Refugees and Human Rights

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am glad to see you back in the Chair.

I will start by sharing with the House the case brought to me by the Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network, a charity that works tirelessly to support asylum seekers in Leeds and for which I used to be a short-stop host for asylum seekers who were destitute. Network staff told me about a freezing cold Friday afternoon in December when they were phoned anonymously by a member of Home Office staff, tipping them off that the Home Office had just sent a woman on to the streets of Leeds, where she was wandering around crying. When they arrived they found a woman named Akifa holding a piece of paper in her hand with a map of Croydon, which was some 230 miles away.

After some effort by LASSN and other charities, they managed to locate an interpreter and they heard her story. Akifa did not know where she was. She spoke of looking for a maternal aunt in the Netherlands, but the person who had brought her to the UK was no longer around. This was a story that LASSN had heard many times before—a textbook case of trafficking. Because of her unclear immigration status, no social or homelessness services could take her and keep her safe. Some hours and 20 phone calls later, the police arrived. To their great credit, they did not arrest Akifa for illegal entry to the UK, but instead took her to a place of safety, which was a great relief as arrest was a very real possibility.

Akifa was Eritrean. She was trafficked into the United Kingdom, where she did the right thing and reported to the Home Office. She was then turfed out on to the street and left to fend for herself. How did we get here? How do we end up in a situation where a vulnerable person is abandoned first by her own nation and then, sadly, by ours?

Eritrea, like so many other countries across Africa and Asia, has experienced a sharp increase in the number of people attempting to flee in recent years. Despite there being no ongoing war in Eritrea, huge numbers of men and women trying to escape national service in the country resort to routes that take them through war-torn countries and deserts and across deadly sea crossings. That is because, unlike military conscription, boys and girls aged 16-plus are often expected to serve indefinitely, with many refugees equating conscription to a life sentence of forced labour.

Physical abuse, including torture, occurs frequently, as does forced domestic servitude and sexual violence by commanders against female conscripts. There is no redress mechanism for conscripts. Attempts to flee are sternly punished. On 3 April 2017, new conscripts trying to escape from a convoy in Asmara were shot at by guards, killing several. President Isaias rules without institutional restraint. There have been no elections since 1991 and no legislature since 2002. The judiciary is subject to Executive control and the constitution is unimplemented.

UNHCR reported 475,000 Eritreans globally to be refugees and asylum seekers—that is 12% of the population—yet the UK policy has been to pass the buck to countries already facing problems of their own, shirking our own responsibility under international law. As The Guardian reported last year, Home Office documents obtained by the Public Law Project detail efforts by the Government to seek more favourable descriptions of human rights conditions in Eritrea. The notes relate to a high-level meeting that took place in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, in December 2015 between senior Eritrean Government officials and a UK Government delegation. A diplomatic telegram, written by the then UK ambassador to Eritrea, said that a meeting was held to “discuss reducing Eritrean migration”, and sought to find evidence on human rights

“to evaluate whether we should amend our country guidance”.

We should be ashamed of those actions. It took a tribunal case to overturn that guidance.

We accept that there is a problem, yet we have failed to provide a solution. The case of Akifa and Eritrea presents a broad problem with British refugee policy. Akifa should never have been left at the mercy of dangerous traffickers. She should never have been able to escape death only to risk her life. Akifa should not have been abandoned in Leeds—she should have been able to reach the UK through safe and legal means. The UK needs to stand up, not just for Eritreans but for all those fleeing conflict and oppression. The refugee crisis is bigger than Britain, but we can work with the UNHCR and other organisations to fulfil our moral, legal and human obligations. Let history remember our country not as the one that chose to look away but as the one that worked hard to create a better alternative and encouraged other countries to follow suit.

Oman, UAE and Iran

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

Both the Prime Minister and I have made it clear that we do not agree with what President Trump said about Jerusalem. We do not agree with his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and we do not agree with his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. What the Prime Minister said was welcomed in the region. I found a wide measure of knowledge and appreciation of the UK’s position. We want to encourage our American friends to come forward with the long-awaited plans, which have been gestating, for the middle east peace process. That is the symmetry that the world wants to see from the Trump Administration. In the context of this recognition of Jerusalem, now is the time to bring forth those plans and to do something symmetrical to advance the middle east peace process.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Although we welcome the progress that the Foreign Secretary reported this weekend, may I ask him whether he pressed the Iranian authorities to allow Richard Ratcliffe into Iran, so that if Nazanin cannot be home for Christmas, he at least will be able to visit her and see the state that she is in?

