Hurriyat Conference chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Pakistan’s acting deputy high commissioner M. Nafees Zakaria held a closed-door meeting with Tory MP Steve Baker just a couple of hours after the House of Commons debated on the human rights situation in the Indian subcontinent, especially in Kashmir.
The Mirwaiz was joined by many British politicians of PoK origin in the meeting with Mr Baker, who has been taking lead on the Kashmir issue since his election last year. Mr Baker, who represents Wycombe in Parliament, led the two-hour debate in the House of Commons that discussed the human rights situation in Kashmir in light of report by Amnesty International. The Tory MP said that he had met acting Indian high commissioner Rajesh Prasad to discuss the Indian side of the story. “I have thousands of Kashmiri constituents and they require and demand of us to represent their issues. For many of my constituents Kashmir is a source of deep concern. I will not pretend to be an expert on Kashmir, what I wanted to do is to give an opportunity to my colleagues to air their constituents’ concerns about the issue,” said Mr Baker, whose constituency has more than 20 per cent of population with origins in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, mainly Mirpur. The debate was attended by less than 40 MPs, including three Pak-origin MPs Shabana Mahmood, Yasmin Qureshi and Anas Sarwar. Conservative MP Bob Blackman (Harrow East) and Labour MP for Brent North Barry Gardiner joined the debate in defence of India.
The wide use of term “Azad Kashmir” for Pakistan-administered Kashmir by the MPs in the House of Commons was explained by Mr Baker, saying: “I am not an expert. What I do is to represent my constituents.”