Queen’s Speech

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hussain]

My Lords, I strongly believe in the United Kingdom Government’s overseas development budget, which is making a huge difference to the lives of millions of people around the world. It helps in reducing poverty, addressing dire medical needs, providing nutrition, combating deadly diseases such as TB, malaria and AIDS, empowering women and tackling radicalisation in many parts of the world. In the past 12 months, I have had the opportunity of visiting South Sudan and Ethiopia and have witnessed how our aid is helping to build the lives of some of the neediest people in the world. While I fully understand the economic situation at home and the hardship that some of our own citizens have to go through, I fully support our commitment to DfID. Can the Minister assure the House that we will continue that commitment?

On the diplomatic front, the world’s focus has been on developments in the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. However, I have watched the Indian subcontinent more closely. India is steadily making its place in the emerging economies of the world but the gap between rich and poor in that country is not decreasing. Hence more people suffer from hunger and poverty in India than anywhere else in the region. Yet, according to Russia Today, India is stepping up its space programme with a higher budget, the launch of a new satellite and a proposed mission to Mars. The country’s space agency will attempt 10 space missions by November 2013, bringing its total budget to $1.3 billion.

In Pakistan, at the end of the elected Government’s tenure, elections have been held despite many threats and deadly attacks by extremists. The new Government face many challenges including terrorism, law and order, corruption, an energy crisis and the country’s relations with its neighbours, particularly with its historic rival, India. The good news is that Indian Prime Minister Mr Manmohan Singh and Mr Nawaz Sharif have exchanged warm greetings. Let us hope that they are able to resolve their disputes, including the Kashmir issue according to the wishes of its people. If that happens, it will ultimately save both countries millions of pounds from their defence budgets that they need to spend on their publics.

Bangladesh is generally known as a progressive, multi-party democracy and a growing economy in south-east Asia. It has strong political and economic ties with the United Kingdom. Our bilateral trade has steadily grown over the years, largely in favour of Bangladesh. Bangladesh also receives £250 million in aid from the United Kingdom every year—at least until 2015. In the past few years, reports of corruption, torture, extrajudicial killings and the sudden disappearance of journalists and political activists from opposition parties have risen significantly. It is over a year now since Mr Ilias Ali, one of the prominent leaders of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was kidnapped along with his driver. He has not been found since. I had the opportunity of meeting Mr Ali on his visit to the United Kingdom a few months before he was kidnapped. He is one out of thousands of such victims considered by many to have been abducted by government agencies and who have not been seen since—some have been found dead.

According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2013, the overall human rights situation in Bangladesh has worsened in 2012,

“as the government narrowed political and civil society space, continued to shield abusive security forces from accountability, and flatly ignored calls by Human Rights Watch to reform laws and procedures in flawed war crimes and mutiny trials”.

In February 2013, the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Gabriela Knaul, and the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns, expressed concern at aspects of non-compliance with fair trial and due process reported during proceedings before Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, including the pronouncement of death sentences.

Another deadly fire in a Bangladeshi garments factory this time killed over 1,200 people—one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history. The disaster has created worldwide concern for the factory workers who provide, through their sweat and blood, cheap clothes for the developed world. However, before all the victims of the factory collapse were buried, another human tragedy visited Bangladesh with the killings of unknown numbers of opposition protestors by the Government in the early hours of 6 May. This was after a massive anti-government rally. The exact number of casualties in the darkness of the night is still unknown, but the Asian Human Rights Commission calls it “a massacre of demonstrators”. In the absence of any reliable information, the Economist states that what happened in Dakar and beyond in the early hours of 6 May looks like a massacre. Bangladesh police say that 22 people died, but the Opposition claim that the figure could be as high as 2,000.

Bangladesh has been known as a land of religious moderation and the Bangladeshi diaspora are generally recognised as such. About half a million British Bangladeshis in the UK are troubled by the recent events in Bangladesh. On behalf of many of them, I ask the Minister to urge the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to use its good offices to ascertain the truth behind the 6 May massacre in Dakar. The world’s microfinance guru and practitioner Professor Muhammad Yunus commented on the state of Bangladesh:

“The collapse of the building is just a precursor to the imminent collapse of all our state institutions. If we don't face up to the cracks in our state systems, then we as a nation will get lost in the debris of the collapse ... We will have to find ways to fix the institutions to protect them from complete collapse”.

The situation in Bangladesh is showing all signs of anarchy and civil war that could derail democracy and drag the country back into the dark ages. It is time for the influential friendly countries such as the United Kingdom to help Bangladesh to bring back peace, tolerance and reconciliation to the country. I ask the Minister to ask the Foreign Secretary to raise those issues with his counterpart or indeed with the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, at the earliest opportunity.