Human Rights: Kashmir

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab) [R]]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) for setting out the issues at the heart of the debate. The truth is, the Kashmir struggle has gone on a long while, spanning many decades, and tens and thousands of people have died. Many hon. Members will be familiar with the history, so I will concentrate on what happened just two years ago.

On 4 August 2019, phone lines in Kashmir went dead and internet connections were cut. A day later, 7 million people were locked in their homes in a strict and brutal military curfew. Almost 10,000 people, from young people to former politicians, were arrested and indefinitely detained. Some are still in detention. A day later, a Bill was passed in the Indian Parliament stripping Kashmir of its autonomy and special status. It was stripped of its statehood and identity, to be governed directly by New Delhi.

In the last two years, human rights groups have documented the everyday reality of that governance for Kashmiris: mass arrests and raids, torture, the suppression of free assembly, the crushing of the Kashmiri press, the decimation of the local economy, the crippling of the education system, the incarceration of thousands of people, the conversion of hotels and guesthouses into detention centres and the gagging of Kashmiri civil society. Censorship has been institutionalized and journalism has been criminalised.

Until recently, Kashmir had the longest internet shutdown ever imposed by a democracy. The curfew and communication siege also meant no access to doctors or hospitals, no work, no businesses, no schools and no contact with loved ones lasting for many months. We experienced the covid lockdown here, except that ours was without a military curfew and without a communication siege, and still it brought our world to its knees, testing our endurance and sanity. Think of Kashmir and what people have to put up with under a dense military deployment and surrounded by a maze of barbed wire on their street. Imagine soldiers breaking into your home. It is incomparable suffering.

Only a few weeks ago, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed concern over “grave violations” in Kashmir, urging the Indian Government to end the use of shotgun pellets against children. Yes, that’s right—the use of shotgun pellets on children. But the use of these pellets is not new in Indian-administered Kashmir. In 2016, there was a report that more than 1,100 people were partially blinded in what was considered by some to be the world’s first mass blindings. There were reports that some victims were children, some as young as 19 months old.

On top of this is the domicile law, which opened the floodgates to land grabs by allowing Indians from the other parts of India to reside in Kashmir. That means that the state subject certificates of Kashmiris are legally void, unless they are used as evidence for their application to the Indian Government for domiciled status in their own country. Those whose applications are rejected could be denied residency in their own country and deported. Kashmiris are facing a cultural erasure.

Let me be clear: we are not against India—it is a beautiful country—but that does not mean that we should not hold the Indian Government, and particularly this BJP Government, to account for their abusive behaviour. We in this Parliament talk about girls’ rights in Afghanistan, but what about girls’ rights in Indian-occupied Kashmir? They just as much have rights as well.

India most allow the UN observers free and unfettered access to visit Kashmir and assess the situation. I know some Members will stand up and say none of what I have said is correct. In that case, I would say: why doesn’t the Indian Government allow in outside independent observers?