OPEN LETTER TO JEREMY CORBYN

I write to express my concern at a recent resolution passed at the Labour Party conference following the governments of India’s decision to revoke Article 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution. The resolution calls on your party to support Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination and for international observers to be send to the region immediately. The motion also urged yourself to meet the high commissioners of both India and Pakistan “to prevent a potential nuclear conflict”

1. Support for Kashmiri peoples right to self determination

2. International Observers to be sent to the region immediately

3. Jeremy Corbyn to Meet high commissioners of both India and Pakistan to prevent a potential nuclear conflict

I intend to address the three points raised by the resolution but will start by setting the background to the Kashmir dispute. In October 1947, following an invasion by soldiers from the Pakistan Army in plainclothes and tribesmen, the Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh sought assistance from India and signed the Instrument of Accession. Legally, joining the Indian union. India went to the United Nations to highlight Pakistan’s misadventure resulting in  the United Nations Security Council passing resolution 47 in 1948, essentially requesting a plebiscite following the discharge of certain obligations imposed on both Pakistan and India. Both countries argued amongst themselves and failed to fully discharge those obligations.

1. Support for Kashmiri peoples right to self determination

The map of Jammu and Kashmir has changed beyond recognition since the original UN resolution. Pakistan has handed over more than 5,000 sq km of land to China in trans-Karakoram just northwest of the Siachen glacier. In the province of Balochistan, China is building a passage through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) to the port city of Gwadar. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)  is projected to cost $60 billion.

In the 1970’s President Bhutto introduced the resettlement law in Gilgit & Baltistan which allowed for settlement of people from Pakistan in POK changing the demographic profile of POK. This was followed by systematically went resettling retired Pakistani armed forces personnel in POK and continues to this day. In 1948 Shia population was 84%  and in 2011 this stands at 39%, making the indigenous a minority in their homeland. In 1990 there was approximately half million Hindus and Sikh living in the Kashmir valley, now there are approximately 2000 that live there. The rest were forced to flee after they were deliberately targeted by Islamist terrorists. When Pakistan was changing the map of POK by colluding with China, or changing the demographics of POK by resettling non Kashmiris or driving out Hindu and Sikh Kashmiris from Indian administered Kashmir by using their terrorist outfits, why did the Labour party remain silent?

After 70 years of deliberate and orchestrated campaign by the Pakistan government to changing the map and the demographic make up who would have the right to vote if there was a referendum?

2. International Observers to be sent to the region immediately

Pakistan is the home to 130 UN designated terrorists and 25 terrorist entities listed by the UN. Financial Action Task Force, which monitors money laundering and terror financing has put the Pakistan on notice for its violations of more than 20 of the 27 key parameters. In addition to this, PM Imran Khan has an openly defended of Osama bin Laden. Hafiz Saeed, chief of UN-designated terrorist organisation Jammat–ud-Dawa who was banned in the UNSC after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed and the United States had announced a US $ 10 million bounty for his arrest. Pakistan approached the UN security council committee with a request to let Hafiz Saeed to withdraw money for what Islamabad described as “necessary basic living expenses”. Pakistan is the only government in the world that provides pension to an individual listed by the UN in the Al-Qaeda and Daesh sanctions list. Pakistan is a country that has shrunk the size of its minority community from 23% in 1947 to 3% today and has subjected Christians, Sikhs, Ahmadiyas, Hindus, Shias, Pashtuns, Sindhis and Balochis to draconian blasphemy laws, systemic persecution, blatant abuse and forced conversions. Surely, given the facts above there is something very concerning happening in Pakistan, would UN resources not be better utilised looking into and helping Pakistan remedy their problems. But what surprise me the most is how you profess to being anti colonial when it suits but when playing vote bank politics you want to put on those jackboots and march into another country. I would argue this is an internal matter for India and India alone.

3. Jeremy Corbyn to Meet high commissioners of both India and Pakistan to prevent a potential nuclear conflict

India is a responsible nuclear power whilst Pakistan was and is a rogue nuclear state. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb, acknowledged that he had secretly provided North Korea, Libya, and Iran with crucial technological and intellectual building blocks for making nuclear weapons. Khan, was pardoned by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf shortly afterwards. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei at the time, told reporters that the Khan case “raises more questions than it answers” and that cracking the case of the Pakistani scientist represents only “the tip of an iceberg” in the wider global nuclear black market. “We need to know who supplied what, when, to whom,” El Baradei stressed. “Dr. Khan was not working alone.” These questions have never been answered by Pakistan.

You would be well advised to speak to the Pakistani Prime Minister and request that he stops making irresponsible brinkmanship statements on how he would use nuclear weapons.

These views are not solely mine but some of your senior MP’s have agreed with my line of thinking. Virendra Sharma MP has criticised his party’s stance on internationalising the Kashmir issue. Speaking to India Today TV, Virendra Sharma said, “I am very disappointed that this motion was passed at Labour Party conference. Barry Gardiner, another prominent MP from Labour Party and ‘shadow’ Secretary of State for International Trade called the resolution, “ill-informed and partisan.”

Look forward to your prompt thoughts and reply.