Soma Oil & Gas: SFO Investigation
Lord Avebury Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they intend to propose to the United Nations Security Council in the light of the Serious Fraud Office’s criminal investigation into Soma Oil and Gas Holdings, Soma Oil and Gas Exploration, Soma Management and others in relation to allegations of corruption in Somalia.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, the Serious Fraud Office’s investigation into Soma Oil & Gas is an ongoing, independent investigation. It would not be appropriate to comment at this stage, nor to take any action on the basis of it. We are advising the federal Government of Somalia of the importance of establishing an effective legal and regulatory framework before signing oil or gas contracts, due to the high risks of corruption and conflict associated with the sector.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, Soma has contracts with the Government of Somalia giving it rights over 60,000 square kilometres of the continental shelf and creaming off up to 90% of the state’s oil revenues. Are the Government concerned that Soma paid civil servants advising on the deal a total of $360,000 and the so-called independent legal adviser another $500,000? When is the relevant Security Council committee due to consider the report on these payments, submitted to it on 3 August by the Somalia and Eritrea monitoring group?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, on the first question, I perhaps did not make it clear enough in my first Answer that this matter is being investigated by the SFO, and investigated as the result of a leaked confidential document. In light of both those circumstances, it is not the practice of any Government to comment on such matters. On the noble Lord’s second question, I understand that the United Nations will discuss these matters again shortly.
Freedom of Religion and Belief
Lord Avebury Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, I join in the congratulations that have been expressed to my noble friend Lord Alton for the powerful way in which he introduced this debate, and indeed for the consistent and wonderful way in which he always defends the rights of people’s religious freedom. On no occasion have I heard him speak more powerfully on the subject than he did today.
My old friend Dennis Wrigley, founder of the Maranatha community, asks if we care that entire Christian communities have been wiped out in the Middle East and what we are prepared to do about it. Those are questions that I hope the Minister will be able to answer.
However, the challenge is in fact much greater than that. Daesh makes no secret of its intention to expand its so-called caliphate from its base in Syria and Iraq so that it covers the rest of the Middle East and north Africa. Ultimately it aims to spread its interpretation of seventh-century Islamic governance and beliefs across the whole world, eliminating all other faiths by conversion or assassination, as it has already demonstrated by the massacres of Yazidis, Christians and Shia and the enslavement of the martyrs’ widows in the territory that it occupies.
William Young of the RAND Corporation observed:
“Al-Baghdadi’s messages have resonated with Sunnis in the region, North Africa, Europe and the United States primarily because he appears successful”.
I agree with his conclusion:
“The faster the Muslim world can be shown that ISIS is not invincible and does not have a divine mandate to rule the Islamic world, the quicker young Muslims and others will stop listening to its messaging”.
The coalition needs to ratchet up military operations against the Daesh and we should explore the willingness of our partners in the 60-state coalition to provide troops for a multinational ground force in Syria. We are providing 75 military instructors and headquarters staff as part of the US-led programme to support the “moderate Syrian opposition”. Can the Minister please identify the groups included in that phrase? They do not include, apparently, the heroic YPG which successfully repelled the Daesh assault on Kobane at the end of last year. Operations on that frontier would have the merit of not undermining the Assad Government’s capacity to hold Daesh at bay.
The so-called caliphate sends out a powerful signal to extremist Sunni Muslims elsewhere that they can help towards the realisation of the universal Islamic state by destabilising existing kufr Governments through acts of indiscriminate terrorism such as the attack on British tourists in Tunisia. However, the main thrust of Daesh operations this year outside its own territory has been attacks against the soft target of Shia mosques in neighbouring Arab countries. In March there were simultaneous attacks on two mosques in Sanaa, capital of Yemen, killing 137 people and injuring 357. In May there were two attacks on Shia mosques in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, killing 29 and injuring more than 85; and on 2 June, a Shia mosque in Kuwait was attacked, killing at least 27 and injuring 227 others.
