Israel and Gaza

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said today, and for the information and work from his community in Bolton that he is making available to the Foreign Office. Of course I shall be pleased to see him at a mutually convenient time.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Last week I attended a briefing with Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta, a heroic British Palestinian doctor who had just returned from Gaza. Because the Israeli siege prevents medical supplies from entering Gaza, he told us he had to use vinegar and washing up liquid to sterilise wounds, even on the night when he performed amputations on six children. He recounted their screams, and the desperation of their parents. I pay tribute to Professor Ghassan, but it will forever shame this House that the dying and the wounded who he treated were bombed and maimed by Israel with the approval of this place. Will the Government finally listen to the growing global calls and demand an immediate ceasefire?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady’s eloquent intervention underlines the importance of achieving a sustainable ceasefire in the way set out by the Foreign Secretary in his article at the weekend.

Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Leo Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about post-war reconstruction and the return of civilians. Of course, the UK will be at the heart of the international response that will attend to that.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker:

“A night of utterly relentless bombardments”—

the worst of the war so far. Those are the words of a UNICEF spokesperson this morning in Khan Yunis in the south of Gaza, where 1.8 million Palestinians are now trapped as Israeli bombs rain down on them. They were ordered to flee the north, and they are now being slaughtered in the south. Nowhere is safe in Gaza. As even UN experts warn of the grave risk of genocide, the UK Government continue to give their full support to Israel, calling for pauses in the slaughter but not a permanent ceasefire and an end to the slaughter. Is the Minister happy to be part of a Government so deeply complicit in the horrors being inflicted on the Palestinian people?

[Leo Docherty]

We continue to be forthright in our support for the absolute right of Israel to defend its people and its sovereignty. The tragedy that has unfolded following the Hamas terrorist abomination on 7 October of course brings pain to all sides, but we will continue to be forthright in our commitment to Israel’s security and, ultimately, I hope, to Palestinian statehood, in a long-term and sustainable peace in the middle east.

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Member will have heard heavily rehearsed during this statement the arguments for and against a ceasefire, and I fear I cannot add anything to what I have already said on that point.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The Minister’s call for Israel to follow international law in Gaza rings utterly hollow when we know that that is not happening. The United Nations Secretary-General, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others have been clear that Israel is clearly and grossly violating international humanitarian law. Since 2015, this Government have licensed more than £472 million of arms exports to Israel, including parts of F-35 stealth aircraft, which are currently raining down bombs on Gaza. Does the Minister know whether British weapons have been used in violations of international law in Gaza, and does he agree that we should not sell weapons for committing war crimes?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Member will know that the President of Israel, President Herzog, has made it clear that his country will abide by international humanitarian law. [Interruption.] She will also know that, in respect of arms exports in this country, we have the toughest arms regulations anywhere in the world.

Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Situation

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The British role at the United Nations is second to none in trying to stop what is happening in Israel and in Palestine. The point I would make to the hon. Gentleman is that Hamas knew exactly what they were unleashing on that dreadful day of 7 October, and the blame for what has happened should be allocated precisely where it rests.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Gaza used to be described as a “prison camp”—that is what Prime Minister David Cameron called it in 2010. This week the United Nations Secretary-General called it “a graveyard for children”. More than 10,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered in Israel’s assault, nearly half of them children. It would take nearly six hours to read the names and ages of every child killed so far. Yet that horror has been given the green light by this Government. Today I tabled an amendment to the Humble Address calling for an immediate ceasefire, a move backed by 76% of the British public. Will the Government finally do what is right and demand an immediate ceasefire to end the bloodshed?

[Mr Mitchell]

While the hon. Lady is eloquent on the effects, she is not so eloquent, in my opinion, on the causes. In respect of the amendment that she has tabled, of course that is a matter for the House, but it will not be supported by the Government, nor by those on her own Front Bench.

