Persecution of Christians Overseas

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Boko Haram has been persecuting and killing Christians for more than 10 years. In a decade, thousands have died. I am going to focus on the story of just one woman.

Saratu’s home was one of those targeted. She saved her family as her village burned, making sure they got away. They hid together in the forest, but she knew she would have to go back. They had nothing to eat and she could not let her children die of hunger. She was spotted, chased, captured and beaten. Saratu was taken to a holding camp with hundreds of other women and children; they were held like animals. She feared the worst. She had heard the stories of rape, torture and murder, and of forced conversion, forced marriage and slavery. But her spirit was not broken. She was determined to get back to her children and save the other women with her. Two nights later, she escaped with more than 20 women and children.

Twenty thousand Nigerian Christians have been killed, and many more have endured kidnapping, forced conversion and torture. The kidnappings have not stopped. Christians across the middle belt of Nigeria still live in fear and the violence has spread to neighbouring Niger. Just last month, Boko Haram kidnapped a woman from the city of Diffa, in an area that has provided refuge for the tens of thousands fleeing the attacks in Nigeria. They used that woman to send a message of terror—a letter saying to all in Diffa: “Leave within three days or be killed.” Many Christian families have fled in fear, but others simply cannot afford to leave and remain at risk. It may become yet another story of religious cleansing and murder.

The Diffa region has already seen what Boko Haram will do: 14 people were killed and 37 kidnapped in two separate 2017 attacks. Soon afterwards, the daughter of the region’s Christian pastor was taken as well. The persecution caused by Boko Haram is extreme. Some 8,000 children have been used as soldiers, targeted because of poverty and vulnerability, and exploited, lied to and manipulated. Many are orphans, and some had been abandoned to the streets by parents who could simply no longer look after them. In 2018, according to UNICEF, 48 of those children were used as suicide bombers— 48 children died to murder others. In that year, they were mostly girls. In 2017, the number was 135. The campaign of religious violence has not stopped, and less than a month ago three children were used as a weapon in a communal hall; 30 were murdered and 40 injured. Religious differences have been exploited to create this violence. Christians—the minority in the north of Nigeria—have been made scapegoats. Hatred has been created and fuelled.

President Buhari has made clear commitments to improve security, including for Christian communities in Nigeria, but frankly such promises have been made before. I want to know what the Government are going to do to work proactively with Nigeria, Niger and others to make that basic promise of security a reality.

International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

We rightly acknowledge —especially those of us who are a little older—just how much freer and fairer our society has become for LGBTQI people in a short time. We usually do not stop to think that if equality has come so far and so fast, it could be eroded just as quickly. We cannot stop building solidarity around gender, sexuality, race, religion, disability and class. This is about not just policies, but exchanging stories and coming to understand each other better. Our mission is to resist those who spread lies, fear and division, and to keep on with positive conversations about who we are, how we are different and how we are the same.

I will concentrate on just three issues on which the Government’s response must be stronger. First, I want to know when we are going to get moving on reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. No matter how difficult the debate, we have to find the courage to help some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. Secondly, I want to know why PrEP is not being rolled out to absolutely everyone who needs it without delay, because it raises the genuine hope that we can end HIV transmission entirely. That is incredibly exciting, so why are we not acting faster? Thirdly, I want to know why our Government are not treating President Bolsonaro of Brazil as the active threat to LGBTQI people that he clearly is, and I need to speak strongly on that issue.

Bolsonaro has used homophobic slurs as weapons against his political opponents, straight and LGBTQI alike, over and again. He has repeated the incredibly damaging lie that LGBT parents are child abusers. He has repeated the lie that young people are recruited into being LGBT by activists who are simply in pursuit of sex. Just last month, he presented gay tourists, including British citizens, as a threat to Brazilian families. He has already acted to remove the responsibility to protect the rights of LGBT Brazilians from the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights in a country where more than 100 trans people, and many more queer folk, are murdered every single year.

Most despicably, Bolsonaro is a man who has encouraged parents to beat their children if they do not conform, who has explicitly endorsed violence against gay couples on the streets, and who has said repeatedly that he would prefer his sons to die rather than be gay—he would prefer them to be run over by a truck. This is a man who took a smiling selfie with his neighbour, the police officer charged with murdering the heroic bisexual councillor Marielle Franco last year. She was murdered for her human rights activism, and Bolsonaro alone refused to condemn her murder.

I want to finish by mentioning one specific case among many hundreds. In 2014, after Bolsonaro had made his comments about beating children who are not acting in line with their parents’ gender expectations, an eight-year-old boy was murdered by his father near Rio. He was beaten because he liked having long hair, because he liked to dance, because he tried on his sister’s clothes and because he liked helping to wash the dishes. Because he did not fit, his father beat him until he was dead. I can only conclude that Bolsonaro would have approved. He appears to me to be a vicious misogynist, transphobe and homophobe, and a clear danger to LGBTQI Brazilians and visitors alike. I think him reprehensible.

I want to hear the Government tell the truth about Bolsonaro and tell me what action they are going to take to oppose this evil. That is the very least we can do for that murdered child and so many other LGBTQI people who are living in absolute fear in Brazil today.

Human Rights: Xinjiang

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I will do my best, Mr Wilson. I have filleted my speech as I have been sitting here.

