Genocide: Bringing Perpetrators to Justice

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on being the conscience of not only the House of Lords but the Government on this issue of genocide. I do not need to explain to all the wonderful legal minds in this Committee that, in English law, the accomplices who aid, abet, counsel or procure an offence are charged jointly with, and face the same maximum sentences as, the people who commit the criminal act.

This night, the UK Government and the arms industry are culpable for genocides and other atrocities committed across the world. There are very few such atrocities that are committed independently of the global arms trade, of which the Government of the UK are a major component. In your Lordships’ House earlier this week, I mentioned the case of the UK aid sent to Mozambique to create a fossil fuel plant. Not only is this a disaster for our planet, it has also created more unrest in a very unstable area. In 2020 the plans actually encouraged an increase in the number of violent incidents; there were 570 in 2020 alone, of which one was 50 people beheaded on a sports field over the course of one weekend.

The conventional arms industry is bad enough for this, but then there is the nuclear weapons industry, the whole purpose of which is to facilitate global nuclear annihilation. Any high-flown promises about justice for genocide are empty while those same people who made the promises support the arms industry. It is time to rein in the military industrial complex and stop facilitating the killing of people across the world. That really would benefit the reputation of the UK Government.