Syria

Debate between Alison McGovern and Lucy Powell

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the current situation in Syria and the UK Government’s approach.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this debate.

On the morning of 14 April, British and allied forces conducted strikes on Syrian installations involved in the Assad regime’s illegal use of chemical weapons against its own people. The strike was launched as a response to the Syrian regime’s latest chemical weapons attack on 7 April in Douma, as I mentioned a moment ago, which killed up to 75 people, including young children.

I want to begin by quoting a Syrian, Bilal Shami from Rethink Rebuild Society, which is a Syria-led organisation that I have visited in Manchester. Bilal said:

“The UK’s latest reactionary military response seems to be detached from a wider comprehensive strategy that helps end this devastating seven-year conflict.”

It is that wider strategy that I want the House now to turn to.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for making a very powerful case for this debate today. This week I have had several emails from Rethink Rebuild Society, which is based in Manchester, imploring Britain now to redouble its efforts to put civilians at the heart of its strategy and to make sure that the abhorrent actions of Assad that we saw a few days ago can never reoccur. I just wanted my hon. Friend to know that.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend, and, through her, all those in the Syrian community in Manchester and in the UK beyond for the assistance they have given me in working on Syria.

We know that we cannot continue to allow the erosion of international laws that prohibit the use of chemical weapons. I explained earlier our country’s historical role in containing the use of chemical weapons—and we ought not to forget our own experience. But I do not wish to constrain our discussion today merely to chemical weapons, because, vile though they are, they are not the only means of savage killing that has taken place.

Let me remind the House that the conflict in Syria began when Assad’s forces opened fire on protesters demanding the release of political prisoners. They were not violent anarchists or subversives with questionable ties to foreign Governments, but a 13-year-old boy, his cousin and a dozen of their friends who had sprayed graffiti on a wall calling for Assad to step down. With the Syrian civil war now in its eighth year, the lack of a strategy from our Government beyond hoping that things will improve is leading only to more suffering. More than half a million Syrians have died, 6 million are internally displaced, and 5 million are refugees.

Today I call, as my colleague Jo Cox called, for a comprehensive strategy to protect civilian life. The Assad Government continue to commit violations of international humanitarian law on an almost daily basis. Let us take, for example, his barrel bombs: the brute force of dirty explosives booted off the back of a helicopter, heedless of who might be beneath. The deliberate targeting of civilians is illegal in any case, but what makes this worse is Assad’s continual terrorising of the civilian population without consequence.

That is not all. Siege warfare has returned in Syria. That is also illegal, but despite the best efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Red Crescent and other humanitarians, Assad simply will not comply with the right to food, the right to medical care, or the right not just to live but to exist in any normal understanding of the word.