Last October, a senior editor from Foreign Policy, James Palmer, was interviewed about his work and about human rights in Xinjiang. It was a heart-wrenching watch. He said:

“All of my Uyghur sources are gone”,

and then apologised as he broke down in tears. He continued:

“I can’t talk to people because they’re gone. I cannot reach them.”

Even his Han Chinese sources had been arrested for talking about what is happening to the Uyghur people. They are disappearing from the streets and being put into camps. The Government appear to be trying to erase the memory that they even existed. Mr Palmer made it clear that he is no longer trying to contact Uyghur people because his attempts could put them in danger.

In October, in response to a question from me, the Minister stated that according to credible reports an estimated 1 million people—at least—were being held, including Uyghurs and other minority ethnic Chinese. As has been said, Chinese officials describe the camps as,

“vocational education and employment training centres”

for

“criminals involved in minor offenses”,

but Human Rights Watch has gathered evidence that points chillingly to something else.

Basically, there are reports of beatings, solitary confinement, psychological abuse and even inmates being forcibly given psychotic drugs in the camps. We are told that people with serious mental and physical health conditions receive no special treatment; nor do heavily pregnant women. There are reports of deaths inside the camps. Survivors have described to Human Rights Watch how they were chained to a bed or to an iron chair for days, or even hung from the ceiling, as they were interrogated. They eventually confessed to whatever they were charged with, whether that was owning a religious book or having a friend who had been abroad.

Apparently, that is what the Chinese Communist party is calling its “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism”. Under that regime, as we have heard, Turkic Muslims are identified as belonging to one of three categories: trustworthy, average or untrustworthy. Muslim citizens have to not only keep out of trouble, but actively display their loyalty. From a place such as this, it is hard to imagine what it must feel like to live with such suspicion and in constant fear of saying the wrong thing, being with the wrong person or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Chinese artist and defender of human rights, Ai Weiwei, spent 16 years of his childhood in exile in Xinjiang province because his father, a poet, had fallen out of favour with the authorities. His international fame as a dissident artist is evidence that that kind of repression is eventually ineffective as well as cruel. He has said about the current situation that we have to think about human rights and human dignity as one, and that if anyone’s rights are violated—whatever minority, whatever religion they are—we have to think of it as our rights being violated. I could not agree more.

The Government have been asked several times about the steps we can take to improve the human rights situation through our trade with China. Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon said:

“China is an important strategic partner, and it is because of the strength of our partnership that we are consistently able to raise these issues”.

Although I agree that raising issues bilaterally is important, the level of abuse documented calls for something stronger. Given what is going on in the Chamber at the moment, I worry that human rights might be viewed as an inconvenience or a threat to our trading relationship.

I hope that the Minister will commit to concrete steps today. Statements of concern are simply not enough. We need economic sanctions against those responsible and we need to follow Germany and Sweden in offering expedited asylum processes for Turkic minorities from the province.

Rohingya Refugee Crisis

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to take part in this debate, and a real honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), who spoke in this debate with such knowledge and passion. It was a real delight to hear them talk.

Like many other Members present, I took part in the debate last year in which we heard about the appalling violence that was being carried out against the Rohingya people in Myanmar and about the disgraceful failure of the State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, to act. She was a woman in whom I placed real hope and faith; she has now betrayed her nation and the most vulnerable in it.

The most horrific stories are still emerging, but I wish to share just two. Lukia is just 18. She grew up in Rakhine state with three sisters and one brother. Their father was a fisherman who took care of them all. Lukia was married just one week before her village was attacked. Some would say she was fortunate to be out of the house when the Myanmar military fired at it with a rocket launcher. Her family, brothers and husband were all killed instantly. She managed to escape the village and, after weeks of walking with other bereaved people, sleeping in tents with traumatised strangers, starving, she managed to join her sister and nephew in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. There, she at least has some rice and dal to eat, and some soap to get clean. But she cannot work, so she can do nothing except dwell on all that she has lost—the family and home that were so cruelly stolen from her. She still dreams of one day returning.

A man called Abul Basar has a similar story. He was also married at 18, and he sold betel leaves to support his wife. When the military entered his village two years later, he ran to a nearby hill to hide, because he knew that men of military age were often abducted or killed, as the UN reports confirm. From that hill, he saw the military take his wife and subject her to rape and torture. There were so many of them that there was nothing he could do. They put her in a house with 20 other women and burned them all alive. Abul said:

“The world went dark for me at that moment.”

He does not remember the journey afterwards—the trauma was too much for him—but he seems to have been carried by people from his village all the way to Bangladesh.

It is so hard to imagine the suffering that Abul, Lukia and the 900,000 others are going through. The Rohingya have already suffered so much, and the criminals who planned and perpetrated all this are getting what they wanted: ethnic cleansing. For those who do return to Rakhine state, the Government there are developing Rohingya-only settlements. They will not be allowed to return home. Amnesty International has called what is emerging

“a vicious system of state-sponsored, institutionalised discrimination that amounts to apartheid”,

and that is so true. There is no room for doubt about the scale of the persecution of the Rohingya, and there should not be any doubt about the intentions of those responsible.

