Tahir Ali

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) for securing this important debate on such an important day. In south Asia, the long-drawn dispute over the state of Jammu and Kashmir remains a hanging fireball between two hostile nuclear neighbours, India and Pakistan, bringing human misery in the form of wars over the issue and continuing to threaten regional and global peace. The international community has failed Kashmiris in Indian-occupied Kashmir for the last 78 years by not implementing the plebiscite determined from the United Nations Security Council resolution 47. Instead, for the past 78 years, we have seen the Indian Government take advantage of that failure by subjecting Kashmiris to unlawful killing, torture and multiple human rights violations. Over half of my constituents in Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley are from south Asia, and the majority are Kashmiris. The treatment of Kashmiris in the Indian-occupied Kashmir has worried them for many years. As a born Kashmiri, seeing the level of brutality and oppression by the Indian-occupied Kashmiri forces is absolutely devastating. It is just as distressing that the Government are not taking matters into their own hands and pushing to make the plebiscite happen. The United Kingdom now has to step up to right the wrongs against the Kashmiri people. United Nations resolution 47 not being implemented is unfinished business for this Government, considering that the resolution was determined when the United Kingdom was under a Labour Government. It was a Labour Government then and it must be a Labour Government now who help the Kashmiri people in their fight against the injustices caused by Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party-led Government. The UK Government must now push for the long-overdue plebiscite and hold India accountable for the actions against Kashmiri people. The silence of the international community cannot go on any longer and cannot be unrecognised. The world cannot afford to ignore the Kashmiri people any longer. It is a matter of humanity and justice. The goal for the Kashmiris has always been self-government and the right to self-determination. The right to self-determination is not a privilege; it is a fundamental human right, and the United Kingdom must do everything in its power to help Kashmiris towards that. My role is not to take sides by being pro-Pakistani or anti-India. As a born Kashmiri, I believe that it is my duty to highlight the abuses of human rights violations to this House. Even after seven decades, people of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir are waiting for the right of self-determination promised by the United Nations. Notwithstanding over 25 United Nations resolutions calling for the solution to the dispute, India is still reluctant to grant Kashmiris the right of self-determination, and the world cannot stand by and allow that to happen. The Scottish people were rightly afforded a referendum to express their desire for independence, and the UK had a referendum on remaining in or leaving the EU. Kashmiris are not begging for freedom, and neither will they beg for something that is their fundamental human right. Seven decades later, the people of Kashmir are still waiting. This is not a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan. The international community needs to take responsibility, and the British Government need to take responsibility. We should not have trade agreements with India while the abuses continue, because that will be seen as rewarding one of the biggest—if not the biggest—oppressors of human rights in the world.