Genocide Determination Bill [HL]

Lord Singh of Wimbledon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my friend and colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on his persistence in pursuing a politics-free determination of genocide. Genocide is the mass killing of members of an ethnic or religious community. Unfortunately, evil behaviour is often overlooked or condoned in the pursuit of trade or national self-interest. More than one UK government Minister has openly stated that we should leave human rights to one side when we talk trade.

In June 1984, the then Indian Government, trailing in the opinion polls, attacked the centre of Sikhism, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and other gurdwaras to win the support of bigots in the majority community in the forthcoming general election. Thousands of Sikhs were killed. Baat Cheet, the official Indian army newspaper, openly declared that all practising Sikhs were potential terrorists. In November of the same year, tens of thousands of innocent Sikh men, women and children were brutally killed as a result of further incitement by the government-owned All India Radio, calling on people to kill Sikhs. Electoral lists were given to gangs of thugs to help them identify Sikh households.

At the time, I was a member of the Home Secretary’s Advisory Council on Race Relations. I raised the issue with the then Home Secretary, David Waddington—a genuine and affable man. He looked at me and said, “Indarjit, we know exactly what’s happening, but it’s difficult. We’re walking on a tightrope. We’ve already lost one important contract”—that was the Westland Helicopters contract.

In 2014, on the 30th anniversary of the genocide against Sikhs, I raised the same issue in the House, quoting from a United States embassy document saying that more Sikhs were killed in India in a few weeks than the number of people murdered in the 17-year rule of President Pinochet of Chile. I asked for an apology from the British Government for providing military aid—documented in newly released papers at the time—to assist in the genocide against Sikhs. There was no apology—why upset an important trading partner?

India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was widely seen as being instrumental in the orchestrated killing of Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002. For some years, he was banned from entering this country or the United States. Then he won a general election and everything changed: he was welcomed here as the Prime Minister of an important trading partner.

The word “genocide” is strongly associated with Hitler’s pogrom against the Jews. I know of the incredible suffering of the Jewish people. I have visited Auschwitz and seen the showers where innocent men, women and children were gassed to death. Anti-Semitism was rife in Europe at the time, not only in Germany but in this country, where the word “Jew” was seen as a term of abuse. News of the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Jews by the Nazis touched the conscience of many in the West, who compensated for their previously negative attitude by linking genocide almost exclusively to the killing of Jews. The reality is that genocide, like that described against the Sikhs, has gone on throughout history and is still continuing today.

I have supported Holocaust Memorial Day since its inception, but I have had no joy in getting the committee to recognise the genocide against the Sikhs or other genocides, such as the mass killing of those who opposed the Ayatollah’s regime in 1988 and, as we read in the news, are still opposing it and its subjugation of women today.

There is an irrational fear that highlighting the suffering of others will somehow dilute our recognition of the suffering of Jews. We urgently need to get away from this politically generated hierarchy of suffering. Genocide is genocide wherever it occurs. That is why this Bill to take the determination of genocide away from politics is so important. As a member of the Sikh community, in the closing words of the Sikh daily prayer, “seeking the well-being of all”, I strongly support this important Bill.