Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker]

The hon. Lady is right, and I am most grateful to her. Of course, I share that view, which is why we are here today.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman be characteristically even-handed and mention the Amnesty report, “As if Hell fell on Me: the Human Rights Crisis in North-west Pakistan,” given that this debate is about human rights issues on the subcontinent as a whole?

[Steve Baker]

I am most grateful—

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[Mr Scott]

I totally agree and reiterate that there must be justice for all. I would never say that there should not be.

In the short time left to me—that is, in this debate, not beyond that—I would like to raise a number of issues. I have said in the past that, when the conflict ended, a number of babies and children below the age of 12 were not accounted for. I have asked the Sri Lankan high commission to share with me what happened to those babies and young children. To this day I have not received an answer. I will continue to follow that up, but I would also ask the Minister to look into the matter, just as I have asked our high commissioner in Colombo.

We are also getting sad reports of what are called “grease devils”. These are men who attack people after applying grease to their bodies so as not to be captured by the authorities. They then run into military camps or police stations, having attacked their victims—normally women—in their homes. I am not casting any aspersions against anyone as to who they might be, but I would like to see the practice stopped and the perpetrators caught. I would also like to ask what has happened to the elderly and disabled people who were left behind at the end of the conflict, on 18 May 2009, because they are still unaccounted for.

I have here a list of various things I could run through, but I shall not do that because of the time. What I want to say, to everyone in the House, is that we have a duty. We have a duty to represent not only our constituents, but those who have no voice, wherever they are in the world. We have a duty to stand up for innocent people, whether they be Tamil or Sinhalese, and to get justice.

[Barry Gardiner]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Amnesty International’s country report on Sri Lanka this year will be of equal concern to both the Tamil and Sinhalese communities? The report says that in the immediate aftermath of the elections, the Rajapaksa family,

“which controlled five key ministries and more than 90 state institutions,”

introduced a constitutional amendment in September that

“removed the two-term limit on the presidency”.

[Mr Scott]

Yes, that is a great concern. Again, individual action is needed on all these items.

Today, however, we are here to speak about human rights on the Indian subcontinent. We have to speak about human rights in Sri Lanka; we have to get justice for the Tamil people. If we do not get it, we will all have let those people down. I, for one, will continue to do everything in my power—whoever I upset, whether they be colleagues or not—to continue to try to get that justice for the Tamil people. We have said that we will look at the situation in November to see whether the Sri Lanka Government have failed to take action. It is now mid-September, so it is not long till November. I hope that, for everyone’s benefit, the Sri Lanka Government will allow an independent international investigation into what happened. I believe that that is what we must go for. I know that the Minister stands up for the rights of all in this area, so I hope that will happen.

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[Andrew Griffiths]

I agree, and I know that the hon. Gentleman does a great deal in this House on these issues. I congratulate him on that.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman asked why the world was not doing something about Kashmir. Does he agree that that may have something to do with the Simla agreement, under which Pakistan and India agreed that they would settle the issue bilaterally without outside interference, and in a completely peaceful way?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I am afraid that I would agree more if we had seen more proactive responses from both Pakistan and India. Having been to the Pakistan-administered side of Kashmir and spoken to many people, I found it frustrating to see that many politicians there are inhibiting the efforts to find a solution.

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[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Today a delegation from Conservative Friends of India heads off to the subcontinent. The hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) has ensured that when they land in Delhi they will walk into a major media storm. The UK Parliament should be very wary of intervening in the dispute over Kashmir.

Members have talked about the UN resolution and the plebiscite, but the resolution had a condition—

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

When my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) rose on a point of order as a result of a tweet that he had received, I attempted to intervene on him, but so powerful was his flow that I could not. Will my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) confirm that when a newspaper makes a statement through social media, it does not speak for the Government of the Republic of India, and these are two very separate matters?

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is right, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend knew precisely that when he made his “nearly a point of order”, as Mr Deputy Speaker called it.

The UN resolution attached a condition to the holding of the plebiscite—the withdrawal of the Pakistani forces that had invaded that part of Kashmir in 1949 when the maharajah of the state of Jammu and Kashmir had vacillated over whether to become part of India or part of Pakistan. The invasion precipitated the maharajah to jump towards India, with the consequences that we have seen since.

Of course, it is absolutely right that this House should always take a keen interest in the protection of human rights around the world, but hon. Members and members of the public watching this debate must think there is a certain irony in the fact that although the hon. Member for Wycombe sought to raise his concern about human rights issues in India, it is not India but five of India’s closest border neighbours, including Pakistan, that the 2011 “Failed States Index” lists among the 50 most failed states in the world.

[Steve Baker]

I tried to approach this with considerable caution. I am not sorry if the Indian media pick up on this issue, as I would like our constituents’ concerns to be given the widest publicity. I paid tribute to India as the world’s largest democracy and a country with institutions based on our own which seek to reinforce the rule of law, and noted that Indian Government institutions have recognised many of these human rights abuses. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that, on the whole, the House has sought to be balanced.

[Barry Gardiner]

I accept the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman says that he has contributed to the debate, and I would not wish to challenge that. However, if one looks at the immediate neighbours surrounding India, one will often find that there is far greater cause for concern in those jurisdictions than in India.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

rose—

[Shabana Mahmood]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

No, I will not.

