Conflict in Fragile States

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Loomba for securing this important debate. Human rights abuses do not just take place in conflicts in fragile states. They take place in many countries known as famous democracies. One of them happens to be India, particularly in Indian-administered Kashmir. As many noble Lords know, I was born in Azad Kashmir and I have family and friends on both sides of the line of control that divides the state between India and Pakistan.

The Indian Army has been in Kashmir since 1947, but it was given special powers in 1990 under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which gives it complete immunity. Although I am aware that the Indian armed forces have enjoyed this immunity at different times in different parts of India, it has always been for a short time, whereas the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act has been applied in Kashmir without a break since 1990. Since then, more than 100,000 civilians have been killed. Many more have been injured, detained and tortured.

Lately, the forces have started using pellet guns, which has resulted in hundreds of people, mainly the young, being blinded in one eye or both. Many international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, have highlighted these violations time and again. As lately as two days ago, the United Nations Human Rights Council made a formal request to India and Pakistan for free access to their respective areas of the former princely state. Pakistan has agreed to give free access providing India does the same, but sadly, India has refused completely.

Let me draw noble Lords’ attention to some surveys done some time ago on the plight of widows and orphans in Kashmir. The first is a report on a survey on the impact of the conflict situation on women and children in Kashmir, conducted by the department of sociology at the University of Kashmir and sponsored by the UK-based NGO Save the Children Fund in 2003. Here are some extracts:

“Srinagar—Shama Bano at 30 continues to struggle for survival along with her two minors, including a mentally retarded son, in militancy-hit Kashmir where living conditions of thousands of widows and orphans deteriorate day by day.

Bano’s life was shattered when she found her husband Manzoor Ahmed Bhat’s bullet-riddled body outside the residence on December 15, 1992, and still finds it hard to believe it with seven-year-old mentally retarded son Amir groaning and grumbling about the fate of his father.

After the death of her husband, Bano moved into her brother’s house in the Lalbazar area here as her in-laws ill-treated and left her and children in the lurch and dependent on income hardly sufficient to feed the family.

The plight and misery of Bano and other widows and orphans came to light”,

during the study, which was,

“carried out by nine researchers under the guidance of Dr Bashir Ahmed Dabla, Head of the Department, with 600 respondents (300 widows and 300 orphans) taken in six districts of Kashmir. In all, 100 respondents (50 widows and 50 orphans) were taken in each of the districts of Baramula, Srinagar, Kupwara, Pulwama, Anantnag and Budgam and an attempt was made to understand the prevailing conditions of the widows and orphans which emerged immediately after the death of their husbands and fathers, Dr Dabla, the director of the project said here.

According to the survey, significant groups of women and children have become widows and orphans as a result of death of their husbands/fathers who were the sole bread earners in their families with the result the living conditions of these have become worse as there is no organised, systematic and continuous financial support to them.

Dr Dabla admits that limitation of the study was its small sample as reliable estimates put the number of widows and orphans in Kashmir at 16,000-20,000 at present”.

This was in 2003. It goes on:

“A majority of the widows are illiterate and fall in the age group of 19-30 years and belong to lower middle class families with a monthly income of Rs 2000-4000. The survey gives the break up of incidents of death of husbands of all women respondents—cross-firing (21 per cent), killed by army/security forces (26 per cent), custodial killing (15 per cent), militants (9 per cent), surrendered militants (17 per cent), killed by bomb/mine blasts (7 per cent) and at the line of control (5 per cent) … though after the death of her husband, a Muslim woman is allowed by the Shariah to marry again, the survey found 91.33 per cent respondents whose husbands had died didn’t marry because they wanted to look after the children of their deceased husband, while only 8.66 per cent had remarried”.

The survey said that,

“most of the women face problems within and outside their homes like financial difficulties, psychological downfall, emotional stress, denial of inheritance/due rights, sexual harassment, physical insecurity, losing control over children, dead husband’s liabilities, harassment by in-laws, social security and apathy … The crucial problems faced by children, after the death of their fathers, are economic hardship, psychological setback, lack of love and affection and apathy on the part of relatives”.

The report said that the survey went on to say that:

“The devastating effect in the post-death period is that children could not pursue their education, while orphans had to drop out of schools, others had to face a tough time for continuing their formal education … The survey found that the number of dropouts from schools in rural and urban areas has significantly increased during the past decade as death of fathers led them to work outside to earn for their families. ‘These children, who work in automobile workshops, home service, handicrafts, face undesirable conditions as they are exploited which leads to child labour’”.

Let me give another quotation, this from the Hindustan Times of 14 March 2010. It reports:

“There are over 32,000 widows and 97,000 orphaned children in violence-battered Jammu and Kashmir, a new study has found, suggesting that the unending conflict in the border state has only made things worse for the vulnerable sections of society … ‘There were 32,400 widows and 97,200 orphans in 2008 in Kashmir and the number is growing. With the continuity and intensification of armed conflict, their life conditions have deteriorated to miserable sub-human levels,’ says the study … The study says that widows and orphans in the state, which has been battling a separatist war since 1989, have not received adequate help from the government … ‘Neither the state nor NGOs have been able to help them in an organised and systematic manner. The tragic aspect of the situation is that the state has not adopted any specific social policy and programme in this regard. Their problems accumulate and intensify day by day’”.

