Kashmir

Naz Shah Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Westminster Hall

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Davies, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) on securing this debate.

In 1945, the world set up the United Nations, with peace, justice and international co-operation in mind. At the signing of the UN charter, which was signed by 50 nations, including ours, President Truman famously said:

“If we had had this Charter a few years ago—and above all, the will to use it—millions now dead would be alive. If we should falter in the future in our will to use it, millions now living will surely die.”

For Members across this House and to those who listen to my words after this debate, the charter lives on today but, tragically for the people of Kashmir, the will to use it does not.

UN Security Council resolution 47, which provides for the right of a plebiscite for the people of Kashmir, has existed since 1948. The will to implement still does not. Seventy-four years on, the trajectory for the people of Kashmir is leading to a future far from a right of self-determination and closer to one of non-existence. But let us put history to one side for a second. In 2019, India unilaterally revoked article 370, removing the special status of Kashmir, outrightly defying the United Nations resolution, setting back previously agreed international resolutions such as the Simla agreement, arresting Kashmiri political leaders, enforcing curfews, implementing a media blackout, and denying internationally agreed principles of human rights for Kashmiri people. I ask this House and our Government: apart from the words of condemnation, what else do the people of Kashmir get?

From the start of 2010 to the 2019 siege, the Kashmiri people have been shut off from the entire world—occupied by more than 600,000 Indian soldiers, in the largest military operation in the world; Kashmiri women targeted for rape; 250 Kashmiris killed; 1,500 injured; 657 houses destroyed; 4,815 cordon and search operations during the past one year alone; political leaders under house arrest and put through kangaroo courts; thousands of non-Kashmiri Hindus of India issued with domicile certificates; and the Indian Government proactively changing the very demographics of Kashmir, leading only to a path of ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri people. Without the UN rapporteurs allowed into the region, and with every report out of the region censored, how can anyone assure this House that a genocide in Kashmir is not taking place?

From 2015 to last year, Britain sold more than half a billion pounds-worth of arms to India, which will contribute to shedding the blood of the Kashmiri people. Without the reassurances from the UN, we cannot be sure that we are not contributing to a genocide. As a proud daughter of Kashmir, I simply ask the Minister whether the Prime Minister, who has now cancelled his visit to India, will follow on and cancel the shipment of arms to India? We do not need international leaders and Governments protesting with words; we have activists on the streets for that. We need international leaders and Governments with the will to take action and stop genocide taking place. The time to act is now. Will the Minister act now while there is still time, or history will not be so forgiving?

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

We can retain a five-minute limit. I call Robbie Moore.