Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for this important debate. It is as delightful as always to see him speak on such humanitarian issues.

For some time now, some of us have been observing the UK Government’s response to mass atrocities amounting to genocide or crimes against humanity, in my case as a member of several all-party parliamentary groups focused respectively on, for example, the atrocities in Sri Lanka, North Korea, Yemen and Syria, as well as engaging in debates in this House. I have always been highly concerned by the response of the UK Government—quite rightly referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza—that it is not for politicians to make the determination of genocide but for the international judicial bodies. I have never accepted that argument. We have to be careful to ensure that arguments about the decision-making process never override mass genocide of communities in war-torn areas.

Such an argument fails to recognise one fundamental issue: that the obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide are imposed on states and not on international bodies. States that ratified the convention are under a duty to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. This duty cannot be fulfilled when a state fails to make the determination of genocide and waits until an international judicial body does so. By waiting and not undertaking any actions, the state fails to prevent genocide. Similarly, this delays punishing the perpetrators of the crime.

I recall the UK Government saying that, despite not recognising the Daesh genocide of religious minorities, they have taken steps to stop it with the Global Coalition against Daesh and to ensure prosecutions by way of working with the Iraqi Government on a UN Security Council resolution to establish an investigative team. Those steps are good and certainly welcome. However, this is not the usual response from the UK Government to mass atrocities that may amount to genocide. The UK’s response to the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Burma, quite rightly identified by my colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, is a good example of the UK’s failure to have an adequate law or policy to deal with such cases.

Similarly, as in the case of Daesh atrocities, the UK Government refused to recognise the atrocities perpetrated by the Burmese military against the Rohingya Muslims in Burma as genocide. They have not done anything to stop the atrocities or to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

After engaging in a dialogue with the Burmese Government, the UK Government accepted their assurance that they had established an investigative mechanism and would conduct independent and transparent investigations. We expected similar things in Sri Lanka; unfortunately, they did not materialise. This is even though the recent report published by the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar indicated that:

“Expecting justice and truth from any Myanmar domestic process is simply naive”.


This gives me an opportunity. I do not absolve Aung San Suu Kyi from this situation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, has quite rightly said. We find today that she has vehemently defended the imprisonment of the two Reuters journalists who were given seven-year jail terms after reporting on the massacre of Rohingya Muslims. This is a case condemned by international Governments and the United Nations as a miscarriage of justice and a major regression of freedom of expression in Myanmar. The civilised world stood by Aung San Suu Kyi when she was under house arrest; the least we expect from her is to speak up for the massive number of refugees in Bangladesh. Not having any laws or policies to deal with the question of genocide or follow-up actions cannot be justified. It was not justified when genocide was perpetrated in Pakistan in 1971; it was not justified during the Khmer Rouge genocide in 1975; it was not justified during the Hutu genocide against the Tutsi in 1994; it was not justified during the Bosnian genocide in 1995; and it was not justified during the genocide in Darfur in 2003, or in many other places. Inaction in the face of genocide cannot be justified.

It is shameful that, approaching the 70th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the UK Government have not done anything to consider such laws or policies but rely on their unjustifiable long-standing policy of leaving a determination to international judicial systems and acting only where they find the political will to do so. We need a change and we need it now, as we have failed too many times over the years, as we are failing the Rohingya Muslims in Burma right now.