Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I am grateful to be called to contribute to this important debate and I congratulate the hon. Members for Wycombe (Steve Baker) and for Ilford North (Mr Scott) on securing it. I am pleased that it has proved so popular with parliamentary colleagues, although the unfortunate flip-side is that we have a strict time limit on our contributions.

Like the hon. Member for Wycombe, I wish to focus my comments on the situation in Kashmir. This topic is important to me because my constituency, and Birmingham as a whole, has a large British-Kashmiri population, some of whose members are here for the debate and many of whom have written to me asking me to voice their concerns in the House. The subject is also important to me personally, because I am of Kashmiri origin: my family originated from the Mirpur district of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, both my parents were born there and I still have family and friends there. Consequently, the plight of Kashmiris and the necessity of finding a peaceful resolution to the Kashmir dispute have loomed large in my life.

For too long the beautiful region of Kashmir, often described as paradise on earth, has been caught in one of the world’s most dangerous conflicts, but it is a conflict that is little reported and often does not get the media and global political attention that it needs and deserves. I am grateful, therefore, that this debate has given us an opportunity to focus on the issue. I know, too, that many British Kashmiris are grateful to the all-party group on Kashmir and Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry, a former Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, for their efforts to raise the profile of this dispute and to secure political debate and action.

The failure to resolve the Kashmir dispute, and particularly the failure to give effect to UN resolutions from the 1940s urging a plebiscite in Kashmir so that the Kashmiri people can determine their own future, has resulted in an uprising in Indian-administered Kashmir, the suppression of which, according to Amnesty International’s “lawless law” report, has led to grave human rights violations. The report highlights disturbing and unacceptable cases of abuse, with the application of the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act 1978, in particular, undermining efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution. Amnesty International found that many cases in which the Public Safety Act had been applied involved lengthy periods of illegal detention of political activists seeking Kashmiri independence, in violation of Indian national law as well as international law. Many cases featured allegations of torture and other forms of ill treatment being used to coerce people into making confessions.

One of the most offensive features of the Public Safety Act is that it provides for immunity from prosecution for officials operating under it, thereby granting impunity for human rights violations under the law. The application of the Act, together with the discovery of mass graves in Kashmir, the Mumbai attacks in 2008 and Kashmir’s bloody summer of 2010, have undermined the prospects for a resolution of the dispute.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech, and I am proud to be sitting here listening to her. Does she agree that India should accept the findings of the commission on the mass graves in Kashmir?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jason McCartney]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. I made that point myself, but journalists must not over-compensate for their inability to go to those areas by wildly inflating reports; they must stick to the facts. As a journalist I was sometimes frustrated by similar situations, which can be very difficult.

[Lyn Brown]

Mass graves should be investigated. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if India agreed to a commission, we could see the truth of the claims that are being made and end the torturous anxieties of many people in Kashmir, who are worried that their relatives may be languishing in such places and that they have no rest?

[Jason McCartney]

The hon. Lady must have had a sneaky peek at my speech because I will come to that in about 20 seconds.

I welcome Amnesty International’s report on Kashmir, “A Lawless Law”, and want to highlight some of its conclusions, which I fully support. I call for a repeal of the Public Safety Act, which results in the long-term detention of people in cases where there is insufficient evidence for trial. I call on Indian-administered Kashmir to allow peaceful protests and exercise proper crowd control, and to carry out an independent, impartial and comprehensive investigation into all allegations of abuses, including the unmarked graves and allegations of torture. I call on the UK Government to keep Kashmir on their agenda and raise these issues with the Governments of Pakistan and India whenever they meet.