Economics is not about goods and services;
it is about the actions of living men.

Yesterday’s debate on Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent, which I moved and in which I focussed on Kashmir, may be found here:

Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con): I beg to move,

That this House has considered the issue of Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent.

I am extremely grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for making this debate possible. My predecessor, Paul Goodman, took this issue extremely seriously and I am sure that had this mechanism been available he would have called such a debate. I am also extremely grateful to the Members who turned out to support me at the Committee: my hon. Friends the Members for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney), for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) and for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) who spoke about Sri Lanka, the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) and the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin).

The origin of this debate was my request for a debate on human rights in Kashmir and the request of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North for a debate on Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, some commentators mistakenly thought that we sought to conflate the two issues. That is not the case. It suited the Backbench Business Committee to bring the issues together under the heading of “Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent”.

I have a simple purpose: to give a voice to the thousands of British Kashmiri constituents who demand and are entitled to representation in this place, their Parliament. I am aware that many Members wish to speak about Sri Lanka, so for the sake of time I will rely on my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North to cover that issue. I will say only that I support my Tamil constituents’ demand for an independent international investigation.

I shall let the debate stand in its own right.

This week, I sought and secured a debate on human rights in Kashmir which is to take place on the afternoon of Thursday 15 September, in the House of Commons.

I was joined before Parliament’s Backbench Business Committee by Jason McCartney MP, Andrew Griffiths MP, Denis MacShane MP and Nic Dakin MP. We argued for a debate on Amnesty International’s recent report on human rights in Indian-occupied Kashmir, “A Lawless Law”. We pointed out that this would be the first full debate on Kashmir since Partition and called for Parliament to demand real progress towards human rights and democratic self determination for Kashmiris.

The Committee decided to award a three hour debate to be shared with Lee Scott MP on the subject of human rights on the Indian Sub-continent. This will allow the situations in both Kashmir and Sri Lanka to be debated.

I am delighted that Parliament will have this opportunity to debate human rights in Kashmir and Sri Lanka in the main Chamber of the House of Commons. The cause of Kashmir has never received the prominence it should in British public debate and too little attention has been paid to the pleas of British Sri Lankans. I hope this debate will spur the Government to further action on both situations.

Yesterday, I heard someone support control orders. This video from Liberty seems an apposite response:

And on 10 Jun 2009, via Liberty responds to control order judgment.

Today the House of Lords ruled unanimously that the government has violated Article 6 of the Human Rights Act which protects the right to fair trial as ‘controlees’ don’t even receive the gist of the allegations against them. Liberty believes that this is another body blow to the unfair and unsafe control order regime.

Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty said:

“If protecting the public is the top priority then Control Orders do not achieve it. Dangerous terrorists should not be in their living rooms but convicted and imprisoned. Innocent people should not be subjected to years and years of community punishment without trial. Control Orders are the worst of both worlds and the new Home Secretary should take this opportunity to learn from the mistakes of his predecessor.”

Liberty’s proforma letter to the Home Secretary is also an interesting read.

As Britain braces itself for recession, it faces another – surreptitious, but no less serious – crisis of confidence. Our liberal democracy is based on individual freedom, the rule of law and parliamentary democracy. Yet, since 1997, the government has wrought a seismic shift in the relationship between the citizen and the state – attacking our most basic rights of protection against the state, whilst shoe-horning swathes of new claims on the state into the ever-elastic language of human rights.

via ConservativeHome’s Platform: Dominic Raab: Exposing this Government’s assault on our historic liberties.

MI5 participated in the unlawful interrogation of a British resident now held in Guantánamo Bay, the high court found yesterday in a judgment raising serious questions about the conduct of Britain’s security and intelligence agencies.

read more | digg story