However, it goes wider than that. In Pakistan, terrorist groups swearing allegiance to the Daesh have been responsible for three major atrocities so far this year: the suicide bombing of an imambargah at Shikarpur in January, which killed 80 and injured 100; a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in Peshawar, capital of troubled Balochistan, in February, killing a least 22 and injuring 80 at Friday prayers; and a gun attack by killers on motorcycles on a bus carrying Ismailis in Karachi in May, killing at least 26 and injuring 13. Eliminating the Daesh, its metastases and its wicked ideology taught in Saudi-funded madrassahs throughout the world must be the main goal of all who believe in freedom of religion.
Saudi Arabia: Raif Badawi
Lord Avebury Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the government of Saudi Arabia about the confirmation of a sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison against Raif Badawi.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, we are extremely concerned about Raif Badawi’s case and have discussed it at the most senior levels in the Government of Saudi Arabia, most recently on 9 June. The Foreign Secretary discussed this case in February and March with the Saudi Minister of the Interior, His Royal Highness Mohammad bin Naif, now Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. The case is under active consideration and we will continue to watch it closely.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, when the first 50 lashes were administered to Mr Badawi, he needed medical attention. If the Saudi Supreme Court’s decision that he should undergo a further 19 sessions of 50 lashes each is carried into effect, it will amount to torture followed by death. Does my noble friend consider it appropriate for a state such as Saudi Arabia, which has barbarous and inhumane punishments on its statute book for trivial offences, to continue to be a member of the Human Rights Council, and will the UK take steps to have the country removed from that position?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I shall be attending the Human Rights Council early next week. I know that a wide range of issues will be raised but I have not yet seen any matter referring to the membership of any individual country. However, it is the view of the United Kingdom that the treatment of people in detention must be in line with the protocol on torture, to which, of course, Saudi Arabia is a signatory.
Migration: Trafficking
Lord Avebury Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
Order! I think that we are still getting used to taking turns now that we are in a new Parliament and we are sitting in different places. May I suggest that my noble friend Lord Marlesford has an opportunity to ask a question on this occasion?
Queen’s Speech
Lord Avebury Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, in September 2014, President Obama said:
“We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy”.
Those words were echoed in the gracious Speech, except that apparently we think that this is a phenomenon that is confined to the Middle East. In fact, the objectives of the terrorists are of a global nature, as I shall attempt to show.
On 19 March, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said that the strategy for clearing the Daesh out of Syria and Iraq was to provide military support to the Iraqi forces fighting the terrorists. This policy is now in ruins, with the ignominious defeat and expulsion of government forces from Ramadi, following a similar exercise in Mosul. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said that the Iraqi army has lost the “will to fight” but it would be more accurate to say that it never had the will. Only the Shia militias are capable of preventing the terrorists occupying Baghdad, let alone recovering Anbar province. They and the Kurdish Peshmerga are the effective military opposition to the Daesh on the ground in Iraq.
In Syria, as my noble friend Lord Alderdice has said, we cannot make up our minds whether the priority is to get rid of Assad or to eliminate the Daesh. The Kurdish YPG beat off a determined attack by the Daesh against the city of Kobane and has emerged as the only plausible ally for the US-led coalition. Is the UK helping YPG operations with military supplies and logistics, and what are our ultimate goals in Syria? The public need to know where we are going and that means not only with the military operations but also with the countermessaging strategy on which the noble Baroness said we are chairing a subgroup with the UAE and the US. It would be interesting to know a little more about what that subgroup has been doing.
The ideology of the Daesh is metastasising to other Islamic countries. Leaders of the Pakistan Taliban have pledged allegiance to the Daesh, and other Pakistani terrorist groups, which carry on relentless campaigns of murder and massacre against Shia Muslims and other religious minorities, including Christians, are dedicated to programmes of religious hatred and cleansing.
President Ashraf Ghani warned of impending terrorism by Daesh in Afghanistan in March, and sure enough, Shahidullah Shahid, claiming to be a spokesman for the group, said that it was responsible for a suicide bomb in Jalalabad on 18 April which killed 33 people and injured more than 100, many of them children. Most of the followers of the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan will switch to the Daesh, which has said that the two countries form part of its caliphate.
