PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Democracy in Bangladesh - 11 September 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

It was the sitar-loving George Harrison who sang that

“Bangladesh…sure looks like a mess”.

He made the observation in 1971, soon after the country’s formation, but it applies again since 5 August, after momentous events happened in that country. No one saw it coming, but the previous Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who had looked so entrenched, was overthrown. Within days, her replacement was Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel prize winner for his concept of microfinance. That did not happen without bloodshed. Hundreds of students were killed in the struggle for the new Bangladesh 2.0, as people have called it, and thousands injured.

Bangladesh’s founding constitution—it is only a young country—stressed democracy, secularism and socialism, but in recent years it has become synonymous with corruption, authoritarianism and repression. There were echoes of Saddam Hussein’s fall when we saw TV pictures of statues of the first ever leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, toppled, with effigies of him burned and pictures smashed, from the capital city, Dhaka, to Tower Hamlets. It was all because of his daughter, the ex-PM Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled in two bursts for a large percentage of the country’s existence. It was she who ensured the omnipresent pictures of her dad across the nation. For me, it had echoes of Tiananmen Square in 1990, although in this case the students won. There may be a fledgling interim Government, but I feel they have very good intentions, and we should congratulate them.

I will give way to the new Chair of the Defence Committee.

I thank my hon. Friend, and I congratulate her on securing this Adjournment debate about democracy in Bangladesh. After the recent upheaval, many of my constituents in Slough and people across the globe are extremely concerned about not just democracy, but the rights of minorities. There have been many attacks, in particular on the Hindu minority community. Does she agree that it is incumbent on the new Administration to safeguard the rights of all minorities within Bangladesh?

My hon. Friend always makes excellent points. When we are talking about minorities such as Hindus and Buddhists—there are various minorities—it is interesting to look at who is propagating the stories. There have also been pictures of devout Muslim students from the madrasas in their topi defending Hindu homes. BBC Verify has shown that some of these attacks have been on people associated with the previous regime. Sometimes these things are a bit amplified by people with agendas, but my hon. Friend makes a great point.

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. She is absolutely right to highlight the issue. Does she not agree that democracy means the protection of human rights and religious freedom? I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. We stand up for those with Christian faith, those with other faiths and those with no faith, the right to religious freedom and the right to practise faith or to have no faith. There can never be true democracy in Bangladesh until a Government and a system are in place that do not penalise people based on how they worship or where they worship, but that offer protection for people’s differences. That is what society should be like.

I totally agree with the hon. Member. The UK has a unique historical role in the colonial histories and as head of the Commonwealth. He does great work on the APPG. We should be vigilant on all these things.

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. On the UK’s role, is she aware that in May, the previous UK Government signed a deal with the now deposed Bangladeshi Government about fast-tracking the deportation of Bangladeshi asylum seekers, presumably including those seeking political asylum? Bangladesh was deemed a supposedly safe country. Does she agree that something has clearly been revealed to be wrong here, both with the deportation policy itself and with the UK’s foreign policy objectives?

I have checked, and apparently some of those memorandums of understanding are being looked at by the new Government one by one to see if they are carried over. The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Let us have a reset. We have a fresh Government in this country and a fresh one in Bangladesh, so it is time to look at these things through new eyes.

Back in the summer—in fact, it was at the same time as we saw race riots in this country—there was footage of jubilant Bangladeshis marching through the streets of Tower Hamlets, the hon. Member’s borough. That confused many people, but it was in happiness; they were not angry ethnic mobs. There is a big global diaspora, with 70,000 in this country, including me. The diaspora can be seen across Europe. In some of the middle eastern emirate states, the diaspora has supplied cheap labour to build such things as World cup stadiums in Qatar. Bangladesh is a place that exports people.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech about an important issue. I commend the work of the Bangladeshi community in Reading, who work incredibly hard in our town. They are visible in a whole series of professions and business activities. I thank and commend my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for raising these important matters about the future of Bangladesh. Across the House, we all share concerns about this wonderful country, and we wish it the best with its new leadership.

