Baroness Blackstone
Main Page: Baroness Blackstone (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and therefore losing my place but I am grateful for being allowed to speak in the gap.
I want to focus on the criminal justice system as it affects Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories. I acknowledge that there have been a few improvements as a result of pressures by UNICEF and others on Israeli authorities including its military prosecutors, police, prison service and Ministry of Justice. However, there are still many serious breaches of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Moreover, as set out by the exceptionally thorough and measured report by a group of eminent British lawyers, there is a continuing gulf between law and practice. There are still great differences between the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian children. The lawyers were forthright in their conclusion that Israel should not discriminate between those children over whom it has jurisdiction. They also concluded that Israel is in breach of a number of international human rights conventions because of these legal differentials. It is, they say, in breach of UNCRC articles on discrimination, the child’s best interests, premature resort to detention, non-separation from adults, prompt access to lawyers and the use of shackles. It is also violating the fourth Geneva Convention in the transportation of child prisoners into Israel. This is a devastating indictment of the system.
In their report, the lawyers set out a large number of recommendations on arrest, interrogation, plea-bargaining, trial, sentencing, detention, complaints and monitoring. In discussing their recommendations with the Ministry of Justice, they were told that the changes proposed were conditional on there being no significant unrest or a third intifada. The lawyers said that they were concerned about this conditionality and rightly concluded:
“A major cause of future unrest may well be the resentment of continuing injustice … justice is not a negotiable commodity but a fundamental human right which can itself do much to defuse anger”.
They went on to suggest that the position taken by a military prosecutor who told them that every Palestinian child is a potential terrorist is the starting point of a spiral of injustice. As they said only the occupying power, Israel, can reverse this.
What are the UK Government doing, having regard to their international obligations to enforce human rights, to put pressure on the Israeli Government? Can the Minister say whether there have been further developments in lobbying the Ministry of Justice by officials in our Tel Aviv embassy about a follow-up visit by the British lawyers’ delegation? I congratulate the Government on their decision to fund such a visit but I am shocked that the Israeli Government have so far refused to co-operate.
Other speakers in this debate have listed some of the abuses in the criminal justice system highlighted by the lawyers. I have time to mention only two or three of them. Children are arrested in the night and removed from their homes without a parent being able to accompany them; they are not given access to lawyers as of right; and they often get representation only when they appear in court. Small numbers of children have even been held in solitary confinement and few children are granted bail after arrest. Numerous children appear to have suffered physical abuse after arrest. Unless this system is reformed, more and more of these children will be damaged and embittered. They will come out of custody determined to have their revenge. This cannot be in the long-term interests of Israel and its people.