Shireen Abu Aqla

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

As if the ongoing dispossession and discrimination faced by the Palestinian people was not enough cruelty, Israel continuously targets Palestinian journalists. There is not only the murder by Israeli snipers of Shireen Abu Aqla, who for decades bravely reported the crimes inflicted on her people. Since 2000, Israel has killed an estimated 51 Palestinian journalists and an independent UN commission of inquiry found that, during the 2018 march of return, Israeli snipers intentionally shot Palestinian journalists who were clearly marked as such, killing Yasser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein. What will it take for the Government to stop equivocating over these horrific crimes and hold Israel to account for its routine violations of international humanitarian law? And for the seventh time, will the Minister summon the Israeli ambassador?

[Vicky Ford]

We stand by journalists all across the world and it is a tragedy that so many journalists have been killed in recent years, and particularly this year. That is why we continue to raise issues of media freedom on the global stage. In February in Estonia, we announced support for the secretariat for the Media Freedom Coalition, which we founded and which now has 52 members. We will absolutely stand for media freedom and for journalists all across the world.

Prime Minister’s Visit to India

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

I know the Prime Minister keeps a close eye on trade and economic numbers and on the prosperity of this country at a very difficult time for world prosperity.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister began his trip to India with a visit to a JCB factory, just one day after the company was embroiled in controversy after its bulldozers were used to illegally demolish Muslim homes and businesses in Delhi, and following widespread anti-Muslim violence in India, which is widely seen as being whipped up by Modi and the ruling BJP. I ask the Minister again, since she has failed to answer the question: did the Prime Minister challenge Modi on the BJP’s role in anti-Muslim violence in India, or did he again disregard human rights abuses? Does the Minister acknowledge that the visit to the JCB factory was a mistake?

Human Rights: Kashmir

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams).

Today’s debate on rights abuses in Kashmir is one close to my heart. It is very personal for me. In the 1960s, my grandfather came to the west midlands to work in the foundries, having left his home in Kashmir. I still have family in the region, and that is what makes what is happening in Kashmir all the more painful.

It is now more than two years since the BJP Modi Government unilaterally revoked articles 370 and 35A of the constitution, robbing Indian-occupied Kashmir of autonomy, reflective of its status as an occupied territory, violating UN resolution 47 and initiating a brutal lockdown. This has intensified human rights violations in the region, with widespread reports of torture, rape, extrajudicial execution and illegal detention. In what is now the largest military occupation in the world, the internet connection was cut off, and political leaders, activists and journalists were arrested.

In 2020, following its reports of widespread state abuses, human rights organisation Amnesty International faced reprisals from the Modi Government and was forced to halt its operations in the region. These repressive actions have been mirrored in how the Indian Government have cracked down on the largest protests in world history, led by tens of thousands of farmers; in how they have unlawfully detained British Sikhs in India, such as Jagtar Singh Johal; and in how they attempted to have three British Sikhs from the west midlands extradited, only for Westminster magistrates court yesterday to rule that there was not evidence to justify it. I send my solidarity to the families of these men, who have faced months of agonising uncertainty and fear, and to the Sikh community in Coventry and across the UK.

Human rights abuses in Kashmir are not simply some issue of foreign policy of which Britain can wash its hands of responsibility, nor are they a bilateral issue for India and Pakistan to resolve. This House has a special responsibility for the plight of the Kashmiri people. In 1947, as the colonial power, the British Government oversaw partition of the Indian subcontinent and rejected calls for Kashmiri independence. That decision laid the groundwork for the oppression we see in Kashmir today. But far from standing up to the Indian Government for their violations of human rights and international law, this Conservative Government would rather cosy up to Prime Minister Modi, and would rather refuse to speak out and, once again, demonstrate moral cowardice that shames this House.

Britain has a special responsibility to the Kashmiri people, and it is long past time that we spoke up for their inalienable rights and pursued diplomatic channels to secure UN resolution 47, securing their right to self-determination.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Apologies to Jim Shannon, who has been here throughout, but, sadly, we have run out of time. Wind-ups—I call Hannah Bardell.