In Nigeria, Boko Haram is reported to have declared allegiance to the Daesh, as the noble Lord, Lord St John, mentioned. In Libya, Daesh militants took over the cities of Derna and Sirte and are terrorising the local populations with summary executions and public floggings. They executed 21 Egyptian Copts in Sirte. Forces of the Government in eastern Libya under General Khalifa Haftar are said to be preparing a counterattack, but with no end to the civil war between the two halves of the country, the outlook is grim. I would like to know what the Government are doing to try to bring the two Governments together so that they can at least stop fighting each other and concentrate on the threat from the Daesh.
In Egypt, the local affiliate of the Daesh claimed responsibility on 3 April for deadly attacks on army checkpoints in the Sinai peninsula that killed 15 soldiers and two civilians. It has called on its followers to kill judges and court officials in retaliation for sentences passed on terrorists for offences in Sinai. As the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, mentioned, three judges were shot dead in El Arish in northern Sinai on 16 May.
In March, the Daesh bombed a Zaidi mosque in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, killing 137 people and wounding 350 at Friday prayers. Then, in April, it posted a video online of the execution of 15 Yemeni soldiers, and last Friday it bombed another mosque in Sanaa, wounding 13 people. The Saudi-led military coalition against the Houthis is weakening the only force that might prevent the establishment of a Daesh territorial base in Yemen. The noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, drew attention to the incompatibility of the Saudi coalition’s activities with those of the 80-nation coalition led by the United States, of which Saudi Arabia is a nominal member.
Last Friday, a Daesh suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shia mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, killing at least 21 people and injuring more than 80 at prayer. The so-called caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, recorded an audio message calling on his Saudi followers to attack Shia targets, but the Daesh has a particular hatred for the Shia in every country.
Paradoxically, the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia is similar to the theology of the Daesh, which in fact uses Saudi textbooks on Islam in its schools. The difference between them is political rather than theological because of the Daesh claim that its caliph has jurisdiction over the whole of the ummah and its practice of killing infidels in territory under its jurisdiction who refuse to convert to its particular version of Islam. Clearly, Islamist terrorists all over the world, including thousands here in Britain, see advantages in being part of a movement that is dedicated to the universal reign of Salafist Islam and sharia jurisprudence through conversion or conquest. An intermediate stage based on the maximum extent of Islamic rule in the Middle East, Spain, the Balkans, north Africa and south and central Asia makes it seem plausible, and that is the intermediate plan of the Daesh.
I agree with my noble friends Lord Ashdown and Lord Alderdice that whatever our differences with Russia on Ukraine and with Iran on nuclear development, we need the co-operation of these states on a new diplomatic initiative against the terrorists. Perhaps when the noble Baroness deals with that proposal, she would also like to say whether any fresh initiatives are contemplated to bring Turkey into the equation, which has been mentioned so far only in connection with humanitarian supplies to the KRG.
The Daesh is,
“the negation of God erected into a system of government”.
We need to wake up to the scale of this challenge and develop a robust answer to it, with the authority of the UN Security Council and the approval of the highest levels of religious authority in all the branches of peaceful Islam.
Syria and Iraq: Daesh
Lord Avebury Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the strategy of the United States-led coalition for clearing the Daesh out of the territories which they currently occupy in Syria and Iraq.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, we are part of a global coalition with more than 60 members committing to defeating ISIL. We support inclusive governance in Iraq and Syria, work to counter ISIL’s vile narrative, its access to finance and foreign fighters, and provide military support to Iraqi forces fighting ISIL. The UK also provides humanitarian assistance to those affected by ISIL’s brutality and will contribute to the Syrian opposition train and equip programme.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, the FCO website makes reference to a global strategy for combating the global threat of ISIL, which allegedly was agreed at a meeting in Paris on 15 September last year. However, the text of the agreement is not on the FCO website, and I cannot find it anywhere else using Google. Can the Government leave a parting message in Washington before next Thursday to say that we need a mechanism to co-ordinate military strategy among the armed forces of active coalition stakeholders and with the Syrian armed forces on retaking Raqqa?