In 2012, the Rakhine Nationalities Development party, the most powerful elected party in Rakhine at the time, was already preparing for genocidal violence. It spread an insidious message of hate, representing the Rohingya as terrorists and a threat to the Buddhist majority. In an official publication, the party used the example of Adolf Hitler to spread its message. The report explicitly said that “inhuman acts” are sometimes

“necessary to maintain a race”,

and called for a “final solution”. What an utterly terrifying thing for any Rohingya person to hear. The report went on:

“Although Hitler and Eichmann were the greatest enemies of the Jews, they were probably heroes to the Germans.”

Just this year, the Myanmar army published a pamphlet to justify the violence that said:

“Despite living among peacocks, crows cannot become peacocks.”

Dehumanising language, presenting an entire people as a threat, and praise for Hitler and the holocaust. I know the Minister will agree that there are clear grounds for an investigation under article 3 of the genocide convention—the crime of:

“Direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.

I really hope he will address that later.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow said, social media platforms played a huge role in the incitement. As the UN report says, for so many in Myanmar, Facebook is almost synonymous with the internet, and Facebook has proved to be a useful tool for spreading hatred in the build-up to each outbreak of violence. The site was used by individuals to post messages urging their friends to fight the Rohingya the way that Hitler fought the Jews, or advocating burning Muslim refugees

“so that they can meet Allah faster.”

The UN report describes this as a “carefully crafted hate campaign” conducted by

“nationalistic political parties and politicians,”—

and, heaven help us—

“leading monks, academics, prominent individuals and members of the Government.”

It was a campaign of hatred across all levels of society.

Facebook continues to host the page of the so-called Information Committee, apparently run from the office of Aung San Suu Kyi herself. The page shares propaganda posts denying the persecution of the Rohingya people. One particularly awful post smeared a woman who had dared to speak publicly about being raped. The words “FAKE RAPE” appear twice, in big font, at the top of the post. Facebook officials have conceded that they bear some responsibility, and they have now trained dozens of content moderators who speak the Burmese language and banned various military figures from the site. It is a start, but we need social media platforms such as Facebook to take responsibility for their complicity in horrors such as this much earlier, ensuring that such content cannot be shared on their platforms. Facebook does need to take responsibility, but it is the Government and the military of Myanmar who are ultimately responsible for the evils that have taken place. Thankfully, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has launched an initial inquiry into the violence against the Rohingya—I was not alone in asking for that last year. This is genuinely good progress, but we need to do far more.

In the debate last year, the Minister said that the responsibility lies with the Government of Myanmar and the security forces. He said that we should support the Government in following through on the promises made by Aung San Suu Kyi. But look at what is still happening. Look at the things that the security services are still saying and doing. Working with the security services of Myanmar would be a betrayal of Abul, Lukia and the hundreds of thousands of others who have suffered. It would not help end this horrific persecution, remove the people responsible from positions of power in Myanmar or secure justice for the Rohingya. So I would like the Minister to categorically rule out any military transfers and commit to a broad review of UK trade with Myanmar. We need to know that no aid money provided by this Government, and not one penny of profit from trade or investments involving UK companies, will reach the hands of those responsible for this genocide.

Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. Monday 14 May will go down as a dark day in history. In Jerusalem, crowds listened to Baptist minister Robert Jeffress reading a prayer to mark the opening of the American embassy—a man who has previously made deeply offensive comments about Jews, Muslims, Mormons and gay people. In Tel Aviv, people danced the night away to the music of their new Eurovision winner, Netta. And in Gaza, an hour or so down the coast, 60 people, including children, were killed under live fire.

This is, of course, an emotional debate. It has touched us here, and it has touched my constituents. At times last week, I was receiving emails at a rate of more than one a minute. My constituents are angry and upset about what happened, and so am I. As Members of Parliament, we have a duty to represent that anger, but we also need to think seriously about what happened and what a meaningful response might look like, so I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) for securing the debate. As we heard again this afternoon, she is a powerful, articulate and passionate advocate for the causes she takes up.

Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I do not defend or dispute the disgraceful conduct of Hamas. They waved swastikas in the protests, which was a simply awful thing to do. They supplied maps to protesters, with directions to homes in the nearest Jewish communities. They spread downright lies about breaches in the fence, manipulating protesters and encouraging them to run towards the heavily armed and fortified fence. They have also claimed that 50 of the 60 people who died on 14 May were part of their organisation. I understand this, and I do not condone it—in fact, I utterly and totally condemn it.

However, I think that most of us can agree that the response of the Israeli Government was massively disproportionate. I think it came from a legacy of seeing the people of Gaza as nothing more than a security threat and shamefully denying their humanity, their rights and the conditions in which they have been living. In every so-called “Gaza war”, we have seen civilians being treated like enemy soldiers. It is a systemic problem.

The testimony of one Israeli defence force officer, given to the Israeli organisation Breaking the Silence in 2014, is a stark example of that. He said:

“The rules of engagement are anything inside”—

that is, inside the Gaza strip—

“is a threat, the area has to be ‘sterilized’, empty of people—and if we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming, ‘I give up’…then he’s a threat and there’s authorization to open fire”.

The interviewer asked the officer:

“When you say open fire, what does that mean?”

The officer replied:

“Shooting to kill. This is combat in an urban area, we’re in a war zone. The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley said earlier, Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Defence Minister, echoed that officer’s sentiments just last month, when he said:

“There are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip…Everyone’s connected to Hamas.”