Detention of Jagtar Singh Johal

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

While in India for his wedding on 4 November 2017, British citizen Jagtar Singh Johal was shopping with his newly wedded wife when he was bound, hooded and bundled into a car by plain-clothed police officers. Leaving his wife with no explanation why he had been taken, Jagtar was taken into police custody and denied his right to see a lawyer, family members or a representative from the British high commission. Once imprisoned, Jagtar reported being tortured by police. He said crocodile clips were placed on him, with electricity fired through his body. Such was the severity of the torture that Jagtar had to be carried out of the interrogation room. To make the pain stop, Jagtar reports that he was forced to confess to the alleged conspiracies.

Why has he faced these basic violations of his rights? Prior to his arrest, Jagtar was involved in raising awareness of human rights abuses against India’s Sikh population. Human rights organisation Reprieve fears that he has been targeted for exercising freedom of expression and his right to it. It has already cost him four years in prison without trial. He has endured torture and now there is a real risk that confessions extracted through torture could be used to sentence him to the death penalty. Jagtar now languishes in prison, where mass covid-19 outbreaks have triggered calls for states to protect vulnerable prisoners.

In the face of these humans rights abuses, what have the British Government done? Rather than standing up for the rights of British nationals overseas, they have failed to follow Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office policy to lobby for arbitrarily detained UK nationals overseas, and ignored calls from myself and 139 colleagues earlier this year to do precisely that. The Government have even failed to secure an independent medical assessment of Jagtar to judge the severity and extent of torture, and to secure private consular visits with him for over three years. The Foreign Secretary has failed to meet with Jagtar’s family and despite calls from human rights organisations to raise the issue, the Prime Minister failed to challenge Indian Prime Minister Modi on Jagtar’s detention and treatment in a meeting in April.

This is a shameful dereliction of duty, Mr Hollobone: a pattern of what is happening in India and how the British Government are failing to stand up for human rights. In recent years in India, there have been a growing number of arrests of humans rights defenders, student leaders, trade unionists, journalists, and others critical of the ruling Government. In occupied Kashmir in 2019, the Indian Government unilaterally revoked articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald).

Government Support for India

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) [V]]

The images from India are horrifying—from people gasping for air and dying—[Inaudible]—with hospitals overrun, to seas of blazing makeshift pyres. This is a human catastrophe for India, and, with a virus that does not respect borders, none of us is safe until we are all safe. Vaccine supply is artificially limited by patents, leading to the global vaccine apartheid. At the Word Trade Organisation, India and South Africa have proposed a temporary waiver to vaccine patents, allowing production—[Inaudible]—expand. Public money funded these vaccines, so will the Government put public health before the profits of big pharma and support a waiver of the vaccine patents?

[Nigel Adams]

The audio was a bit in and out there, but I think I got the gist of the hon. Lady’s question. As I have said several times in my response, we are doing an immense amount. We are at the forefront of efforts to ensure that vaccines are getting to the most vulnerable countries—to developing countries—as well as being, I think, the second or third largest donor to the COVAX programme. I gently remind the hon. Lady that that support will assist 1.3 billion people in low and middle-income countries across the globe, including India, where we have seen such horrific scenes; our hearts are with them.

Yemen: Aid Funding

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) [V]]

The Minister began his remarks by saying that improving the situation for Yemenis was

“a priority for this Government.”

How he can say that with a straight face I do not know. Not only has he announced a 50% cut in aid to Yemen, but since the Saudi-led war in Yemen began, his Government have licensed £6.7 billion-worth of arms sales to the Saudis. That is British-made bombs dropped from British-made jets flown by British-trained pilots. Instead of warm words and crocodile tears, will the Minister take the necessary action for peace and end arms sales to Saudi Arabia?

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady raises this issue on the day after Houthi missiles were sent into civilian areas of Saudi. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia seeks to defend itself against such aggression, as every country in the world has the right to do. Our arms export regime is robust, and the best thing that we can do, as I say, to help the people of Yemen is to encourage all the parties, both those in Yemen and regional partners, to bring this conflict to an end.