Author Archives: Imaduddin Ahmed

How British liberals should advocate for the human rights of the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir

By Imaduddin Ahmed | Fri 30th August 2019 - 12:59 pm

This past month, the Government of India has escalated military presence in Jammu and Kashmir, already perhaps the densest in the world, enforced curfews, a media blackout, blocked all communications and arrested Kashmiri politicians without issuing warrants under a draconian law. Reports of torture of civilians are now coming through the BBC.

This comes accompanying the Government of India’s attempt to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special status per the conditions of it joining India after India became independent.

Civilian casualties over the past 12 months were already at a decade high, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as of April 2019 who found in his 2018 report the Indian state to be guilty of ‘excessive force that led to unlawful killings and a very high number of injuries’, and to be guilty of denying access to justice to Kashmiris. The report recommended measures to eliminate the impunity with which security forces were able to act and improve accountability for human rights violations of the state, as well as for the self-determination of Kashmiris in both Pakistan and Indian administered Kashmir. Instead of adopting its recommendations, the Government of India’s recent actions will worsen the situation.

Being committed to fair, free and open societies, British liberals will be itching to intervene. However, British involvement in the bilateral (but asymmetric) issue between Jammu and Kashmir and India could reek of colonialism.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged india and kashmir | 4 Comments

The case for changing our laws on revoking citizenship

By Imaduddin Ahmed | Mon 19th August 2019 - 4:15 pm

When as Home Secretary Sajid Javid attempted to strip British-born Shamima Begum of her citizenship, he highlighted how the Home Office has come to possess powers to revoke citizenship that did not exist a generation earlier. These new powers are nothing short of racist, allowing the Home Secretary to strip Brits of citizenship by dint of their ancestry. According to Javid’s interpretation of the new laws, so long as a person can claim citizenship elsewhere – such as by having foreign ancestry in Shamima Begum’s case, or by virtue of laws such as Israel’s and Ireland’s allowing Jewish and Northern Irish people, respectively, to claim citizenship – the Home Office has the power to take their citizenship. It would not, in Javid’s interpretation, have the ability to take the citizenship of ‘indigenous’ English, Scottish or Welsh people.

The racist implications of Javid’s actions are what prompted a group of diaspora South Asian Lib Dems (most notably Nasser Butt, Marisha Ray, Mohsin Khan, Hussain Khan, Maaria Siddiqi and me) to work in partnership with Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson Ed Davey and adviser Jonathan Jones to come up with Federal Conference Motion F34: Deprivation of Citizenship. At the very least, we aim to completely end the Home Office’s power to revoke the citizenship of anyone born British.