Kashmir: Self-determination
Debate between Barry Gardiner and Roger Gale(3 days, 7 hours ago)
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Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) spoke with great passion, but it is a passion that I fear clouded his recollection of some of the history. Under the Indian Independence Act 1947, the rulers of each of the princely states had the responsibility to choose between the two emergent nations, and Kashmir’s ruler Maharaja Hari Singh had to decide whether to accede to India or to Pakistan. As he was doing so, Pakistan’s militia and troops invaded the part of Kashmir now known as Azad Kashmir. He then signed the legal instrument of accession to the dominion of India. That clarified the position of Kashmir in international law: Kashmir became a part of India.
It is also clear that Pakistan was the primary aggressor in the dispute. On 1 January 1948, India referred the situation to the UN Security Council. After much deliberation, the United Nations passed resolution 47, which my hon. Friend adverted to. However, again he showed a selective memory, because in fact the plebiscite had the precondition that Pakistan should secure the withdrawal of all its tribesmen and troops and Pakistani nationals from occupied Kashmir and put an end to the fighting in the state. That never happened, so the plebiscite that would have followed did not follow either.
The subject of this debate is the issue of self-determination, so I propose to examine the total lack of self-determination that the Kashmiri people actually have in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. As a constitutional entity, so-called Azad Kashmir, which is better known as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is not just strange but unique. It has been given the trappings of a country with a President, Prime Minister and even a Legislative Assembly, but it is neither a country with its own sovereignty nor a province with its own clearly defined devolved authority from the national Government of Pakistan.
Under section 56 of the AJK interim constitution of 1974, the Pakistan Government can dismiss any elected Government in AJK, irrespective of the support they might have in the Legislative Assembly—no respect there, then, for self-determination. Strangely enough for an entity that purports to be a country, the constitution bars anyone from public office and prohibits them from participating in politics unless they publicly support the principle of Kashmir acceding to Pakistan. Imagine that—a country whose politicians can be politicians only if they say they do not want to be a country.
It will therefore come as little surprise to hon. Members when I say that all the major civil and police administrative positions in AJK are held by Pakistani civil and military officers. It may also come as no surprise to find that the putative country has no representation in the Parliament of Pakistan. The territory’s local representatives are excluded from not just Pakistan’s Parliament but even those Pakistani bodies that negotiate inter-provincial resource allocation or federal taxes—so much for “no taxation without representation”.
It is not a country. It is not a province. It is not a state. It is a satrapy. Were I not a British MP conscious of the fact that much of this mess is a legacy of our colonial past in the region, I might also describe it as a prize of war. But then, of course, that is precisely what Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is: a territory taken by force, not permitted even the freedoms of other Pakistani citizens—
