Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

It is a particular pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Ms Ali. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate and for all his diligent work in this area, particularly on religious freedom and on freedom of speech: a subject very dear to my own heart. I echo what the hon. Gentleman said—more needs to be done and more needs to be done more urgently. I am looking forward to hearing the Minister’s responses to his questions.

Many of us were glad to hear of some progress in today’s statement in the Chamber—I thank the Minister for that. I want to make one point to her quite gently. When the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), pointed out that there are some criticisms to be made of the way the Government have handled the matter, the Minister seemed to suggest that, in doing so, the shadow Home Secretary was criticising our forces, which she absolutely was not doing. We would all praise the efforts of British forces on the ground, and the civil servants and non-governmental organisations, who worked so hard back in August to get as many people out as possible. What I gently say to the Minister is that their efforts should not be a shield for our political masters to hide behind.

Many MPs continue to receive desperate pleas on behalf of those left behind in Afghanistan. The United Kingdom Government machine needs to up its game, for this reason: the UK Government pursued a foreign and defence policy that encouraged people in Afghanistan to participate in creating a democratic state, where human rights were protected. Due to the failure of that policy, many of those people are now at risk, so we in the United Kingdom—having been at the heart of pursuing that policy, albeit with some allies—have a particular moral responsibility to take proper steps to help those at risk in Afghanistan.

Like many other Members of Parliament, I have been trying to help constituents with inquiries about friends and family, as well as people who have contacted me as a British MP seeking my help. However, I have been particularly engaged with the plight of female judges and female prosecutors in Afghanistan. We all know that women face particular oppression under the Taliban; when I spoke in a debate about LGBT rights in Afghanistan, I made the point that lesbians and bisexual women experience discrimination twice over in Afghanistan, both for their sex and for their same-sex attraction. This is most definitely an area in which sex matters, and women are particularly at risk.

The brave women who became judges, prosecutors, policewomen, human rights defenders and women’s rights activists under western rule now find that their lives are in mortal danger. That is also true for many of the men they worked alongside, but those women’s lack of freedom to move and to access the means to leave the country themselves, because of their oppression as women and the severe discrimination against them, makes the position of women all the worse. These women who worked as judges, prosecutors and so on are at risk twice over, both because of their civic contribution and because of their sex.

As the Minister knows, I have been working with a former Afghan judge and feminist activist to try to highlight the plight of lower-level female judges and prosecutors in provincial villages, whose lives are particularly at risk because they live in small communities and are therefore more readily identifiable. Marzia Babakarkhail came to the UK in 2008 after two attempts on her life by the Taliban, having served as a judge in Afghanistan. She is now a British citizen who lives in Oldham, and her story is featured in the People’s History Museum in Manchester, which is very worth a visit for anyone who has not been there. It houses the black Samsonite bag that Marzia was given by her mother as a gift to congratulate her on her success as a lawyer, which is one of the few possessions she was able to bring with her to her new life in the United Kingdom. Marzia is anxious that the UK Government should provide a new life in the United Kingdom for other female judges and prosecutors, and she is in touch with many of those who are trapped and left behind. They are in imminent danger of persecution from the Taliban, and from other dangerous criminals and members of terrorist groups who the Taliban have released from prison.

The Taliban’s opposition to the formal justice system of Afghanistan is well known. They are strongly against state-building and against the justice reconstruction efforts by what they call westernising forces, and favour sharia law as the source of justice, underpinned by a strict interpretation of Islam. In the past, they have targeted and brutally killed many judges, and since last August, there have been other, similar targetings. Many of the men who the Taliban have released from prison are heavily armed and are now free to trace and target their enemies without fear, and many of those female judges and prosecutors were involved in the indictment and punishment of those criminals and terrorists, so they are prime targets for revenge attacks.

As we speak and over the past few months, the Taliban have been conducting house-to-house searches, and many of these women are now in hiding, where they receive threatening phone calls asking them about their whereabouts. These women are contacting Marzia in fear and desperation, and she in turn is contacting me and other Members of Parliament.

As the Minister knows, in 2003 the convention on the elimination of violence against women was ratified by Afghanistan under western influence; based on that law, specialist courts were established in 34 provinces under the control of female judges. The Taliban and other conservative groups in Afghanistan considered that law to be un-Islamic, and the judges who enforced it to be infidels and foreign collaborators, so any of the female judges who sat on those courts, trying to protect women, are now at risk. As the hon. Member for Strangford said earlier, Baroness Helena Kennedy, who is—among her many good works—the head of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, has worked with a large team of pro bono lawyers in the UK and across the world to try to save some of those women. She has succeeded in doing so, and I commend her and her colleagues on their efforts.

However, Marzia is worried that junior female judges and prosecutors in the provinces will be overlooked, so I am working to raise their profile with the UK Government. At the end of last year, I brought Marzia into Parliament to meet Baroness Kennedy, the Justice Committee and the then Justice Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), who has recently been knighted. The then Justice Secretary was very keen to assist, but unfortunately he lost his position in the Cabinet reshuffle and with all due respect to his replacement—the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab)—I have to say that he has not so far covered himself in glory over the issue of Afghanistan. However, doing something to help these female judges and prosecutors would be a way for him to make amends.

Regarding the Minister who is here today, she agreed this morning in the Chamber to meet Marzia and I; I look forward to doing so very soon. All I really want to ask her now is that, in addition to answering the questions of the hon. Member for Strangford and other hon. Members, she answers this question: can she reassure me that the meeting she will have with Marzia and I will recognise the United Kingdom’s particular responsibility towards these women? Will it bring tangible results for women who have been left behind in Afghanistan and are now desperate?