There is plenty more like that. There are similar testimonies describing Operation Cast Lead in 2009, Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014—the repeated bloody episodes that have marked the blockade of the Gaza strip, which has now been going on for more than 10 years.

Again and again, we hear reports of the devastation of life in Gaza, which, in my view, often amounts to war crimes. We are told that such action is legitimate self-defence, but we need to say loudly and clearly that self-defence does not allow free rein to kill, to destroy property and infrastructure, and to effectively enact collective punishment of a people. Avi Dichter, chair of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committee, said that Israel’s security forces

“won’t let anyone put soldiers, and certainly not civilians, in danger”.

Then he said:

“The IDF has enough bullets for everyone.”

He said that last Monday, while the death count was still rising.

Again and again, security is linked with deadly, disproportionate attacks on civilians. I want to add my voice to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) when he called for a suspension of the export of arms to Israel. I cannot see that there is any justification for us to continue those exports.

Security was the excuse for Myanmar’s attacks on the Rohingya people. Security is also the excuse for the attacks on the Kurds, who are our allies in the fight against Daesh, and who I feel this Government have abandoned. And, for many years now, security has been used as an excuse for what can only be described as collective punishment in Gaza.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) has already said, when the blockade began, Israeli defence officials calculated the bare minimum of food needed to avoid malnutrition in Gaza. Surely that was not necessary for security. As my right hon. Friend also said, 54 Palestinians died last year waiting for travel permits, which they needed to receive life-saving medical care outside the Gaza strip. Surely that was not necessary for security. Now in Gaza, as we have heard, there are about four hours of electricity each day; between 90% and 97% of the water is contaminated, mainly by sewage; food is scarce; 80% of people are dependent on foreign aid; and, for some children, breakfast is a cup of hot water with a sprinkle of salt. Is that what security has to look like?

The people of Gaza have nothing, so they have absolutely nothing to lose. Omar Ghraieb, a journalist and blogger in the Gaza strip, said in January:

“Despair isn’t even the right word to describe what’s going on here because things are getting worse and worse”.

Many of the protesters knew that they risked their lives by going to the demonstration last Monday, because the IDF had considerately dropped leaflets to tell them so, but many thousands of people protested peacefully anyway. I think that the protesters’ decision to attend a demonstration when they had been told that doing so would put their lives at risk speaks volumes. They had faith in their future as a nation, but they no longer had hope for themselves individually.

I have to tell the Minister, who knows—I hope—that I hold him in really high regard, that we have reached an absurd situation. We have always said that a decision on the status of Jerusalem would be postponed until it could be part of a negotiated peace. Now the city has effectively been recognised as the Israeli capital by the United States, which is arguably the most powerful country in the world. The United States has seemingly made a unilateral decision on behalf of us all.

I do not think that we can allow this reckless US diplomacy, for want of a better word, to represent the international community, because it clearly does not. In the other place, the International Relations Committee has recommended “serious consideration” of the recognition of the state of Palestine, so I have considered it, and it seems to me that this is the kind of important, pivotal moment when recognising a Palestinian state would do meaningful good.

I do not believe that there has ever been a more urgent need to recognise Palestine. Is there a more opportune moment waiting for us just round the corner? I have been observing and speaking about this situation for years, and a realistic peace process seems to be getting more remote. I honestly think that we need to recognise Palestine now, so that these two historic nations can work towards a shared future together, and so that the people of Gaza can imagine a better future for themselves and their children. I do not believe that prevaricating about when we should do this remains a viable option. The status quo in Gaza is no longer an option. The time is now.

Gaza: UN Human Rights Council Vote

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

That is correct, and I am sure that no one in this House actually does that, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making it clear.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

The other place recommended last year that the Government stop treating Israel with kid gloves and display some political robustness. This Government’s abstention is worse than weak; it is deplorable. How can the people of Palestine trust our Government when we refuse even to look seriously at these issues, let alone challenge them?

[Alistair Burt]

I understand the force of the hon. Lady’s response; she is always honest about all these things. I would point to what we said in the explanation of the vote, which clearly raises questions about Israel’s conduct. We seem to be one of the few Governments prepared to consider both sides of these dreadful incidents, and that is why we want to find the truth about what happened.

Enslavement of Black Africans (Libya)

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. As we heard in the extremely powerful opening remarks from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), there is incontrovertible evidence that slavery—that brutal and dehumanising exploitation—is taking place in Libya today.

As we know, modern slavery is shamefully common in our world and exists in our country. However, the images and words that have come out of Libya in recent weeks are shocking and have historical resonance: the victims are black Africans and the people who have enslaved them are not. The people who have been bought and sold in Libya have been violated in so many ways; they have experienced much violence and they have been betrayed and cheated at every step of their journey.

The personal stories make clear that the victims have paid, borrowing and scraping together money to start a journey to Europe because they believed an evil deception—but that was only the start of their exploitation. They are left utterly alone, terrified and without support in an unstable foreign country and under the control of people who care only about extracting every penny that they can from their “merchandise”. Foka, a Cameroonian, described the beatings he witnessed and endured at the hands of the traffickers, as he and others were cowed and forced to submit:

“There was torture like I’ve never seen. They hit you with wooden bats, with iron bars…They hang you from the ceiling by (your) arms and legs and then throw you down to the floor. They swing you and throw you against the wall, over and over again”.