Eritrea and Ethiopia
Lord Avebury Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Chidgey on securing this short debate that links Eritrea and Ethiopia, and on his masterly summary of the human rights violations in Eritrea and the consequent exodus of large numbers of refugees.
The two countries were linked in a forced marriage when the UN organised a bogus test of public opinion in Eritrea and imposed a federal union of the two countries in 1952, followed 10 years later by Emperor Haile Selassie’s annexation of Eritrea. There followed a 30-year war of liberation to restore Eritrea’s independence.
In the 1970s, I was chairman of the Eritrea Support Group, which campaigned in Parliament and the media for Eritrea’s freedom and tried to persuade Ministers to support the self-determination of the Eritrean people, sanctioned by international law. Ministers would always reply with the mantra, “We believe that a federal solution would be best for the people of Eritrea”. I tried to ask them how they dared to usurp the right of the people themselves to exercise the most fundamental right of all peoples, emphasised by its position as Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
In 1981, I visited Eritrea at the end of the Ethiopian sixth offensive. I travelled by Port Sudan through the desert and then along the Freedom Road, which was blasted out of the rock, up into the highlands, where I stayed at the Nacfa Hilton, a cave behind the front line. At dawn we saw the Antonov bombers dropping their loads on the ruins of Nacfa, in which the only building standing was the tower of the mosque. The corpses of Ethiopian conscripts killed in a hopeless attack on the cliffs protecting Nacfa were still lying where they had fallen, testifying to the futility of the Dergs’ colonialism.
In 1993, after the Eritreans gained their freedom, they held a referendum, in which there was a 99.3% turnout, in favour of independence, an event that no one who was there could ever forget. There was a spontaneous outburst of joy, with singing and dancing in the streets, and it seemed as if Eritrea, with its talented and hard-working people, would become a beacon of democracy and prosperity in the Horn of Africa. However, that dream was shattered when Ethiopia launched a fresh war of aggression on the pretence of a dispute over the border between the two countries.
After tens of thousands of lives had been lost on both sides and hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on sophisticated weapons, it was agreed to refer the demarcation of the boundary to a commission headed by the distinguished British jurist Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, who was a schoolmate of mine 66 years ago. Both countries had agreed to accept the commission’s decision as final, but when the details were published in April 2002, Ethiopia found one excuse after another to dispute the findings. Ostensibly, its main reason was that the commission had awarded the small town of Badme to Eritrea, but as it had no significant value there must have been other reasons. The suspicion is that the long-term objective of Ethiopia is to re-annex its former dependency and, meanwhile, to weaken it by threatened aggression along the border and working to intensify sanctions on false charges of supplying weapons to the al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia.
The Ethiopians unlawfully occupied territory all along the border that should have been demilitarised under the settlement, and Eritrea has been forced to maintain large armed forces as a precaution against further military attacks by its bullying neighbour. That was its justification for the much criticised imposition of indefinite military service, which was mentioned by my noble friend. The Eritrean ambassador told us that from last November conscription was limited to 18 months and that conscripts would not be required, as before, to perform civilian work such as road building, earning no more than $30 a month. Thousands of young people are fleeing the country every month, and Eritreans are the most numerous of those attempting the risky crossing from north Africa to Europe in which so many lose their lives. There is hope now that the flood of Eritrean asylum seekers will abate and that the colony will receive a boost from the extra labour in the private agricultural sector from the release of the indefinitely conscripted young people in the system.
