to deal with enforced disappearances. In 2010, Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior set up a committee to investigate the reports, and the following year its supreme court launched a commission of inquiry into those cases so that law enforcement agencies could listen to the concerns of the families involved. Those were of course welcome steps, but we recognise that more than a decade has passed since the introduction of those initiatives and considerable issues still remain unresolved.
Let me be clear: the UK absolutely and strongly condemns any instances of extrajudicial killings or enforced disappearances, which have such a damaging and destructive impact on families, communities and the rule of law. We cannot allow those practices to continue unchecked, and we urge Pakistan to investigate fully allegations, prosecute those responsible and provide justice to victims. The UK regularly raises our human rights concerns with the Government of Pakistan, including in support of freedom of expression, the rights of minorities and women, and the importance of an independent and transparent judicial system.
Our high commissioner is in regular touch with the caretaker Minister for Human Rights, and our political counsellor recently met senior officials in the Ministry of Human Rights to discuss the issue of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Balochistan. The British high commission in Pakistan engages routinely with Baloch politicians based in Karachi and Islamabad to gain insights on the politics of the region and to help us to assess the security situation, and hopes to visit Quetta when the security situation allows.
Lord Ahmad raised the issue of enforced disappearances with the then Minister for Human Rights in June 2023, and he looks forward to meeting Pakistan’s new Minister in that role once the new Government are fully formed. In the meantime, we are continuing to work with our international partners, civil society and human rights defenders to raise those human rights issues with the Government of Pakistan. The security challenges and safety situation in Balochistan make supporting developing programmes there more difficult than in other parts of Pakistan, but of course some of our most important international development programmes in Pakistan support positive outcomes in Balochistan and elsewhere across the country.
Our educational initiatives in particular are helping to provide more robust data on education to improve the quality of schooling across Pakistan, including in Balochistan. In 2022, the UK Government provided humanitarian assistance in the form of emergency shelter, hygiene items and nutritional support in the province during the devastating floods.
John McDonnell
I am grateful to the Minister for what she has said so far. Can I raise two points with her? One is the issue regarding the current safety of those who have protested, particularly Dr Mahrang Baloch, whose life, I believe, is under severe threat. What representations can we make to the Pakistan authorities to ensure her safety? It is too easy for the Pakistan authorities to accuse civil society organisations of being linked with, or of supporting, terrorists. The Pakistan Government do not seem to recognise civil society organisations as being able to peacefully express their views, and therefore, unfortunately, at times they react in the way they do—by branding every organisation with the same tag.
Secondly, Lord Ahmad has done good work, and I would very grateful if a number of us could meet him to talk through some of these issues, so that we can have an ongoing dialogue—particularly on monitoring what is happening at the moment, and the threat to individuals and organisations. That is ongoing, particularly because of instability within Pakistan itself.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
I absolutely take the right hon. Gentleman’s important point on the question of Dr Mahrang Baloch’s current safety; I will pick that up with the team at the high commission and make sure he is updated. Sadly, it is not only with the Pakistani authorities that we see the inability to understand and respect the voices of civil society, their peaceful protests, and their willingness to share its concerns through peaceful means—and the constraining of those voices. I think we are all agreed that those countries that sit under the areas of concern that we highlight are often the ones that are simply not willing to understand or separate the two.
I have no doubt that I can commit Lord Ahmad to a meeting with the right hon. Gentleman and others in due course. Together they can discuss what we all agree is a continuing deep concern about the human rights abuses in Balochistan that have been highlighted today— in particular, the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. I know that if Lord Ahmad were here, he would say the same. He is looking forward, as are the team in the high commission, to working with the new Government, as they take up their posts, across a range of shared interests, and to continuing to focus and engage on those human rights issues specifically.
To finish, I echo the Foreign Secretary’s recent statement where he set out his hope that the next Government of Pakistan will understand that they must be accountable to all the people that they serve, and indeed
“work to represent the interests of all Pakistan’s citizens and communities with equity and justice.”
Question put and agreed to.
11.29 am
Sitting suspended.