[Boris Johnson]

Tempting though it is to go into the details of our discussions on each of these consular cases, given the sensitivity and difficulty of our conversations, it would be better if we just said that we continue to ask for the cases to be treated in the humanitarian way that they deserve, and for those people to be released as soon as possible.

Yemen

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

Two or three things are worth mentioning. One of the problems in the region has been the non-payment of public health workers. I have had three conversations with the current President of Yemen in which I have urged the Yemeni Government to make finance available to pay the workers whose job is to try to assist those who may be likely to get cholera. I know that some of the aid agencies have stepped into the breach and paid people to do the same, which has been magnificent. However, the United Kingdom has played its part. We have given £27 million to UNICEF to treat children with severe acute malnutrition, provide safe water supplies and critical hygiene items and support mobile health clinics, and £6 million has been specifically allocated to cholera response. We have been supporting the vaccination programme to try to make a difference. Of course access is vital, but we work through partners, and that is the way to help tackle the cholera epidemic.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I, like my hon. Friends, condemn in the strongest possible terms the missile attack on a civilian target in Riyadh? There have also been many attacks on civilian targets in Yemen. What plans have the Government to apply the arms trade treaty to Saudi Arabia in future licensing decisions?

[Alistair Burt]

As has been mentioned before, arms licences in the United Kingdom are subject to strict controls. Everything is done on a case-by-case basis. I stress that we regularly raise the importance of compliance with international humanitarian law with the Saudi Arabian Government and other members of the coalition. Saudi Arabia has publicly stated that it is investigating reports of alleged violations of international humanitarian law, and that lessons will be acted on. The coalition’s Joint Incidents Assessment Team has announced the findings of a total of 36 investigations, and the most recent were released on 12 September 2017. It is all being taken very seriously. However, the hon. Gentleman was right to condemn that missile attack.

Korean Peninsula

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I do. The hon. Gentleman has caught my sentiments exactly.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do agree that this crisis has been created by the missile tests and thermonuclear test last week by the North Korean regime, which clearly is not acting like a rational nation state. I thank the Foreign Secretary for his approach and for using the UN Security Council to put pressure on China and to restart the six-nations talks. However, on Sunday, the President of the United States made a public statement on Twitter, as is his wont, saying:

“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!”

Is that our approach? Are we saying that the approach of regional nations such as South Korea amounts to appeasement? The “one thing” he mentions is clearly military action. Are we pressing all the other options on the United States?

[Boris Johnson]

It is not so much that we are pressing all the options on the United States—though of course we are—but that those are the options that the United States itself massively prefers and wants to bring about.

British Prisoners in Iran

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for calling me to make my first speech in Westminster Hall. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) for securing the debate and introducing it in such a comprehensive manner.

I have received more than 100 emails from constituents about this matter, which shows that the cases of Nazanin and Kamal have touched the hearts of the nation. It is all too common for people to claim that a situation is Kafkaesque, but to me, as an avid reader of Kafka, the similarities between those cases and the case of Josef K. in “The Trial” are all too apparent. Kafka himself described the seeming basis of the Iranian judicial system when he wrote in “The Trial” that

“it’s characteristic of this judicial system that a man is condemned not only when he’s innocent but also in ignorance.”

Both Nazanin and Kamal were charged and convicted without adequate representation or due process—indeed, they were condemned in ignorance.

Like other hon. Members—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn—I call upon the Foreign Secretary, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Minister to press the Iranian Government on a number of issues that my constituents, Amnesty International and I have raised. They should press them to allow Kamal and Nazanin any specialist medical care they may require; give Kamal access to his medical records; apply without discrimination article 58 of the Islamic penal code, which allows for someone to be conditionally released after serving a third of their prison sentence and would ensure the immediate release of Nazanin and Kamal; ensure that Kamal and Nazanin have regular access to a lawyer of their choice; allow them to be in contact with their families, including relatives abroad; and allow them to communicate with British consular officials—although that seems to be a contentious issue. I ask the Minister to respond to those points.

The United Kingdom has a well-deserved international reputation for its justice system. I hope that the Government will press for the most basic justice in Iran for our citizens, whether they are British citizens or dual citizens, and particularly for Kamal and Nazanin. It is clear from the contributions to this debate that that is completely and utterly lacking.