Contribution
Like everybody across this House, as a proud British citizen, I of course support the Government’s intentions in the growth strategy and their efforts to agree mutually beneficial trade agreements between countries after the debacle of Brexit, with which we lost collective bargaining and the benefits that we enjoyed from EU membership.
I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) on the absolutely mandatory obligation on Britain to ensure that, whatever trade deals we negotiate with whichever country, wherever in the world, human rights are front and centre in those negotiations.
Thousands of my Kashmiri diaspora constituents and their families are suffering. They have been suffering for nearly 80 years, and it is about time that Britain took a lead in helping alleviate the occupation of Kashmir and the illegal treatment of citizens there to allow them the right to self-determination. Building on the issue of human rights, I also join the hon. Member and my hon. Friend in expressing my profound sadness and disappointment that we are signing a free trade agreement with a leader of a Hindu nationalist governing party that has, for decades, violently persecuted Muslims, Christians, Dalits and other minorities in India for their religious belief or their class status, and the millions of people in occupied Kashmir.
Most egregiously, as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, Modi facilitated a pogrom that resulted in over 1,000 individuals, the majority of whom were Muslim, being murdered amidst widespread reports of sexual violence, looting and property destruction. The exact death toll of the Gujarat riots is unclear, but it is estimated to have exceeded 1,000 men, women and children, the vast majority of whom were Muslim. According to Genocide Watch, during the massacres at least 250 women and girls were gang-raped before being burnt to death. A mob of 5,000 people set fire to houses of Muslims in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Patiya neighbourhood, resulting in the deaths of over 65 people. Before being burnt and hacked to death, women and girls were gang-raped in public. Their male family members were forced to watch the rapes, and they were then killed.
I have a couple of heartbreaking examples. Hina Kausar from Naroda Patiya was pregnant when she was raped. Several eyewitnesses testified that she was raped and tortured, and that her womb was slit open with a sword to extract the foetus, which was then hacked to pieces and burnt alive alongside the mother. Bilkis Yakoob Rasool was five-months pregnant when she was gang-raped, and 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, were murdered in front of her eyes. The Gujarat Government have now granted early release to all 11 of her convicted rapists.
I was in Ahmedabad myself on the first and subsequent days of these riots. I climbed to the rooftop of my uncle’s home, and I watched the city burn around me. Black smoke was billowing from every direction. I saw at first hand how the leader of a state facilitated and stood by as fanatics murdered, raped and pillaged their way through Muslim communities and neighbourhoods. Modi was complicit in this ethnic cleansing, even if attempts at achieving legal justice have so far proven futile. Since then, he has continued to refuse to accept any responsibility or to apologise for the events that took place, thereby adding insult to injury for the bereaved victims and families.
As Prime Minister of India, Modi continues to engage in faith-based oppression of India’s Muslim, Christian and other minority populations. Homes, businesses and places of worship are unlawfully and arbitrarily demolished —a phenomenon that Amnesty International has labelled “bulldozer injustice”. Communal violence against Muslims is rife, with mob violence and lynchings on a daily or weekly basis.
I gently remind the Government of how innocent civilians are being treated by the Government with whom we are signing this trade deal. I urge them to do everything in their power to get the best deal that we can, but without compromising the principle of human rights for all. Muslims, Christians, Dalits and others are relegated to the status of second-class citizens and subject to collective punishment. The Government should instead pursue an economic diplomacy that recognises the importance of religious tolerance and pushes to promote peaceful co-existence of groups with different beliefs. Signing this trade agreement—and with it, exchanging a reduction in tariffs for our values—sends a dangerous signal to the world that religious bigotry and violations of international human rights law are permissible.
Since Brexit, successive UK Governments have shifted away from integrating enforceable human rights clauses into trade deals; they have instead opted for profit over people by adopting a values-free approach that starkly diverges from the human and workers’ rights provisions that the EU—albeit imperfectly—championed. Shame on them, and shame on this deal! The Government should follow the Human Rights Committee’s proposals that standard human rights protections should be included in all agreements, and that we should begin to treat human rights as something that applies to all individuals of any religion, anywhere in the world.