Dr Rupa Huq

My hon. Friend is so right. I did not see any demos in Reading, but I do know that in all sorts of European capitals, including Paris and Rome, as well as in Manchester and Trafalgar Square, there were solidarity protests when these things went on. The diaspora has been active. I am a London-born Bangladeshi. I kind of knew about the country from my parents telling me that it was this paradise of coconut trees and those kind of things. I only went as a teenager. More recently, as an adult and as an MP, I have noticed the slightly more sinister side, with things like enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Every human rights organisation—Amnesty International and so on—has condemned those. I try to keep out of this subject—I do not have a very Bangladeshi electorate—but I was jolted when in 2018 I heard from the family of Shahidul Alam, a photographer who was taking pictures of an earlier student protest, that he had been banged up and tortured. Then I had to get involved. I was there as recently as May with the excellent all-party parliamentary group on global sexual and reproductive health rights—it has been reconstituted just today—for a United Nations Development Programme conference. Again, I realised that I was in a one-party police state—it is not quite right. As one of the diaspora, these human rights crackdowns came into my inbox, and they reached fever pitch in July when hundreds of brave students gave their lives in a struggle. Before we broke for recess, I had a panel discussion, with the panellists including Toby Cadman, a barrister who has defended people from the Jamaat party that was banned by the previous regime—it has just been unbanned—and the head of Amnesty International UK. The discussion, which we had in the Grand Committee Room of Westminster Hall, was so oversubscribed that people had to be turned away, such was the thirst for information. I see the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) in his place. He was there, and I think that his defeat of Jonathan Ashworth may have had something to do with some comments about this subject, but let us not speculate.