Some of the worst human rights abuses of recent memory have occurred in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, in a part of the world where, frankly, India stands out as a beacon of democracy on the subcontinent. The relations between India and the UK, at both a trade and a strategic level, are excellent. They reached new levels of cordiality after Tony Blair’s visit in 2005, when the two Prime Ministers signed the New Delhi declaration, and they have been further strengthened by the current Prime Minister’s visit last year. Economically and culturally, as well as strategically, it would be a retrograde step should a debate such as this sour those excellent relations.

I first visited Kashmir in 2000, when I took a delegation of MPs on a fact-finding visit. We visited at a particularly important time: two years previously, both India and Pakistan had declared themselves nuclear weapon states. Pakistan had announced that it would adopt a doctrine of first use in certain circumstances. India had stated to the international community that it would never use nuclear weapons first. It was a time of great tension.

In 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee travelled to Pakistan to meet Nawaz Sharif. It had been hoped that that might reduce the tension between the two states and all seemed well. Three months later, however, Pakistan-based militants invaded across the border at Kargil on the line of control into India. A bloody border conflict started in what became known as the phoney war. That invasion directly violated the Simla agreement of 1972, in which both nations agreed to resolve the issue of Kashmir by exclusively peaceful means.

President Clinton summoned Nawaz Sharif to the White House and persuaded him to withdraw Pakistani forces from Kargil. The confrontation de-escalated until Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by General Musharraf, who had been the key architect of the Kargil incursion. In 2000, Musharraf proclaimed himself the new President of Pakistan, without the benefit of a general election. In the following months, India was subjected to some of the most vile and well-orchestrated state-sponsored terrorist attacks ever seen, including the hijacking of an Air India flight, the attack on the temple at Gandhinagar and, of course, the attack on the Indian Parliament.

Despite the constant threat to India’s citizens from hostile parties at home and abroad claiming thousands of lives every year, India has continued to stand for tolerance and human rights in that part of the world. Terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed have continued to bombard India with state-sponsored terrorism supported by Inter-Services Intelligence.

It is against that background that we must consider today’s Amnesty International report. The report documents detentions under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act and makes some specific allegations. It is right that this House should consider them, albeit in the context of public safety that I have outlined. The report relates to more than 600 individuals detained under the Public Safety Act between 2003 and May 2010 when the research was conducted. That is fewer than 90 people each year for seven years. Amnesty states:

“The research shows that instead of using the institutions, procedures and human rights safeguards of ordinary criminal justice, the authorities are using the PSA to secure the long-term detention of political activists, suspected members or supporters of armed groups and a range of other individuals against whom there is insufficient evidence for a trial or conviction”.

That sounds remarkably similar, as the hon. Member for Wycombe admitted, to this country’s Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. On 14 July last year, he voted to keep detention at 28 days and I think I voted to bring it down to 14 days.

At this year’s Reith lectures, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, talking about security, said that

“not all intelligence can be turned into evidence. It can fall well short. As I have said before, of evidential standards, hearsay at third hand, things said, things overheard, things seen and open to varying interpretation, rarely clear-cut even with the benefit of hindsight…and which any judge would unhesitatingly kick out even if the prosecution thought them useable. That requires us to accept that not everyone who presents a threat can be prosecuted.”

It is in that light that we need to consider these allegations.

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[John McDonnell]

That is exactly right. As a result of the campaign in India and the support that we and Amnesty International are giving it, there could be a breakthrough in this case that could lead to the abolition of the death penalty. There are clear concerns about the fairness of the trial, as well as about the eight-year delay in implementing a decision, which I believe constitutes cruel, degrading and inhuman punishment. As a friend of India—as many of us here are—I therefore appeal to the Indian Government to think again, to allow the mercy petition to go ahead and to allow this person’s death sentence to be commuted, but also to consider the issue of the death penalty itself, which I see as a continuing blemish on the Indian constitution and political system.

[Barry Gardiner]

I was most concerned to hear my hon. Friend say that the only evidence against Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar was the confession that he had made in police custody. The Amnesty report, “A lawless law”, describing another case, records that

“the trial court dismissed two of the three outstanding charges against Sheikh noting that the only evidence against him was a confession made by him while in police custody which was inadmissible in court (in India, confessions made to the police are inadmissible as evidence because of fears that they may be coerced).”

Would my hon. Friend care to comment on that?

[John McDonnell]

Yes, that is common practice, and it is usually taken into account when considering the mercy petition. That did not happen in this instance, however. There have been four recent cases in which mercy petitions have been rejected by the President. That is a change in practice that we have witnessed over the past seven or eight years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) suggested. There is a change of political climate on this issue in India at the moment, and I think that it is to the detriment of India. On that basis, pressure needs to be mounted in India and internationally, to address not only this individual case but the whole question of the abolition of the death penalty.

The issue of Sri Lanka and the treatment of the Tamils has also been raised with me. I want to associate myself with the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) in this regard. A key issue is that, although the commission took place and various recommendations were made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, a number of them have not been implemented. For example, the simple recommendation that a list of names of those in detention should be published still has not been implemented. As a result, a number of my constituents are still anxious to find out what has happened to their families and where they are in detention.

When people are released from detention, despite reassurances that they will be assisted with resettlement, that is not happening in every case. Some are living in very distressing circumstances, but they are getting no assistance. Furthermore, there is a continuing problem of land having been taken over, particularly by the military, and reallocated to the majority community. In that way, members of the Tamil community are being displaced yet again as a result of the Government’s actions. I would welcome our own Minister putting pressure on the Sri Lankan Government to address those issues and to get back into negotiations with the Tamil National Alliance, which has withdrawn from the current negotiations because of the Government’s intransigence. In that way, we might be able achieve an atmosphere of peace and reconciliation again.