The permanent existence of a state of “no war, no peace” is a major reason for the plethora of human rights violations by Eritrea, which have been mentioned by both my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock. These include the arrest and disappearance of 21 opponents of the Government in 1991, arbitrary arrests and severe restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly. These are undoubtedly seen by the regime as necessary protections against their unscrupulous and determined enemy. That is not to defend such practices but to make an observation. Does the Minister not agree that, if the threat of aggression were lifted, violations of human rights would diminish and the flow of refugees would be further reduced? Trade between the two countries and access by Ethiopia to the ports of Assab and Massawa would boost economic activity throughout the region and lower unemployment locally and internationally, thus reducing the incentive to emigrate.
Ethiopia, on the other hand, has no enemies in the region and therefore has no reason for the severe restrictions on freedom of expression that it imposes. Human Rights Watch said last week that 22 journalists, bloggers and publishers were charged with criminal offences in the past year. Six independent publications were intimidated and closed, with dozens of staff forced into exile. Three owners of publications also fled abroad to escape false charges that led to sentences of three years in prison in absentia. Six members of Zone 9, a bloggers’ collective, were charged under the counterterrorism laws and have been in custody for 274 days, sending a chilling message to online activists. Can the Government not make representations to Prime Minister Desalegn to relax the stringent controls on freedom of expression so that Ethiopians can have a genuine election in May?
Above all, I call on the Government, and through them the EU, to launch a new diplomatic effort for peace in the region—for Ethiopians of all political parties to accept the Lauterpacht settlement unequivocally and to withdraw their forces from Eritrean territory.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing today’s debate. I also commend the important work of the various all-party groups of which he is an active member, including the All-Party Group on Africa. As he has described, there are few more moving stories than those of migrants who undertake perilous journeys to reach western Europe, sometimes losing their lives in the process. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, has just described that graphically. Today’s debate is, therefore, a welcome opportunity to discuss an issue that clearly links the United Kingdom and our partners in Africa—and indeed, our partners in the European Union in our work to reduce the need for migration and the need for unsafe migration.
The Government have made it very clear that the international community must act together to reduce the risk of migrants losing their lives or falling prey to the traffickers. Migrants make the journey for a number of reasons—whether seeking more economic opportunities or to escape human rights abuses and persecution. I shall come in a moment to some of the more specific points which noble Lords have made on that matter. Poverty and instability in the Horn of Africa drives individuals to seek a better life in Europe and beyond. For those who cannot leave, these same factors contribute to an environment in which fundamentalism and extremism can prosper. Tackling illegal migration to the EU from the Horn of Africa is therefore clearly in our interest and that of all countries in the region. We must address the problem at its source, and the UK is committed to playing its part.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, in particular asked questions about al-Shabaab and the terrorism link with regard to that. He mentioned the United Nations and Eritrea monitoring group. I understand that Eritrea denies any support for al-Shabaab but continues to refuse entry to the monitoring group. We urge it to co-operate fully with the group’s work. I am entirely at one with the noble Lord in this matter.
Clearly co-operation through our European Union partners is important. I was asked about that not only by the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Kinnock, but by my noble friend Lord Chidgey and the right reverend Prelate. In addition to our bilateral work with key regional partners, we play an active role in the new EU-African Union Khartoum process, which includes of course both Ethiopia and Eritrea, supporting dialogue and co-operation to tackle people smuggling and human trafficking in the region. I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, that the Prime Minister’s position is that we will negotiate a successful resolution to our relationship with the European Union, and in any future decision by the British people we would put a very positive case and would certainly hope that we would remain part of it. That is the result of successful negotiation by my right honourable friend Philip Hammond, who has been travelling around countries throughout western Europe, taking soundings and getting some very positive results—more positive perhaps than some of the press makes clear on some of the issues that we have been broaching. There is still a long way to go. We know that but we are making progress.
We welcome the fact that both Ethiopia and Eritrea have expressed commitment to the Khartoum process. It provides the best framework to drive this issue forward. Noble Lords have drawn attention to the tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea. I would say to them that if they are taking the Khartoum process seriously, they have to take negotiation on the basis of solving the differences between them seriously too. As a member of the core group of EU and AU member states steering the development of how we take this process forward, we as a country are keen to ensure that we maintain momentum and that the process leads quickly to concrete projects that combat the smuggling and trafficking.