Foka’s injuries were still visible when he made that statement.

The traffickers are not only exploiting young migrants through slave labour but making money from ransoms, as we have heard. Sometimes, to coerce a ransom payment, a migrant is forced to call a parent or relative and then beaten while the relative listens. The story of Victory, a young Nigerian man, is illustrative. First, he paid people smugglers, who lied and said they would get him to Europe. He then endured weeks of slave labour in Libya once he could no longer pay them, and he was then forced to find a ransom payment to set him free. His mother had to beg and borrow the money to save his life. Victory’s ransom was more than 1 million Nigerian naira, which would take 56 years to earn on the local minimum wage. Victory had already spent his life savings to pay the people who exploited him, and now his family may literally face a lifetime of debt while his exploiters continue to escape justice. 

As we have heard, Mohammed Abdiker, of the United Nations migration agency, said that migrants who fall into the hands of smugglers face

“systematic malnutrition, sexual abuse and even murder…14 migrants died in a single month in one of those locations, just from disease and malnutrition. We are hearing about mass graves in the desert.”

The UN estimates that there are anything from 700,000 to 1 million migrants currently in Libya, with 70% from sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence shows that 30% of adults and 40% of children have been forced to work against their will. That is a massive number. So many people enslaved—so many children.

I would like the Government to outline what we are doing to stop the enslavement and sale of human beings in Libya and the trafficking of people towards the Mediterranean. I understand that France is to work with the UN’s sanctions committee for Libya to identify individuals or organisations involved in trading human beings. That committee can require UN member states to freeze assets owned or controlled by individuals on its list and can impose a travel ban. Does the Minister support that proposal, and will he work to ensure that that committee has all the information it needs?

Action against slave traders must be the priority; they have to be shut down. However, there is obviously a broader context. Large numbers of desperate people from sub-Saharan Africa are stuck in Libya. That was not their intended destination, and it is getting harder and harder for them to move on, partly because of the actions taken by our Government, in concert with many other European Governments, to make it harder for migrants to cross the Mediterranean.

Those actions have generally been taken with good intentions, motivated by a desire to shut down trafficking routes. However, shutting down the traffickers who run routes up and down the Mediterranean is clearly only half done at best; the terrible re-emergence of slavery in Libya is testament to and a consequence of that. If we want to reduce harm by closing those routes, that strategy cannot stop at the shores of north Africa—action needs to be taken in Libya and, equally, in countries to its south.

Social media is a critical tool for the perpetrators of modern slavery. It is how traffickers advertise, spread lies and recruit victims, and it enables them to run their amoral trade. Social media companies, whether they like it or not, have a role to play in disrupting this trade, and I hope the Minister will comment on any conversations he has had with those companies in his remarks.

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Lady rightly raises social media. However, does she agree that social media has also played a positive role in getting this petition out and this issue raised? The one caution I urge is that some of the photos doing the rounds to raise awareness of the slave trade are actually not related to the slave trade. It is important that, when we share photos, we share accurate photos, which is not always easy to do.

[Lyn Brown]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: social media can play a very useful role in our society. However, we need to understand that it can be used by completely unscrupulous people to lure others into slavery and ultimately, possibly, to their deaths. Social media companies have to accept responsibility for what they do and find ways to help us to close down those traffickers.

The UN has understandably requested urgent funding—I presume the Government are considering that request—and 1,300 new resettlement places across the world for the most vulnerable African migrants in Libya. Niger has offered to take that number temporarily before the end of January, but a more permanent solution has to be found. The current situation is simply dire—so many people are vulnerable to slavery and all the abuses that go with it. Those people matter. African lives matter, and they need us to be their allies by taking action to end this today. This is not a situation that we can simply take note of and move on from.

Who these hope-filled, naïve, ambitious, desperate migrants were before they fell prey to the traffickers is no longer important. All are refugees now, needing help and a route out. We could and should do more to help them. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on how we plan to do just that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

During the conflict, nobody quite knew how it would end, because the circumstances were happening on the ground, militias were forming and so on. NATO played a part after the Arab League made a presentation to the UN demanding intervention because Benghazi was going to be attacked and people were going to be slaughtered. Let us not forget the reasons why the intervention happened in the first place: the determination to save civilian lives in Benghazi, prompted by the Arab League and the UN, was highly significant.

All the way through the conflict, the sense was “What happens next?” That is why people went in afterwards to seek to build a civil administration and prepare the ground for elections. Those took place, and a Government were established, but the fallout since then has been a combination of pressure from Islamist forces that came into the process afterwards and the inability of those who formed the militias to agree among themselves about how to support the politicians in civil Government. It was thought through, but it could not be imposed.

People themselves must create their own institutions. I remember people at the time praising the fact that there were not boots on the ground determined to do it for the Libyan people—they were doing it for themselves. It was thought through, but for every particular conflict and difficulty, it seems that a new adverse reaction is created, and that is what we are living through now. I will come to that and what we are trying to do, because it is most important.

