Solidarity with Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination

Mushtaq Lasharie and Kumar Sarkar with the panel

by New Worker correspondent 

 A seminar on the latest human rights situation in Kashmir was held at House of Commons last week, organised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Third World Solidarity. Chaired by Dave Anderson of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Liz Twist MP, with historian Victoria Schofield, Khalid Mahmood MP, Shadow Minister for Europe and Russia, and Qurban Hussain as main speakers.

The appalling human rights violations by the Indian Government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) following the latest abrogation on 5th August 2019 of Article 370 of the Constitution of India were the central issue for the seminar. The article was inserted in the constitution in 1949, which gave extraordinary powers to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, lawfully authorising it to have limited autonomy via its own constitution. This was as part of an agreement between the then-ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, and the Government of India as the condition of Kashmir joining independent India.

Victoria Schofield, author of Kashmir in the Crossfire and Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War, presented a graphic account of the complete lock-down, causing a shortage of food and medicines, and withdrawal of the Internet services. At the same time, students are unable to attend their schools and colleges.

Qurban Hussain, born in Pakistani-protected Free Kashmir (Azad Jammu and Kashmir), highlighted the indiscriminate use of the Armed Forces Special Act by the Indian Army in occupied Kashmir. The Army committed widespread raping of Kashmiri women, picking up young boys from their houses whose dead bodies were then found the following day. He added that some 30,000 Kashmiri people have been put behind bars.

Mushtaq Lasharie, Chair of Third World Solidarity, questioned the role of the United Nations on Kashmir. He drew attention to the fact that numerous resolutions on Kashmir from the Security Council are never implemented; but several participants commented on the non-binding nature of many UN resolutions.

Kumar Sarkar of the Britain South Asia Solidarity Forum, born in India of a Hindu family, speaking from the floor, dealt with the Kashmir struggle in the background of the Indian independence movement. He quoted from Prime Minister Nehru’s speech in the Indian Parliament in 1952 advocating a plebiscite in Kashmir and India’s unequivocal acceptance of the results irrespective of the “hurt we might feel”. The fact that this plebiscite never took place shows that the so-called liberal Indian nationalism advocated by Nehru’s Congress Party and the present sectarian Hindu nationalism of the BJP have deeper roots in the discriminatory nature of Hinduism, to which both were linked. Both existed in parallel all along in India's independence movement. The origin of the BJP’s anti-Muslim nationalism lies directly in the fascistic Hindu caste system; BJP is a proto-fascist force.

This seminar was no doubt useful because it focused on the issues around the lack of human rights in Kashmir and self-determination of the people of Kashmir. But such seminars cannot go beyond advising participants to pressurise their MPs. Serious consideration needs to be paid to the fact that apart from an excellent resolution by the Labour Party on Kashmir, there is no ongoing campaign of solidarity in Britain with the people of Kashmir.

Support the Kashmiri people!

 

Andy Brooks, Mushtaq Lasharie and Theo Russell at the meeting

by New Worker correspondent

Members of London’s Pakistani community joined New Worker supporters to call for justice for the Kashmiri people at a meeting in central London last week. They had come to the Cock Tavern in Euston to hear NCP leader Andy Brooks and Mushtaq Lasharie, who chairs the Third World Solidarity movement, demand the immediate and unconditional end to martial law in Indian-held Kashmir and support the Kashmiri people’s call for self-determination.

Mushtaq Lasharie summarised the plight of the Kashmiris under Indian occupation despite UN calls going back to 1947 that upheld their right to self-determination. This was supported by Andy Brooks, who talked about the pressing need to draw the broader labour movement behind the legitimate demands of the Kashmiri people whose cause is still largely only upheld by the British Pakistani and British Muslim population.

The meeting endorsed a motion that called on India to immediately and unconditionally restore the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian constitution , release all the Kashmiri political prisoners and allow journalists, diplomats and human rights activists to enter and work unhindered in Indian-administered Kashmir

The motion noted that Pakistan and India are both nuclear powers, and another full-scale war could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange that would leave millions dead. It supported all efforts to ensure that this does not happen. The key demand is the end of partition and it upheld the original 1947 UN resolution and supported the just demand for a referendum to let the Kashmiri people decide if they want to be part of India, Pakistan, or in an independent state of Kashmir.

The motion has now been sent to all those who took part in the meeting for further amendments and it will later be sent round for endorsement in the broader labour and peace movement.

Democratic Korea’s day in London

Andy Brooks, Chris Coleman and other friends with Choe Il

 By New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks and London secretary Theo Russell joined other communists, diplomats and friendship activists in celebrating the foundation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at a lunch-time reception at the DPRK embassy in London last week.

Democratic Korean ambassador Choe Il welcomed everyone to the gathering which included Chris Coleman from the RCPB (ML) and veteran campaigner Mushtaq Lasharie, the chair of the Third World Solidarity movement,  as well as representatives from the Foreign Office and members of the Korean Friendship Association.

On 9^th September 1948 the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established in the free northern part of the Korean peninsula that had once been part of the Japanese Empire. It’s a special day for Koreans on both sides of the divided country and amongst the overseas Korean community because on that day in 1948 the Korean people expressed their democratic will through popular power and immediately took the first steps towards building a new socialist life for the workers and peasants who had fought to free themselves from the Japanese yoke that had enslaved them for many decades.