Several noble Lords asked me, in particular, about extended military service—very much a euphemism. I listened very carefully to all the words used by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, my noble friends Lord Avebury and Lord Chidgey, and the right reverend Prelate about the real nature of this—one or two noble Lords referred to it as being like slave labour—and the fact that it acts as a serious driver for people to leave the country. Having left and broken the rules on conscription, people are—I cannot think of the right word—terrified to return. That is why some of the figures of asylum grants by us to Eritreans look so high, because clearly there has been concern about them returning to that country given their reasons for leaving.
We did indeed have a joint visit to Eritrea by Home Office and Foreign Office officials in December. They looked at the drivers of migration and particularly discussed the matter of extended military service. I can say to my noble friend Lord Chidgey that this was a useful starting point for further co-operation. A similar visit to Ethiopia is planned for the near future. With regard the visit to Eritrea, the Eritrean Government representatives assured the officials from the FCO that military service will be strictly limited to 18 months and, indeed, I have been briefed by those officials today. The undertaking has been given. It is matter now of making sure that that is put into practice.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, made the valid point that not everybody fleeing Eritrea is fleeing persecution; some leave for strong economic reasons, and the extension of the 18 months’ military service, with no knowing when it would finish, was an awful position to be in. That is very different from some of the drivers that one sees for people fleeing from Syria.
The matter of development assistance was raised by my noble friend Lord Patten. He asked about the role of aid. We are firmly committed to the use of aid in ensuring that there is security and prosperity in countries that currently experience neither. Our total spend over all countries in 2013 was almost £11.5 billion, second only behind the USA in overall volume. We believe that that is helping to change the lives of many millions of ordinary citizens across the Horn of Africa. In Ethiopia, in particular, last year our funding allowed over 1.6 million children to go to primary school, helped 110,000 mothers to give birth safely and provided clean water for more than 250,000 people. Our funding is also helping Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, particularly with shelter and support to unaccompanied minors, as well as warning refugees of the risks of illegal migration. I know that none of that will be a surprise to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock. When she was a Minister she was passionate about these issues, and rightly so. I can assure her that that passion remains in government.
I was also asked about the issue of Ethiopian and Eritrean relations more generally. My noble friend made reference to a leaked memo on Ethiopia’s destabilising policy against Eritrea—at least the memo refers to itself as being leaked, whether it was or not I simply do not know. We will consider its contents seriously and closely. Better relations between the two countries are clearly needed. We have called on both sides to respect the commitment that they made in the Algiers peace agreement of December 2000 to refrain from using force against each other. We will continue to encourage both Eritrea and Ethiopia to engage bilaterally and internationally to overcome the current stalemate and hope that progress can be made towards demarcation in accordance with the decision of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission.
Lord Avebury
Does my noble friend not recognise that the Algiers agreement was final and binding and that both parties had agreed to accept it, so there is no question of negotiations or variations on the settlement? They both must accept it, and, in particular, Ethiopia must agree to the border that was determined by the British judge, Judge Lauterpacht.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, international agreements, once entered into, should be adhered to, and I hope that the Russians hear that with regard to the Minsk protocol with regard to Ukraine. I agree with my noble friend about the importance of keeping one’s word.
Much attention was drawn to the issue of human rights, and rightly so. I will summarise very rapidly indeed. The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, my noble friends Lord Avebury and Lord Chidgey, the noble Lord, Lord Rea, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby all raised issues. Briefly, with regard to the matter of Petros, we are of course aware of that case. I am afraid that I can give the noble Lord, Lord Rea, no comfort. We do not have any assurances about his well-being despite consistent efforts to obtain them. We will continue to call for his release.
There are human rights abuses across the board. The right reverend Prelate raised the issue of religious freedom. We will continue to look very carefully at the matters he raised because, clearly, those are abuses that have occurred and, as he rightly says, particularly against groups that are not registered under the Eritrean system. There was a reference to the detention of political prisoners and journalists. We certainly try to establish the facts. There are still journalists in detention despite reports that six have been released. There was a reference to the Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak, who is still under arrest.