Anyone who has seen the horrific footage of slave markets in Libya cannot possibly have been unaffected by it; it is appalling. I also put on the record our admiration for the journalists who got the footage. When I saw the pictures of them going into that place, my first thought was, “They’re going to be killed.” How could anyone go into those circumstances unarmed, knowing that the people conducting the auction were who they were and what the outcome was likely to be. If they treated the lives of those whom they were buying and selling with such disdain, what would they think of reporters who were there to expose them? We thank the CNN crew who did such a remarkable job.

We will always remember some of the things that came out of the footage, such as the talk of merchandise, as the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) mentioned. The hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) spoke of wickedness, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam. We discussed the fact that once someone has a mindset of treating someone else as not human, there is virtually nothing that they will feel unable to do. That has been the scourge of the region and other parts of the world for too long.

The Government share the deep concern and alarm expressed about modern slavery, the formation of the conditions that have produced the migration, and what migrants face in Libya today. As the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) reminded us, we must not forget that the men, women and children enslaved in Libya typically began their journeys hundreds or even thousands of miles away. They are likely to have fallen foul of traffickers and organised criminal gangs that pay no heed either to the desperate human suffering caused by their despicable trade or to international borders. That is why our work to help the victims of traffickers, prevent others from falling victim to them and shut down the trafficking networks that exploit migrants must be carried out on an international scale, as all hon. Members have said.

Let me first brief hon. Members on the UK Government’s work to tackle modern slavery globally and then focus on the situation in Libya. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has identified modern slavery as

“the great human rights issue of our time”.

She sponsored the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which more than one hon. Member has referred to this afternoon. Eradicating modern slavery is one of our top foreign policy priorities. As we know, modern slavery exists here, too, although not to the degree that we saw on those awful videos. It is everywhere, and tackling it is a cause that unites decent people everywhere.

It is not acceptable that slavery still exists in the 21st century. We reckon that this vile trade generates around £150 billion a year for traffickers and organised criminal groups. As a criminal enterprise, it is second only to the drugs trade. Trafficking of people is horrific and criminal, but it generates huge amounts of money and that is why it goes on.

We are pressing for concerted and co-ordinated global action. We are strengthening the international consensus to support migrants, tackle modern slavery and take a comprehensive approach to migration. The hon. Member for Dundee West asked what we were doing internationally. At the UN General Assembly in September, the Prime Minister convened world leaders to launch a call to action to end modern slavery. She also committed to using UN sanctions to target people traffickers and strengthening the ability of Libyan law enforcement agents to tackle these criminals. The hon. Member for West Ham is absolutely correct that if the people responsible can be identified individually, there are sanctions that can be applied. Most of us would like very serious sanctions to be used against them.

We are also doubling our aid spending on modern slavery to £150 million. That money will be used to address the root causes of slavery, strengthen law enforcement capacity in transit countries and provide support for the victims of these horrific crimes. Their ordeal does not end when they are released; it goes on in their memory.

The UK is committed to addressing illegal migration across the Mediterranean, including through work in Libya and further upstream. Hon. Members mentioned the need to bring different elements together; the UK supports a comprehensive approach that addresses the drivers of illegal migration and reduces the need for dangerous onward movements. That includes not only breaking the business model of smugglers and the trafficking rings that prey on the desperation of migrants, but providing vital protection to victims. The UK’s National Crime Agency is working with Libyan law enforcement, enhancing its capability to tackle the people-smuggling and trafficking networks.

Our new £75 million migration programme will specifically target migrants travelling from west Africa to Libya via the Sahel. It will provide critical humanitarian assistance and protection; assist those along the way who may wish to return home; give information about the dangers ahead; and offer vulnerable people meaningful alternatives to treacherous journeys through Libya and Europe. It will also include a scale-up of reintegration support in countries of origin, particularly for those returning from Libya.

The UK is conscious of the links between migration, people-smuggling and modern slavery. We are increasingly building modern slavery programming into our migration work. We have also assisted vulnerable migrants with voluntary returns. UK bilateral funding has helped more than 1,400 individuals to escape the challenging circumstances in Libya and return home. The hon. Member for Leeds North East spoke about the voices of those involved; as the recent programme demonstrated, it is those voices that are most powerful in dissuading others from leaving.

If I may make a wider point, a significant amount of our international development contribution of 0.7% of gross national income is designed to be used in countries where we want to support the provision of alternatives for people who feel that their smartphone shows them a different life. We must not neglect how easy it now is for people to find out what is happening elsewhere. There are safer alternatives to leaving, but that can happen only when international development work of the kind that we are engaged in bears fruit.

[Lyn Brown]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister’s flow, because what he is saying is really helpful, but two questions emerge from it. First, the UN has asked for additional funding; does he know of any additional money that we are contributing to deal with the slave trade? Secondly, advertisements are encouraging young people in sub-Saharan Africa to leave their homes in search of a better life via traffickers. Has any contact been made with social media companies to get hold of the people advertising those routes and deal with them?

[Alistair Burt]

The answer to the hon. Lady’s second question is that I do not know. I pick up on what she says as something new, and I am not aware of any specific action we have taken on it; I am confirmed in that view by a brief glance at my officials. However, it is a really interesting point. I am also not aware of what is being done internationally. As we have all discussed, this is not a problem that the UK can deal with on its own, and no one is asking us to. The point about the process of persuading people and contacting social media is very interesting; social media are capable of so much good, but can cause so much ill when used carelessly. I will look into that matter specifically and ensure that the hon. Lady and other hon. Members are aware of what action we might take.