Let me share another article from 2013 and mentioned in many newspapers in India: “The Shocking Tale of Half Widows and Half Orphans”—a term noble Lords might not have heard elsewhere in the world. It talks about Kashmir and was written by Ana Kandwal. It says:

“While I was in Kashmir, I was hoping to witness the beauty of … paradise but what I witnessed instead were the gloomy stories hiding behind a beautiful veil. Seldom does any tourist, who visits Kashmir to feel the beauty around Dal lake, houseboats, Gulamarg and Sonmarg get to feel the touch of reality. I am quite sure that people have observed the disturbance which one can sense now and then, which comes with the endless Indian military convoys that pass by or the sight of jawans or Jammu Kashmir police supervising at every nook and corner, and of course those graffiti that one can see sprayed up on the walls, especially near Lal Chowk, that talks about the stories of rebellion and revolutions that are enough to give jerks and prick in your rose tinted glass. We sensed the same fear, disturbance, confusion and were incapable to understand the setting. But as they say, ignorance is bliss. We preferred to move ahead by making assumptions about the natives of Kashmir to calm down our conscience. I think we have become habitual of making assumptions. Isn’t it the easiest way to run from the reality or from our duty? … Since childhood, we were taught that Kashmir is a part of India, that it’s a paradise on earth. What we were never taught was that Kashmir is a disturbed area where people still believe in”,

not living under colonial rule.

He went on to ask,

“why some people want self determination? What is it and why some people want to repeal”,

the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. He said:

“We were taught only beautiful things that made us patriotic and anyone or anything that talks against these beautiful teachings or tried to cross check the reality are labelled as anti-national. And here I was, at the place which gave me many reasons to be bothered. I was ripped off my own so called identity and beliefs. The Kashmir that I always believed to be mine was not so mine. Till Jammu, everything was just like India but when we reached Srinagar, I started sensing that I am in a different country. There was nothing like India except that the Indian military could be seen at each and every place. Our whole lives we read something, accepted somethings and the reality seemed to be starkly different. Something that shocked me was the graffiti on the walls stating ‘Go India Go’, ‘Free Kashmir’, ‘1947: Indian independence or occupation?’, ‘Revolution is loading’, ‘AFSPA license of offence’ etc. I was aware of the disturbance in Kashmir valley through all those media news which we get to hear of but was completely ignorant about this different angle of the whole issue”.

I will shortcut my speech, because it may just run over, but I would draw your Lordships’ attention to this: between 1989 and 2009, the actions of India’s army and paramilitary forces in Kashmir have resulted in 8,000 enforced and involuntary disappearances and 70,000-plus deaths, including through extrajudicial or fake encounter executions, custodial brutality and other means. Lawyers have reportedly filed 15,000 petitions since 1990 inquiring, largely unsuccessfully, into the location and health of detainees and the charges against them.

Seven thousand unmarked graves exist in Indian-administered Kashmir. According to a recent finding, when 53 graves were found in a particular district of Kashmir, after the exhumation of the bodies 49 were found to be of the local villagers who had disappeared from nearby villages, while three were unidentified and one was that of a militant. The finding is so chilling that it shows the extent of the violation of human rights, and the degree of the ignorance within the institutions. It urges the Indian Government to cease such activities and calls for justice.

Finally, will the Minster ask her right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary to use his good offices to persuade India to lift the curfew order imposed on most cities and towns of Kashmir for the past 68 consecutive days, to allow free access to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to investigate the human right cases in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, to withdraw from Kashmir its military and its draconian laws such as the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, and to allow the people of Jammu and Kashmir a referendum to decide their future as we gave to the people of Scotland?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Goldie]

I am happy to undertake to do that for the noble Baroness. I cannot provide her with the specific answer, but I can undertake to make the inquiry and see what information is forthcoming.

[Lord Hussain]

I asked two particular questions that I did not get answers to. First, will the British Government ask the Indian Government to give access to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which two days ago asked for free access to investigate human rights violations and India refused? Will the Minister ask the Foreign Secretary to raise that with India to allow that access? My final question was with regard to the continued curfew orders in place for the last 68 days. All the schools, hospitals and colleges are shut and life is at a standstill. Can we ask that those curfew orders be lifted?

[Baroness Goldie]

I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord’s concern. I can certainly make inquiries, but at the end of the day certain of these matters are outwith the control of the United Kingdom Government. I can certainly undertake to make inquiries on his behalf.

I conclude by thanking noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions. Widows are a particularly vulnerable group—alongside children, disabled people, women in general, people who are LGB or transsexual, and others—in conflict-affected and fragile states, and the international community has a responsibility to pay special attention to their needs. Far too many widows are still shut out of inheritance, land tenure, livelihood, a social safety net, health care or education. Far too many widows and their children must cope with not only grief at the loss of their husband or father but their own sudden loss of status and benefits in society. In places where a woman’s status is linked to her husband, she may find herself suddenly shunned and isolated, and that quite simply is wrong.

At the same time, it is important to recognise the contribution of the world’s widows, who raise families, run companies, sit in Parliament and play a full and active role in public life. We must continue work to promote and protect the rights and well-being of widows, and to help maximise the positive role they play in our societies and in our economies by removing discriminatory laws, policies and practices that impede widows from enjoying the dignity and equality they deserve.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for his tireless work on behalf of widows through his foundation. All vulnerable groups should have a champion such as him.