With regard to all these matters, we do not give up. Just because it is difficult, we do not give up in pursuing our relationship with these two countries. Walking away would leave those who are the victims of persecution and misbehaviour by Governments in a more perilous position than they currently face. The commitment of this Government is that this is a challenge that requires a global, long-term response to a difficult problem. We will all keep trying to ensure that, as an international community, we do our best to tackle it for the sake of those behind the traffickers and behind Governments who do not have good governance.
Kuwait: Bidoon
Lord Avebury Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the Government of Kuwait about granting citizenship to the stateless Bidoon who are resident in that country.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, the British embassy in Kuwait is in regular contact with the Kuwaiti Government to lobby on this important issue. The UK recognises that the situation of the Bidoon in Kuwait causes real human rights problems. We encourage the Kuwaiti Government to implement swiftly their plan to naturalise those individuals eligible for Kuwaiti nationality and regularise the situation for the remainder.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, I know that my noble friend is well aware of the fact that Kuwaiti Bidoon children are born stateless and go through the whole of their lives without access to education, health and public services of all kinds. Over the many years that the Government have been making representations on the subject, their representations have fallen on deaf ears. Will my noble friend, bearing in mind the close relationship between the royal families of our two countries and the recent world public appeal of the UNHCR to reduce statelessness, consider making a high-level appeal to the emir himself to grant citizenship to those 120,000 stateless people, and procure that the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs follows our example?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I would not seek to invite the Royal Family to take particular actions, but I am sure that everything that the noble Lord says in this Chamber has due regard paid to it in these matters. He is right to refer to the UNHCR. The UK is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, but Kuwait is not. We encourage all countries to sign the convention.
I should remind my noble friend, and therefore the House, that the 105,000 estimated Bidoon who seek nationality are not all in the same category. Of those, about 34,000 were in Kuwait before independence in 1961 but did not register for citizenship. The remaining number have come to Kuwait after that date from other countries. Some of them went there to work; some were illegal immigrants. Therefore, their position is very different from those who, with their descendants, seek full citizenship.
Middle East and North Africa
Lord Avebury Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, the misnamed “Arab spring” has not yielded the arrival of democratic government, the rule of law and human rights anywhere in the region. In Palestine, as we know, creeping occupation of the West Bank makes a two-state solution increasingly implausible. In Iraq, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, one sees the legacy of the misguided 2003 invasion by Anglo-US forces. Now the state has lost one-third of its territory to the Daesh. In Egypt, the brief period of Muslim Brotherhood rule was marked by political ineptitude and repression, leading back to domination by a military strongman. The removal of Gaddafi produced anarchy, and now disputed sovereignty between the east and west of the country. Syria was already suffering a devastating civil war when the Daesh erupted onto the scene.
The actual revolutions in the region have led to far worse conditions for ordinary people; peaceful transitions, which may take far longer, are the right way forward. In Tunisia, mentioned earlier, the moderate Islamist Ennahda party of Rached Ghannouchi, who lived here in exile for 20 years, lost the election this week to secularists in a peaceful transition. The same could still happen in Algeria and Morocco, where the leaderships talk about reform, although the pace is leaden.
The Gulf states have followed a completely different path. All are ruled by hereditary autocracies, and only in Bahrain has there been an opposition with mass popular support. The response of the ruling family has been to impose long prison sentences on the most effective political and human rights activists, to violently suppress peaceful demonstrations, to deprive people of their citizenship without due process, to recruit a large number of foreign Sunni security personnel and grant them nationality in a medium-term plan to outnumber the native Shia population, and to invite in troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE in an unsuccessful attempt to cow the people into submission.
Our Government say that they raise human rights violations with the Bahrain authorities, but they do it sotto voce, going along with the fake reforms initiated by the rulers. This is a country where the Prime Minister, who is the King’s uncle, has been in office for more than 40 years, and the King appoints all the Ministers. The judges, too, are appointed by the Government; so the rule of law is absent. There is a rigged Parliament.