As the Prime Minister made clear last year, we stand ready to support the UN further. I have no new figures, but a £150 million programme was recently announced and additional money is going through. Part of that goes to UN agencies that we work with on enforcement issues and humanitarian support.

Hon. Members also mentioned Libya’s stability. Ensuring Libya’s stability and helping the Libyan Government of national accord to restore unity, take control of their southern and coastal borders, and rebuild the economy is the best way to tackle the organised criminal groups that are making Libya a transit route for illegal migration. Let me update the House on the present state of affairs in Libya with respect to the Government and reconstruction.

I was pleased that the hon. Member for Leeds North East referred to Peter Millett, who will indeed retire quite soon and who has had the most difficult time in recent years, having been unable to work in Libya. Like the hon. Gentleman, I have visited him, both in the compound in Libya and in Tunisia.

The Government of national accord are supported by a UN resolution. We are working with them and with UN Special Representative Ghassan Salamé on the negotiations to move the governmental process forward, which have reached a critical stage. The Libyan political agreement is being adapted and extended. Ghassan Salamé is spending his time trying to bring the various parties together to put the right names into the presidential council and work through a political process that is exceptionally difficult because of huge vested interests and a degree of distrust between the parties. The UN special representative and our own ambassador have worked so hard to address those difficulties. The ambassador was recently in Benghazi; he was able to get into eastern Libya for the first time in some years and talk to people there.

Libya is still a divided country in many ways, and the political process is absorbing a huge amount of time. Of course, that means that law enforcement agencies on a national scale are very difficult to drive and control, because on the ground both money and guns talk louder than a national Government. We would be foolish to think anything else. We therefore have to continue to strengthen that national Government, so that they have both the authority and the physical ability to enforce what needs to be done about these gangs.

The Libyan Government have indeed been strengthened. I saw Libya’s Deputy Prime Minister recently to express our concern about what the television coverage has shown of the auctions. The Libyan Government had committed to establishing a commission to look further into the issue and see what they could do, and the United Kingdom and other countries need to be clear that we will support the enforcement efforts they need to take. Commissions are one thing, but everybody in this Chamber wants to see some action, which can only be carried out with international support for those who are driving it forward.

To achieve further and long-term sustainable progress, we also need to invest upstream in countries of origin and transit. Africa continues to account for the largest percentage share of UK bilateral official development assistance expenditure allocated to a specific country or region. It received approximately £2.9 billion in 2016, or 51% of our bilateral ODA spend, and much of that money is designed to take away the root drivers of migration. I have no doubt that the determination to do that is strongly shared by every Member of the House, including all those who are here today.

The African Union can indeed play its part. The recent summit agreed to establish a joint European Union-African Union-United Nations migration taskforce aiming to accelerate assisted voluntary returns, to bring sub-Saharan nationals back to their own countries from Libya and to provide resettlement for the most vulnerable, including those we saw in the cages and at the auctions. Again, that can be done only by combined work, and we are engaged in that work. The first meeting of the taskforce took place in Brussels just at the end of last week, and the UK strongly endorses ongoing efforts by the EU, the AU and the UN to address the trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable people upstream in Africa, including the declaration on assisted voluntary returns at the recent EU-Africa summit. We also look forward to receiving further information on the new joint migration taskforce, following the agreement reached at that summit.

Colleagues have mentioned support for Nigeria. So far, the UK has committed £2 million to establish a joint border taskforce in Lagos by partnering with the Nigerian Government. That taskforce is designed to identify and protect potential victims of trafficking, and to arrest and prosecute traffickers in line with international compliance standards. The taskforce’s centre will support and expand on the 335 prosecutions that have already been made by Nigeria’s national agency for the prohibition of trafficking in people, and it is linked to efforts to combat illicit financial crime, including through asset seizures.

We have also announced a further £12 million to tackle modern slavery in Nigeria. That funding will help to support victims, build criminal justice capacity and promote alternative livelihoods. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) was right to say that commercial practices can play a part. Just as companies have been concerned in the past to make sure that fair trade was part of their ethos as they worked to provide commodities, so they must be absolutely and completely vigilant about slavery and illegal trafficking, and there must be the harshest sanctions against those that breach those rules; there is no doubt about that.

I will just deal with a couple of further issues. First, I will make clear it again that we do engage the Government of Libya and the Libyan authorities on the issue of migration and modern slavery. In August, the Foreign Secretary urged Prime Minister Sarraj to respect the human rights of migrants, and as I have said, I raised the human rights situation with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq just a few days ago. Again, however, we do not underestimate the difficulties that the Libyan authorities face, which can be resolved only when the political situation in Libya is itself resolved.

Humanitarian support is also vital, because we must also deal with that strand of the issue. Since October 2015, we have allocated more than £175 million in response to the Mediterranean migration crisis, including substantial support for Libya. I mentioned earlier that migrants who find themselves in slavery in Libya come from many hundreds of miles away. That is why we have to take a comprehensive approach to migration, addressing the root causes as well as working to alleviate the conditions that migrants face.

