Her aunt's regime 'disappeared' people - so why did Starmer make her a minister? - Voice of Asia

In Bangladesh, when Mir Ahmed Bin Quasem was abducted from his home by armed men, his four-year-old daughter was too young to understand what was happening. He recalls being dragged away barefoot, with his little daughter chasing after him with his shoes, saying "Baba, take it," as if he were just going out. He was held in solitary confinement for eight years, blindfolded and handcuffed, and to this day, he doesn't know where he was held or why.

The 40-year-old British lawyer is one of Bangladesh’s so-called “disappeared” – critics of Sheikh Hasina, who served as the country’s Prime Minister for over 20 years until she was ousted last August. Hasina’s rule saw some of the worst violence in Bangladesh since the 1971 war of independence, with hundreds killed, including at least 90 on her last day in power as she clung on to office. Hasina herself is highly controversial, and she is also the aunt of Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, who last week resigned from her position as shadow minister for counter-corruption following a string of denied corruption allegations.

These allegations include that Siddiq’s family siphoned off up to £3.9 billion from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh, and that she used London properties linked to her aunt’s allies. The government’s ethics watchdog later found she had not breached the ministerial code, but Siddiq still resigned. However, this may not be the end of the matter. The affair has raised uncomfortable questions about Starmer’s judgment and the way Labour seeks the votes of the Bangladeshi diaspora.

Given that Labour has long known of Siddiq’s links to her scandal-ridden aunt, questions are now being asked as to why the party failed to foresee this situation. Ben Quasem’s case was first raised as far back as 2016. Over the years, his and other “disappeared” Bangladeshis’ plight has sat awkwardly with Siddiq’s publicly expressed views on human rights. For example, she has long campaigned for the release of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from Iran, yet in public statements, she has shown marked indifference to the suffering and extrajudicial killings under her aunt’s regime in Bangladesh.

Siddiq has also met Russian President Vladimir Putin with her aunt, and appeared on the BBC as a spokesperson for the Awami League, the political organization led by Hasina since 1981. Siddiq also thanked members of the Awami League for helping her get elected as a Labour MP in 2015. Two pages on her website about her links to the party were later deleted. Yet, once in parliament, Siddiq told journalists that she had “no ability or desire to influence politics in Bangladesh.” These connections were not secret, then, but perhaps within Labour, they were not seen as a bad thing, particularly as, in recent years, the party has shown little sign of distancing itself from the Awami League.

Then-Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick told the House of Commons in 2012 that they were “sister organizations”, and many of his colleagues held similar friendly views. And Starmer – who entered parliament at the same time as Siddiq in 2015, in adjacent constituencies – has also met Hasina on a number of occasions. This included in 2022, when the then Bangladeshi Prime Minister was in London for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, a meeting Ben Quasem described as “heartbreaking and shocking.” An ally of Starmer’s argued that his meeting with Hasina was “perfectly legitimate” and did not amount to an endorsement of her policies. Labour’s apparent attempts to cultivate good relations with Bangladesh over the years may reflect political realities in Britain, particularly in parts of the capital.

“You can’t be successful in East London if you don’t understand the Bangladeshi vote,” explained one seasoned Labour campaigner. However, those who fail to understand the country’s divided and volatile political landscape may end up offending the very people they are trying to please. “You need to weigh your words and actions carefully,” the campaigner said. “If you are too openly aligned with one [Bangladeshi] party, you will be criticized.” An analysis by the Financial Times suggests that at least 17 UK constituencies have a Bangladeshi electorate larger than Labour’s majority. Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency has at least 6,000 adult Bangladeshi residents.

Could this combination of enthusiasm and political pragmatism have blinded Starmer’s judgment to the extent that he appointed Siddiq as a Treasury minister responsible for leading the UK’s counter-corruption efforts shortly after winning the election in July, while the potential corruption storm was already brewing? “It’s not new that Starmer has blind spots for his friends and political allies,” said one Labour source. Investigative journalist David Bergman, who has been exposing Siddiq’s links to Bangladeshi politics for a decade, argues that the context is crucial. “It wasn’t a big story until Labour was in power, Tulip Siddiq became a minister, and the Awami League government fell,” he said.

He argues that concerns should have been raised within the party years ago. “Firstly, a blind spot about Tulip Siddiq’s failure to respond to enforced disappearances in Bangladesh,” said Bergman. “Then a blind spot about how close her links were with the Awami League in the UK.” When I put this to one Labour MP, they responded that there is a blind spot on Bangladesh within both the UK media and the Labour party. “There are around 600,000 people in the Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK,” they said. “It’s a country with the eighth largest population in the world, but we’ve heard nothing [from the UK media] since the events of August 5th.” The corruption investigations into Hasina could run for some time, potentially creating more problems for Starmer’s top team to deal with in the coming months, while Siddiq remains a Labour MP.

For Ben Quasem, the fall of the Hasina regime saw him suddenly woken in his cell, bundled into a car, and thrown into a ditch before finally being allowed to return to his two daughters. When he last saw them in 2016, they were toddlers, and now they are young adults. “I didn’t really recognize them, and they didn’t recognize me,” he told me, crying. “Sometimes, I find it hard to accept that I never saw my daughters grow up. I missed out on the best time of my life. I missed their childhood.”