Saudi Arabia played a key role in the creation of the Daesh, as Patrick Cockburn demonstrates in his book The Jihadis Return. It tried to stop its citizens from travelling to Syria only in February when it realised that the supreme target of the jihadists was Saudi Arabia itself. If the Daesh could usurp the title, “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques”, its claim to be the successor of the caliphate would be enormously enhanced.
We need to point out that in funding mosques abroad, particularly in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia is promoting an ideology that carries within it the seeds of terrorism. As the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, pointed out, Qatar and Kuwait are joining in the funding of terrorist operations. The Daesh can probably be eradicated so that it no longer has a territorial base, but the organisation and its ideology can and does metastasise; it already has footholds elsewhere in the region and well beyond, particularly in south Asia. It even has tentacles in the UK, as we see from the 500 young people who are said to have abandoned their families here to join the brutal and inhuman heretics in Syria.
The US has woken up to the importance of saving Kobane, recognising. as the New York Times wrote, that the fall of the city would show the fragility of the American plan, and put the Daesh in a position to cross the border and directly threaten a NATO ally. It would also facilitate the flow of terrorists into Europe and, of course, the UK in particular. As a result of the US policy reversal, arms and humanitarian supplies have been airdropped, as I suggested in our debate on October 14.
The first contingent of Peshmergas from Iraq arrived yesterday with artillery and mortars to reinforce Kobane. Ankara is said to have demanded that for any extension of this programme the coalition should also attack Assad. However, because the Syrian armed forces are the only large-scale provider of boots on the ground against the Daesh we need a reappraisal of the attempts to change the regime in Damascus, as the noble Lord, Lord Wright, advised. This is not my party’s policy but simply acceptance of the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
I hope that at the end of this debate we shall hear not only of plans to join the US in supplying humanitarian goods and arms to the heroic defenders of Kobane, but that we have in train a strategy to combat the much wider threat from a false doctrine of murder and religious cleansing that the Daesh espouses. At the same time, we must demonstrate to the Arab people that we are sympathetic to their needs.
I congratulate Sir Alan Duncan MP on his appointment as special envoy to Yemen, an FCO “country of concern” and the poorest state in the Middle East. Yemen is probably not going to meet any of the millennium development goals; it has a weak economy, poor social services, high population growth and internal conflicts that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people. In spite of these challenging conditions, in 2012, with the help of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation—to which the UK is also a major contributor—Yemen introduced vaccination for rotavirus, which causes extreme diarrhoea and accounts for 11% of under-fives’ deaths there. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Child Health and Vaccine Preventable Diseases, of which I am co-chair, suggests that DfID should now assess how the vaccination system in Yemen should be integrated with the WASH agenda—programmes on clean water, sanitation and hygiene—and with the eradication of infant malnutrition as part of its post-2015 development master plan.
Free Trade Agreement: US and EU
Lord Avebury Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Livingston of Parkhead
As was mentioned earlier, the EU is conducting a consultation on ISDS clauses and has received a large number of responses. I think the appropriate question on ISDS clauses is, “Which ISDS clause?”, rather than whether one should have a clause. Noble Lords should understand that, in the UK, we have 94 ISDS clauses that have in total lasted for 2,000 years. The number of cases that the UK has lost during that time is zero. Many of the claims made about ISDS clauses are based on misconceptions. The UK is pushing for is an ISDS clause that rightly balances the interests of people and organisations with the right that big business—businesses of all sizes—has to a stable investment environment. We will continue to push that, as we have recently with an excellent clause in the agreement with Canada.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, if by some mischance Britain were to leave the EU at some future date, would we have to renegotiate all the bilateral agreements the EU now has or may have in the future with third parties?
Lord Livingston of Parkhead
That is a hypothetical question. As the Prime Minister has stated very clearly, he will be campaigning to remain in the EU—an EU that will be founded on free trade. Free trade is a very important part of the EU and we will continue to push for that.