Kashmir

Naz Shah Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. I am well aware of the work he does with a significant Kashmiri population in his constituency, and I have had a chance to meet some of the main community leaders there. I would not wish him to think there has been too much of an evolution of the Government policy, but what I have seen, having spoken at great length to our high commissioners in Islamabad and New Delhi, is a recognition that one area where we can and will assist, as we have done, is through the breadth of our diplomatic knowledge on the ground. We are able to have lines of communication open with diplomats, politicians and the military on both sides, which we hope will enable us to assist, but it would be wrong to assume that we are in any way going to try to put our own template or mediate there. I would not want the House to be in any doubt about the huge amount of work that goes on in our diplomatic community, which will continue.

I know that my hon. Friend takes the Kashmiri issue very seriously and he is right to say that this is perhaps an important international wake-up call, when progress can be made. We are perhaps reluctant to make a comparison with what happened in Northern Ireland, but the single worst attack on civilians there, in Omagh, in 1998, finally became the moment when many, not only in Northern Ireland but in surrounding countries, thought that something fundamentally had to change. That was the path towards the Good Friday agreement.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

I value the Minister coming here to give us this statement and I thank him for that. However, I am struggling with the fact that although we rightly hear about terrorism and how Pakistan needs to get rid of all the terrorism, I do not hear—and I want to hear—about the Kashmiri people. We do not hear about the fact that we have illegally occupied territory, and people who have been persecuted for years and years. There is no end in sight for those people at the heart of all of this. We are not talking about that. We are not talking about the Indian armed forces doing what they are doing, and blinding people. We are not talking about the resurgence of all the terrors put upon these people. What really alarms me is that while we are talking about Pakistan playing its role, we have seen a Prime Minister in India who is using the conflict to electioneer and for his election purposes. What have our Government done? Have we made any representations to the Prime Minister of India about not using this conflict for electioneering purposes?

[Mark Field]

I thank the hon. Lady for that. She will appreciate, and we have very much noted, the concerns across Kashmir raised in the report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in June 2018. It made firm recommendations for both India and Pakistan to consider. Even eight days ago, I was not quite aware of just how much work goes on. I alluded in my statement to the work on child education. When I was in Pakistan at the end of 2017, I went to Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which at that stage was the stronghold of Imran Khan’s party. I saw the terrific amount of work that was going on in trying to develop trust-based policing, similar to what we have here in the UK, rather than the police being a police “force”. There was also a real commitment to education, particularly girls’ education. These things go on throughout Pakistan. Some of them are quite sensitive and I cannot go into great detail here.

One very much hopes there will be an ongoing de-escalation and calming of passions, but later in the year we will have a leadership week at the Foreign Office, when our high commissioners in India and Pakistan will both be here, so it might be useful to have the all-party group on Kashmir come in. I hope that people will recognise that some of what will be said will be a little sensitive, so I cannot go into deep detail on this on the Floor of the House, but that might be a useful exercise for the all-party group and friends of India from both sides of the House—I am well aware that the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) speaks in that regard. That might be useful, as it would give all Members a little more idea of just how much work goes on in Kashmir, some of which it is difficult at this stage to avow.