On July 5, 2024, the new Labour Party in government in the United Kingdom (UK) appointed Shabana Mahmood, known for her anti-India and anti-Israel stance as the Secretary of the State for Justice. She has been also given the additional charge of being Lord Chancellor. Shabana Mahmood who has her origins in Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) has been a member of Parliament from Birmingham Ladywood since 2010.
True to her origins, the Labour Party MP has been spreading canards about Indian Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir for over a decade. She has been exploiting her position as the UK Parliamentarian to peddle Pakistan talking points on Jammu and Kashmir since September 2014. A year later, she and a handful of their colleagues fired off a letter to PM Modi ahead of his visit to the United Kingdom.
In a letter, she listed out six demands including the removal of the Indian Army from Jammu and Kashmir repealing Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), the release of prisoners unrestricted travel to the region and investigation of mass graves and peaceful resolution. At the very outset, these outrageous demands could be thought of as external intervention by an erstwhile colonial power in India’s matters. However, there is more to it than what meets the eye.
Towards the end of her letter, Shabana Mahmood made her intentions clear by reiterating the need to conduct a referendum in Jammu and Kashmir by the United States Resolution (outrightly been rejected by India in the past. The reference to the UN Resolutions on Kashmir is made by the Pakistani government and its army from time to time to bypass the bilateral pacts and exert external pressure on India and the letter by the Labour Party MP and her other colleagues sought to achieve the same.
In January 2017, Shabana Mahmood was seen calling for global interventions in India’s internal affairs during a politically motivated speech in the House of Commons. “This is a very long-standing dispute between the two nuclear power nations in one of the most heavily militarized regions. It doesn’t receive attention anywhere outside around the world and certainly 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 outsides of that,” she claimed.
The PoJK-origin Labour MP sought to exploit the opportunity to tarnish the image of India based on unfounded claims. She further brazened out, “The further push for a debate regarding Kashmir has come in particular as a result of upsurge in violence and fighting that we have seen in Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir from last summer. And what we see there Deputy Speaker, is the unacceptable failure of the whole world and the denial to give effect to UN resolutions to respect the self-determination of the Kashmiri people playing out in the worst possible way because the people have lost hope. “
The Labour Party MP doubled on her anti-India agenda after PM Modi led the BJP government abrogated Article 370 of the Indian Constitution on August 5, 2019. She and her like-minded parliamentarians wrote to the then British PM Boris Johnson, pleading him to arm-twist India for abrogating Article 370 of the Indian constitution. To further their argument, the vicious UK politicians resorted to peddling blatant lies about the Indian government.
Shabana Mahmood and her colleagues forgot that India is no longer a colonial state of England. As such none of their conjectures, surmises and suppositions had any bearing on the decision made by the Indian government. In an interview with British media, on August 7, 2019, she said, “I think that the move to strip the autonomy and its relative independence and special status by the Indian government is deeply provocative.
It is an aggressive act and I think it is an aggressive act and dangerous because, you know, Kashmir and what’s happened to Kashmir after partition in 1947.” This has led to many decades of violence on the Indian side of the LOC and what India has decided to do in relation to the special status of Kashmir is I think an absolute betrayal of the people of Kashmir and I am deeply concerned about the consequences that this is now going to have,” the POJK parliamentarian was heard saying.
Later in August 2019, she was seen protesting alongside her Pakistani origin supporters over the abrogation of Article 370 in Birmingham (having 30 percent Muslim population). It was unprecedented for a sitting Parliamentary to demonstrate against India, which happens to be strong ally of the country. In May 2020, she tweeted about briefing Labour Party leader Keir Starmer who now is the PM of UK about the ongoing situation in Kashmir via video conferencing.
He last social media meltdown has been on the Indian Union Territory was on August 5, 2020, that is on the first anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 by PM Modi government. Since then, she has not posted anything on Jammu and Kashmir. It has been a year since lockdown was imposed in Kashmir by the Indian government after they revoked the autonomy and special status of Jammu and Kashmir. This was an unjust and unilateral action and with the double lockdown due to Covid many are worried for friends and family.
Since June 2010, Shabana Mahmood has been involved in pro-Palestine protests and anti-Israel activism. As early as August 2014, the Labour Party was seen protesting on the streets in support of Gaza and Hamas. As per an international news agency, the Labour Party MP had previously supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
A report from another news agency stated that Shaban Mahmood was involved in encouraging mob rule and forcibly shutting down a supermarket in Birmingham for stocking goods from illegal settlements. Jewish leaders in the city had accused her of stirring up tensions, behaving inappropriately and promoting public disorder.
“I have always supported a diplomatic process to stop the killing of innocent civilians, get humanitarian aid in and get the hostages out. But it is clear that diplomatic processes have not made sufficient progress.
The conduct of this war has been intolerable, with a disproportionate level of attacks on innocent people that has rightly been the deliberations in international courts,” she had claimed. It now remains to be seen how an anti-India and anti-Israeli propagandist within the Labour Party, in the form of Shabana Mahmood, fulfils her duty as the Secretary of State for Justice.