My hon. Friend is so right. I did not see any demos in Reading, but I do know that in all sorts of European capitals, including Paris and Rome, as well as in Manchester and Trafalgar Square, there were solidarity protests when these things went on. The diaspora has been active.

I am a London-born Bangladeshi. I kind of knew about the country from my parents telling me that it was this paradise of coconut trees and those kind of things. I only went as a teenager. More recently, as an adult and as an MP, I have noticed the slightly more sinister side, with things like enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Every human rights organisation—Amnesty International and so on—has condemned those.

I try to keep out of this subject—I do not have a very Bangladeshi electorate—but I was jolted when in 2018 I heard from the family of Shahidul Alam, a photographer who was taking pictures of an earlier student protest, that he had been banged up and tortured. Then I had to get involved. I was there as recently as May with the excellent all-party parliamentary group on global sexual and reproductive health rights—it has been reconstituted just today—for a United Nations Development Programme conference. Again, I realised that I was in a one-party police state—it is not quite right.

As one of the diaspora, these human rights crackdowns came into my inbox, and they reached fever pitch in July when hundreds of brave students gave their lives in a struggle. Before we broke for recess, I had a panel discussion, with the panellists including Toby Cadman, a barrister who has defended people from the Jamaat party that was banned by the previous regime—it has just been unbanned—and the head of Amnesty International UK. The discussion, which we had in the Grand Committee Room of Westminster Hall, was so oversubscribed that people had to be turned away, such was the thirst for information. I see the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) in his place. He was there, and I think that his defeat of Jonathan Ashworth may have had something to do with some comments about this subject, but let us not speculate.

Does the hon. Member agree about the positive contribution that the Bangladeshi community has made to our country, which has made it as it is today? I would like to take this opportunity to pay homage to the Bangladeshi community of Leicester South, who are hard-working, entrepreneurial and philanthropic. Their commitment to using the political system to improve their community has made my city as great as it is today.

Does the hon. Member also agree that the riots we saw recently in Southport after the devastating attack and killing of three innocent people emphasise how important it is that we do not single out a community, because that can have devastating effects? Does she agree that both sides of the House should be much more responsible in the language they use to ensure that community cohesion ensues?

I completely endorse what the hon. Member is saying. We do need to temper our language and be careful. Every Member in this House has a curry house in their constituency, and that will not be an Indian restaurant—it will be Bangladeshis who run it. An enormous contribution has been made to our society. With the things we saw this summer, we should stamp on the misinformation that I referred to in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi).

Again, those Bangladeshi university students showed courage, and they were not just the elitist ones from the capital city; it happened all over the country at public and private universities, with boys and girls. Their demands were initially against corruption but they grew to wider pro-democracy concerns and the overthrow of the Prime Minister. So far, so predictable, but then in the biggest plot twist since Bobby Ewing in the shower, when all those tensions were coming to a head, we heard that the previous Prime Minister had suddenly scarpered. She helicoptered out. A regime so entrenched that it looked like it would last forever suddenly collapsed like a pack of cards. In January, there was an election in Bangladesh—we hear that 40% of the globe is going to the polls this year—although there were not any other real candidates in it, so that was declared null and void. We now have this caretaker Government who are there to oversee fresh elections. We do not know exactly when those will be.

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. She knows that in the city of Birmingham we have an extremely sizeable community that has Bangladeshi heritage, like the constituency of the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam), and the Bangladeshi community in the curry houses contributes some £4 billion per annum to the to the taxman.

Does the hon. Member agree that the recent disorder and killing of students in Bangladesh has impacted the Bangladeshi heritage community here in the UK, especially when we had a lockdown of all telecoms? Does she agree that the next step must be a democratically elected Government and that that must be expedited, potentially with international observers, to ensure that it is free and fair, so that the loss of those hundreds of students’ lives was not in vain?

I agree. Our loved ones were worried, and we did not know that was going on. We are talking about a country that can, at will, shut off the internet so that people cannot communicate with the outside world, or even with each other via phone signal—there was a Digital Security Act that was a bit sinister, and stopped all freedom of speech, thought, expression and assembly. Yes, we must rebuild. The hon. Gentleman made a great point.