We have a flagship programme to address some of the drivers of modern slavery in Nigeria’s Edo state, which is the country’s trafficking hub. As I said earlier, our work with the joint border force in Lagos and the work that I announced earlier also make a difference. We have a new £75 million programme, as I mentioned earlier, focusing on the route from west Africa through the Sahel to Libya. That includes a new £5 million allocation of support in Libya, which was announced today by the Secretary of State for International Development. That is designed to provide humanitarian aid and protection to migrants and refugees, some of whom are in detention, as part of the work we announced at the June European Council.

Also this year, our aid and development programmes have supported more than 20,000 emergency interventions for migrants and refugees in Libya, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam mentioned in his opening remarks, providing everything from food to healthcare, from hygiene kits to emotional support and safe shelter. We have also provided tailored services for women and girls, to protect them from the heightened risks that they face of trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence.

At the December European Council, the Prime Minister also announced a further €3 million for the EU trust fund for the north of Africa window, which includes countries such as Libya. The funding will be used to protect vulnerable migrants in north Africa, to tackle the root causes of irregular migration and to create opportunities for people to find jobs.

We are committed to ending modern slavery wherever we find it, in this country or abroad. In Libya, that is a complex task. It requires us to convince migrants to build a bright future for themselves at home, which we will do only by helping to strengthen economies right across the continent of Africa. It also requires a Libyan Government to emerge who control all of Libya in the interests of all Libyans, as well as a concerted international effort to put the traffickers behind bars. We are working to accomplish those goals, so that these shocking slave markets can finally be consigned to the past. It also requires the human heart to be changed, so that people are no longer treated as “the other” and no longer can the wickedness of slavery live.

I remember speaking just a few years ago in the Wilberforce debates, as we discussed the passage of our anti-slavery legislation, and I realised even then, as we spoke to different audiences, that slavery was still going on. Indeed, it was reckoned at the time that there were more slaves in the world then than there had been in Wilberforce’s time. To be dealing with this issue today is especially distressing. African lives matter; all lives matter; and this House says so.

The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

As we have heard today, the evidence about what has been happening in Myanmar is clear: there is a concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. The military have used every kind of evil to create fear and trauma—men, women, and children tortured and killed; their families and neighbours forced to watch; children and elderly people burnt alive in their homes; gang rapes by soldiers, including of girls as young as five. All of these horrors are used as weapons to threaten and intimidate more than half a million innocent people into fleeing their homes, far too terrified to return. And who can blame them?

Hasina Begum lived in the Rakhine province, where the violence has been most intense, and her testimony is harrowing. She described how, first, the soldiers killed the men they found, cutting their bodies into four parts to make future identification difficult. Then they rounded up women and girls of the village, and forced them to watch as two teenage girls were raped by 14 of the soldiers. Hasina was forced to watch; she relives this horror in her nightmares.

These obscenities have clearly impacted on my community in West Ham. Last week I was given a petition signed by more than 750 constituents, and I have had many emails about this debate. They want the Government to get to the root of this crisis, not just condemn the most obvious abuses. I was deeply moved by their compassion, and I share their anger. Enough has not been done.

Aung San Suu Kyi has failed to live up to her responsibility as the head of Myanmar’s Government. I thought she was a great woman, but great women do not allow ethnic cleansing to take place in a country in which they have power, great women do not seek to deny facts when innocents are being slaughtered, and great women do not remain silent. The actions of the military, and her own inactions, have trampled the reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi. The generals must be loving it.

But let us be clear: the greatest responsibility for what has happened belongs to the military, and especially the head of the army, Min Aung Hlaing. I want every one of those responsible for these crimes against humanity to face justice, and I want to see Min Aung Hlaing and the other senior commanders on trial for their crimes. The only way for this to happen is if our Government are resolute in calling out these crimes, supporting strong and co-ordinated sanctions. I want to see a visa ban on military figures, a complete ban on all equipment sales to the military and a ban on investment in and business with military-controlled companies. These actions need to be taken at the widest possible level across the EU and across the wider world through diplomacy at the UN.

The immediate humanitarian crisis remains appalling, and I am not convinced that the funding that the Department for International Development has committed is adequate, given the enormous scale of the crisis. We are currently providing emergency funding for shelter for approximately 26,000 people, but that covers less than 5% of the refugees who have fled since August. I understand that we have been the largest single donor in this crisis, and I certainly welcome that, but given the enormity of the circumstances it is simply unacceptable that many people are still not secure and that their basic needs are not being met. There can be little doubt that more can be done, and I want the Government to commit to doing it today.

British Prisoners in Iran

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq]

That is something the families have raised with me over and over again. Why will the Foreign Secretary not meet with the families? Let me be clear: we do not doubt the sincerity of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff, but the fact is that this is not working. The Foreign Secretary needs to meet the families.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. She is being very generous with her time.

It seems to me that the Foreign Office has behaved somewhat defensively in relation to this case and others. Given that there are 600,000 dual nationals in Britain, this is not going to be a single issue. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need urgently to develop a policy on diplomatic support for dual nationals? Currently, we seem to be responding to the Iranian Government’s appalling policies and behaviour with poor treatment.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I am highlighting just one case, but there are many more involving people with dual nationalities. At the end of the day, they are still British citizens, and we have to give them the respect and time they deserve.