US Immigration Policy

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

Irrespective of the psychological traits of various world leaders, in which I am sure the hon. Lady is an expert—I have not had a chance to consult her register of interests to discover whether she is indeed a psychologist—we will work with the President, and indeed with all our friends and partners, to get the best outcome for our country. The partnership with the US is absolutely vital, not just for our stability and security but for that of the entire world.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

This order stigmatises not just on the basis of nationality, as the Secretary of State says it does; it stigmatises on the basis of faith. This is a Muslim ban, and that has been admitted by those the American President asked to help him implement his Muslim ban legally. Why is the Secretary of State persisting in pretending that these people are not doing the very thing that they themselves are telling us they are doing?

[Boris Johnson]

To the best of my knowledge, the President has himself dissociated himself from that characterisation of this policy, and I just remind the House that these seven countries do not comprise the entire Muslim world, and indeed, they are the very countries that were singled out by President Obama for thoroughly restrictive visa regulations.

Changes in US Immigration Policy

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I should like to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) on securing this debate. I agreed with the entirety of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North’s speech and with much of what the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon said, although I disagree with his more fulsome praise for the actions of this Government over the past 48 hours. I would take issue with that, but I was very moved by his personal experiences and his personal reaction to the ban. I commend his speech and his efforts on this matter.

I want to return to a point made when the Foreign Secretary was taking questions earlier, following his statement, about the importance of recognising that this is a Muslim ban. Other Members have made that point as well, but it is so important that we send a clear message and that we call it exactly what it is. We seem to be living in an era when the truth and facts are challenged at every moment. I was struck by a recent film, “Denial”, which is the story of how Professor Deborah Lipstadt had to take the holocaust denier, David Irving, to court in order to prove the truth about the holocaust. It really focuses the mind on the importance of speaking up for the truth at every moment and calling out those who deny it.

Many people are trying to divert us from the truth by saying that this Executive order is about nationality. It is not about nationality. The President of the United States made it very clear in his campaign that he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Rudy Giuliani was on Fox News recently—not one of those organisations that the President likes to accuse of distributing “fake news”—saying that he had been asked by the President of the United States to put together a commission to work out how to enact the Muslim ban legally. These people are not hiding in plain sight; they are telling us in clear words on national television that is broadcast around the world exactly what they believe, exactly what they stand for and exactly who they are.

[Sir Simon Burns]

Does the hon. Lady also remember that, during the Democratic national convention in late July last year, Trump was tacky enough to attack a Muslim gold star mother whose son had died in the service of the US army protecting his fellow soldiers from certain death?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that important point and reminding us about Humayun Khan. In normal circumstances, that action would have been enough to ensure that someone lost an election and received the opprobrium of everyone, everywhere. It is a sign of what we have come to that that did not happen.

It is important that we stick to our principles and that we hold the line in relation to the truth, because that is what is at stake here. Everyone in this House must be unashamed and unafraid to do that. We have to hold the line when people scream at us on social media that things are not as they seem and that the President suddenly changed his mind and does not think that it is a Muslim ban. We also have to hold the line when people try to divert us and when the “alt-right” go on the marches they are now so famous for. We have to hold on to the truth.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I will not, because of the time. I do apologise.

I want to make a point about British values. As a British Muslim parliamentarian, I have spoken a lot in this House about British values. I have also heard a lot from this Government about British values. In fact, I have often felt that the Government feel that the British Muslim community needs to do more to uphold those values. We have heard famous phrases such as “muscular liberalism”, and we have been told that we need to give strong and vocal support to our respect for democracy, the rule of law, equality and tolerance for everyone and every group in this country. We are told that we as a community have to step up to the plate and call out behaviours that do not match with our British values. If we as a community fail to do that, we have the threat of the Prevent strategy hanging over us. As I watched the Prime Minister’s limp, weak and shameful response to this Muslim ban, I hope I can be forgiven for wondering whether the British Government would consider referring themselves to their own Prevent strategy for failing to provide that strong, vocal, muscularly liberal defence of our British values.

I am reminded of the recent Casey review of integration in our communities, one of whose recommendations was held up by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. It stated that we could increase

“standards of leadership and integrity in public office, by…ensuring that British values such as respect for the rule of law, equality and tolerance are enshrined in the principles of public life and developing a new oath for holders of public office.”

I wonder how many members of the Government would feel, if they had taken such an oath, that they had fulfilled that promise by calling out this behaviour on the part of the American President in the way that they should have done. I feel that they have not fulfilled any such promise, and that they have therefore undermined the very case that they make for our own values. That is a real shame.

I have a final point about the personal impact that the ban is having on Muslims around the world, particularly the almost 3 million British Muslim citizens. As a British Muslim, I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that people among my family, friends and community feel terrified. They fear that this is a portent of what is to come. We live in an age of supremacists. Whether the Muslim supremacists of ISIL or the white supremacists who think they have achieved their life’s dream with the new Administration in the White House, supremacists are on the rise around the world. In this age of supremacists and their success, we have a duty to call them out, to stand up to them and to say, “Not on our watch.” We have a duty to provide comfort and security to all our minority communities. We will not let them down. We will not stand by. We will stand up and be counted.

Kashmir

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

The House will know of my long-standing interest in Kashmir. Many thousands of British citizens of Kashmiri extraction have made their home in my constituency, and I take an interest on their behalf, but I have a more personal interest as my family originates from Kashmir. All four of my grandparents were born in Kashmir before my family moved to this country, so this debate has very personal resonance for me.

The hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has already set out the background to this long-standing dispute and I pay tribute to him and to others who led the charge to secure today’s Backbench business debate.

We have heard already that this is a long-standing dispute between two nuclear-armed powers in one of the world’s most heavily militarised regions. It does not receive enough attention anywhere outside the region, and certainly not in our own country given the size of our British Kashmiri population; it certainly has a lot of attention from that population, but not enough from those outside it. I therefore pay tribute to all the doughty campaigners from all parties who have taken every opportunity available to raise this serious matter in the House of Commons and to press both our current Government and previous Governments to do more to help to build a resolution to this long-standing crisis.

The further push for debate on Kashmir has come as a particular result of the upsurge in violence and fighting in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir since last summer. We see the unacceptable failure of the whole world, the refusal to give effect to UN resolutions and the denial of respect for the self-determination of the Kashmiri people playing out in the worst possible way. People have lost hope and are rising against that loss of hope to try to force to have their rights be respected.

That significant upsurge in violence has elicited a brutal response from the Indian authorities. I am afraid that I wholeheartedly disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). I do not believe that it is possible to minimise the extent to which the Indian authorities have acted in a disproportionate manner that has significantly harmed and, indeed, created great tragedy for the Kashmiri people in the region. This is the biggest uprising in two decades and the brutality of the response of the police and security services cannot be ignored. The fact that that is the case is upheld by human rights organisations across the world, including Human Rights Watch, whose world report for 2017 found clear evidence that the police and security forces have acted with impunity, that there have been extra-judicial killings and that mass rape has occurred. All those things are not acceptable.

I concur with the comments made by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). Of course, there will be questions about the veracity of the videos we will see on YouTube, on Facebook and elsewhere on social media, but there should be an open investigation to prove the veracity of the videos. If they are true—I believe that they will be found to be true—there are big questions for the Indian Government to answer.

I have to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall that the big difference between the Indian Government and other Governments that commit human rights abuses is that India is the largest democracy in the world. Being a democracy is not simply about giving people a vote to decide their Government. It includes much more. It is about fundamental respect for the rule of law and for basic human rights that must be protected and that sit alongside the ability of the people to elect their Government.

[Nusrat Ghani]

Will the hon. Lady give way on that point?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am afraid that I would be doing other Members out of their time if I gave way. I apologise.

The use of pellet guns has been mentioned. This is a significant issue for the Indian Government, and our Government must press them more on it. The Indian defence for the use of pellet guns to see off protestors who they say are throwing stones is that pellet guns are non-lethal. Of course, a pellet gun will probably not kill, but I defy anyone to see the pictures of the victims of pellet gun attacks and say that that is a proportionate response against civilians in a democracy. It is not, and I do not believe that anybody would stand up in this House and say that it is.

When we debate Kashmir, people who speak more in favour of the Indian Government’s stance will often say that the position of those who live in Jammu and Kashmir is better because they are able to vote, they are free to take part in the democratic process and they are basically free, and that self-determination is not necessary because they are a free people, freely electing their own local leaders with a significant devolution of power. Nobody—not one person—in Jammu and Kashmir has voted to be hurt, injured, beaten up, raped, blinded or killed. Pellet wounds are brutal. They are a brutal response by the Indian authorities and send a brutal message to the Kashmiri people. They leave brutal scars, which are not just carried by the individuals who bear the physical scars but are borne by the whole community in Jammu and Kashmir itself and all around the world by those of us of Kashmiri extraction. They are a symbol of the population’s repression, its desire to resist that repression and its cry to be heard.

That cry is falling on deaf ears in the largest democracy in the world, which wants to do more business with the rest of the world and play a greater role in world affairs. That position is simply not acceptable and our Government must not shy away from making that plain, especially in relation to the use of pellet guns. Tremendous, appalling, sustained and deliberate misery has been visited on the people of Kashmir for too long. The stories of disappearances and the discovery of mass graves have brought no official UN-led investigation whatever. The police and the security forces have impunity, especially given the implementation of the Special Powers Act of 1990. If a people are humiliated, abused and allowed to lose hope, and offered only despair in turn, and given no answers and no rights, there will an uprising. It is inevitable.

None of us as responsible legislators, also working in a democracy, can watch these events unfold and sit on our hands. We can do more. The legacy of empire demands that we do more. We have a duty to speak out more regularly. We have a duty to challenge as well as to encourage both the Indian and the Pakistani authorities. I have to say to the Minister that the written answers to the questions tabled, particularly last summer, are so bland it is as though these matters are a daily occurrence that can be ignored. That is not good enough. There are other disputes in this world that elicit much stronger responses from the Government when Members of this House table written questions. That has not been the case in relation to the dispute in Kashmir. In particular, there has been no definitive answer on whether the Prime Minister specifically raised the issue of human rights abuses with the Indian Government. It is not enough to tell us that the issue of Kashmir was raised. We need to know whether the human rights abuses and the use of pellet guns were raised.

I believe that it is now incumbent upon the British Government to make a clear call to raise this issue at the United Nations and to ask for an independent, UN-led investigation into human rights abuses, so that we can at least demonstrate that although some parts of this world see this as a forgotten conflict, or a conflict they want to be forgotten, we will never forget it and will keep fighting.