The sight of Muhammad Yunus—until recently, the previous regime had tried to lock him up—was baffling but reassuring for many, because he is globally recognised. He was a character on “The Simpsons”; Lisa discovered his microfinance loans to women. Among his friends are the Obamas and the Clintons, and 197 world leaders have signed a memorandum to welcome him to power. He has the in-tray from hell, and a big job to do in repairing democracy. He was here in March, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) organised a meeting for him with the all-party parliamentary group for Bangladesh, which she then chaired. He is such a modest man; he had 200 different court cases against him, but he did not go on about them—it had to be teased out of him by Baroness Helena Kennedy, who chaired that day. He is known as the banker to the poor.

Nobody saw this coming. Bangladesh is a country of contradictions. It has 175 million people on a land mass the size of England and Wales, and is beset by natural disasters—at the moment, there are the worst floods in 30 years. Youth unemployment is sky high, which partly explains the protests.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on getting this debate. Does she agree that there is also a geopolitical issue surrounding all the changes in Bangladesh? Hitherto, it adopted a credible non-aligned position, supported the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and tried basically to be a promoter of peace in the region. I do not know any more than she does what the outcome of all this will be, but does she agree that the important thing is that Bangladesh remains independent and not aligned with any other bloc? Otherwise, we might end up with the further problem of a cold war in south-east Asia.

There is plenty more to say. We need a fresh start—a reset, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and “in neither Washington nor Moscow”, as the slogan used to be. We need less gerontocracy. Yunus is 84, though he is very sharp. The leader he overthrew is 76, and the opposition rival, Khaleda Zia, is 78.

I have some questions for the Minister. As I said, there is a big job to do. Given our unique role in all this, we should offer support. Apparently, the constitution is being amended and redrafted. Could we lend expertise there? British lawyers have good form on this; we constructed the European convention on human rights. Capacity building is needed to cleanse all sorts of institutions of party people who were in the pocket of the last regime. Hendon police training college is renowned all over the world; perhaps we can rebuild the police in Bangladesh, because apparently there has been a bit of a vacuum there recently. The Stormtrooper-like Rapid Action Battalion force should be disbanded, and the death penalty should be gone. Maybe we could do something about climate finance, because countries in the global south face the brunt of climate problems, and we are in the run-up to COP29. These measures do not even have to cost anything; we could put a polluter-pays levy on some countries.

Lastly, we need to recover some of the assets. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned foreign Governments’ interference. When I last went to Bangladesh, I saw Chinese power plants and Russian flyovers—lots of things like that; I cannot remember what they all were. Money that belongs to the Bangladeshi people was looted and plundered. We need asset tracing to recover it.

I understand that Professor Yunus is coming to the UN General Assembly. It would be great if His Majesty’s Government warmly welcomed him—I do not know if they will be represented by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), the Prime Minister or whoever.

We are talking about Bangladesh 2.0 and human rights. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilisation, he famously said:

“I think it would be a good idea”.

Let us make sure that democracy and human rights in Bangladesh are not just a good idea, but a given. People are talking about this as a second revolution. Let us rebuild Bangladesh, so that human rights and democracy are a given. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

I am so grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) for securing this debate and I commend the commitment she has shown to Bangladesh over many years. As we are aware in this House, Adjournment debates are usually quite a lonely affair, so it is fantastic to have had contributions from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum). My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) has stayed here on the Government Front Bench following her earlier ministerial duties, because it is such an important debate. The hon. Members for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) and for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan), and the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) are all great friends of Bangladesh, and are very active in the all-party parliamentary group for Bangladesh.

The UK and Bangladesh share an historic relationship, with long-standing economic and trading ties built from a strong development partnership. We are both valuable members of the Commonwealth family. Our long-standing relationship is strengthened by our people-to-people ties, with over 650,000 people of Bangladeshi heritage living here in the UK and, as was mentioned earlier, making a significant and highly valued contribution to our country and our relationship. The UK was among the first to recognise Bangladesh after it gained independence in 1971, and has supported the people of Bangladesh since then.

