Press Freedom and Safety of Protesters: India

Debate between Graham Stringer and Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Monday 8th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Some supporters of the governing party in India have said that this is an internal matter—“Foreigners, keep your nose out of it.” I can tell them why everyone is so concerned. It is because human rights are universal, and a world in which they are upheld in all of our interests.

Hundreds of farmers have died already because of the freezing cold and because of ill health while protesting. Imagine the collective pain for those of us whose parents and grandparents have been tilling the land in the Punjab, who have a strong connection with the land and whose family and friends are involved in the protests, when we see scenes of tear gas, water cannon and brute force being used against them, and when we see them herded into the protest sites like animals, with metal barricades, barbed wire and deadly steel spikes installed in the road, as if it were some sort of international border and not the outskirts of the capital city. The irony is that many of the protesters have served on the border, or have children or grandchildren currently serving in the army. Mercilessly, their water supply, sanitation, electricity and internet have been intermittently cut. Trade unionists, human rights activists and journalists, including young women, have been arrested, with reports of sexual assault and torture while in custody.

The millions of protesters are from across India and different faiths, yet because a significant number of them are Sikhs, they have been singled out and branded separatists and terrorists by unscrupulous elements of the mainstream Indian media. It is part of a pattern where Muslim Indians are labelled as Pakistanis, Christians as being under foreign influence, and Sikhs as Khalistani separatists—but we see you, and so does the world. Let me let Members into a little secret about the Sikhs: they are taught to feed millions of those in need for free, year in and year out, regardless of background, colour or creed. They are brought up to stand up for the rights of others, so we can bet our bottom dollar that they will go to the nth degree to stand up for their own rights.

Those of us, like me, who dare to speak up for the farmers are faced with a deluge of hundreds of fake profiles from the Twitter troll factory, and are accused by some disingenuous elements of being, among other things, racist. I do not need lectures from them about the wonders of India. I have been fortunate enough to have lived and studied in India for over four years, learned to converse in Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu, travelled the length and breadth of that beautiful country, and experienced at first hand the warmth and welcome of its lovely people.

While I am at it, let me debunk another myth used to silence anyone in Britain who offers anything but praise: that they must apparently have a colonial hang up. To those people I say that while we spend most of our time discussing national issues, the beauty of being a British parliamentarian in the mother of Parliaments is that almost every day we conduct debates about what is happening around the world. It will not be lost on anybody that the UK Tory Government, in their desperation to get a trade deal, are failing spectacularly to stand up for the human rights of the protesters, so I call on the Government to request that the Indian Government speedily resolve the deadlock and ensure peace and justice for those farmers—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. We move to Bradford West now, with Naz Shah.