We want to see a peaceful and democratic future for the people of Bangladesh. Democracy, human rights, an independent judiciary and good governance are vital foundations for long-term growth and prosperity. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton outlined some of her ideas for how that can be built in the coming months. The UK is therefore committed to bolstering democracy and human rights in Bangladesh through our sustained support to leaders of civil society, defence of media freedom and championing youth empowerment.

We, like many in the international community, expressed concerns about the elections in Bangladesh in January this year. Democratic elections depend on credible, open and fair competition. Respect for human rights, the rule of law and due process are essential elements. Those standards, sadly, were not consistently met during the election period in Bangladesh and were followed by incidents of violent repression. During the recent protests, we were deeply saddened by the loss of life and injury caused. There are credible reports of the police using tear gas, stun grenades and live rounds. The United Nations reports that 32 children were among those killed. Children were also among those detained during the protests. The violence reportedly left more than 600 people dead, and thousands injured and detained. The former Bangladesh Government severely restricted access to the internet, mobile services and landlines. Those services were only fully restored after 10 days. We raised our concerns about the communications disruption in Bangladesh and the widescale impact it had, including on British nationals in country. We were clear that access to communications must be maintained and not used as a tool to repress freedom of speech.

In July, the Foreign Secretary and I issued statements urging an end to the violence and loss of life. We called for all sides to find ways to restore calm, including by establishing a pathway for constructive political dialogue. We are clear that peaceful protesters must never be subject to violence, and that rights to protest, to peacefully assemble and to express different political views must be protected. During the protests, I reinforced our concerns and messages about the situation in discussions with the Bangladesh high commissioner to the UK. The UK called for a full and independent UN-led investigation into the events, and is supporting its independent fact-finding mission to identify human rights violations.

We welcomed the appointment of the interim Government in Bangladesh, led by Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus, in August. The Foreign Secretary made it clear in his statement last month that the people of Bangladesh deserve a peaceful, inclusive and democratic future. The interim Government in Bangladesh have committed to restoring peace and order, ensuring accountability, and promoting national reconciliation, and they have the UK’s full support on those objectives. The British high commissioner to Bangladesh, Sarah Cooke, to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude, met Chief Adviser Professor Yunus and other key members of the interim Government, including the Adviser for Foreign Affairs, in August. She and members of the British high commission in Dhaka continue to engage with the interim Government on key priorities, and she will have heard the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton. The high commissioner and members of the British high commission are actively supporting this democratic process, including through the B-CAPP— Bangladesh-collaborative, accountable and peaceful politics—programme. We work with civil society, youth organisations, political parties and other international partners to encourage democratic participation, civil space and accountable governance.

The UK’s support to Bangladesh reflects other challenges that the country faces, including the impacts of climate change and humanitarian issues. My deepest sympathy is with the people of Bangladesh, in all its regions, as the nation faces the effects of the recent devastating floods; my thoughts are with all those affected. We have responded to the recent flooding with £483,000 of humanitarian assistance. That is, of course, on top of our long-standing support under the overseas development aid projects. The UK Government are also committed to providing humanitarian support for the Rohingya refugees, and we are very aware that, at this moment of stress for Bangladesh, this is a particularly precious duty that it is carrying out on behalf of the international community. As a leading donor to the Rohingya refugee response, we are providing humanitarian aid, including food, clean water, healthcare and protection services. Over £391 million has been provided by the UK since 2017. Because the current conditions in Myanmar are not conducive to the safe return of the Rohingya refugees, we are working with the interim Government in Bangladesh on continued support to those refugees.

As a long-standing champion of democracy, and as a friend and partner of Bangladesh, the UK will support the country’s interim Government in their work to restore peace and order, ensure accountability and promote national reconciliation. We will work with Chief Adviser Professor Yunus and his interim Government as they chart a peaceful transition to an inclusive, prosperous and democratic future for Bangladesh. As part of this regular dialogue, the UK will continue to raise concerns over the protection of human rights and freedom of expression. We will urge the Government of Bangladesh to ensure safety and security inside Rohingya refugee camps, and will reiterate that peaceful protesters must never be subject to violence. As many of our diaspora communities watch this important debate, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton for her relentless support for Bangladesh and its people, and for bringing this debate to the House today.

Question put and agreed to.