Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

We are very concerned about reports of violence and of people being displaced in Kessab. It is difficult to establish accurate numbers, but we are working closely with the Turkish Government to restrict the ability of foreign fighters to cross into Syria. I have discussed that recently with the Foreign Minister of Turkey.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

It has been promised many times, but what progress has been made on gaining unimpeded humanitarian access in Syria?

[Mr Hague]

Very little progress has been made, despite the successful passing of UN Security Council resolution 2139, which included the authorisation of cross-border access. The Security Council is due to review the position every 30 days, and at the coming review we will press strongly for full use to be made of what is authorised in that resolution.

Human Rights

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) on his speech and on his work as Chair of our Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. I agree with him on some things and, as he will not be surprised to hear, disagree on others.

I chair the all-party parliamentary human rights group, which closely monitors and works with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on a number of related issues. I welcome the many programmes and policies that the FCO continues to undertake around the world to protect and promote human rights, including fundamental political and civil rights, good governance, the rule of law and accountability for violations, as well as the protection of women’s rights, which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, and minority rights.

The first thing I would like to say is that despite the FCO’s having previously agreed with the Foreign Affairs Committee that evaluation is important, the 2012 FCO human rights report does not appear to reflect a more analytical approach. Overall, I feel that human rights reports are too focused on detailing activities being undertaken or funded by the FCO in the field of human rights and reciting current priorities, without going that step further. I would particularly like to see more evaluation of what has worked in terms of policies and programmes, and of how and why they have worked.

For instance, the FCO details its capacity-building programme in countries and with Government institutions whose human rights records are wanting—for example, in relation to police training in Afghanistan; police training in Baghdad to develop a more effective police response to incidents involving violence against women; the multi-year UK-led programme to strengthen capacity to tackle terrorism through the criminal justice system in Pakistan; and the police and prison reform project in Uzbekistan. It would be useful to know what precise impact those projects have had in those countries.

I would also like the FCO to do more to explain what policies and measures it is adopting to prevent potential future crises, particularly in countries where there are long-standing human rights violations that are not being addressed. Many are particularly concerned about the situation in Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, central Asia and Eritrea becoming much worse. I think the FCO should, in the first instance, look at whether lessons can be learned from the fall-out from the Arab spring and explore whether transition and consolidation activities and strategies are sufficiently incorporated in country business plans. Are there any lessons to be learned from the Arab spring about how the UK deals with authoritarian regimes more generally?

I would also like there to be further analysis of how competing foreign policy interests are prioritised and when they can and cannot be reconciled. The FCO seems to believe that human rights, geopolitical and strategic considerations, energy security and trade promotion can all be pursued simultaneously, maintaining that

“We cannot achieve long-term security and prosperity unless we uphold our values”,

when that quite clearly is not always the case.

That is even reflected in the FCO human rights report. Although the chapter on Saudi Arabia was beefed up in comparison with the previous year’s report, it still contains numerous qualifications to tone criticism down, such as references to “cultural sensitivities”, which are mentioned nowhere else in the report. It is also incomprehensible to me why no mention is made of the complete lack of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in Saudi; such a lack is mentioned in the chapter on Iran. If the FCO wants to take a more conciliatory approach in the report in relation to some countries, it should explain why.

[Rory Stewart]

I am interested in the observation that it is very difficult to square the circle and simultaneously do security, human rights and economic development. Nevertheless, there is clearly an issue there. Does the right hon. Lady have her own way of expressing that? Perhaps she has a better formulation that she would prefer the Foreign Office to have to square that circle. Is there some other way of describing foreign policy, other than in those terms?

[Ann Clwyd]

Mr Chope, will you explain whether, when somebody makes an intervention, that is taken off the speaking time? I see that the clock kept running.

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

There is no time limit, other than the self-restraint that I know hon. Members will exercise, recognising that a lot of people want to participate in the debate. Although there is no requirement that the debate must finish after one and a half hours, I hope that it will, so that we have an equal amount of time for the second debate. I hope that that helps the right hon. Lady.

[Ann Clwyd]

Thank you, Mr Chope.

I turn to the criteria for designating countries of concern, which perhaps in part will answer the question asked by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). I am pleased that the FCO has provided the criteria it uses to make its designations in the 2012 human rights report. I remain baffled, however, that Bahrain, given the continuing serious violations that were committed during the period that the report covers, was not added as a country of concern. I reiterate the recommendation of the Foreign Affairs Committee:

“If there is no significant progress by the start of 2014, the Government should designate Bahrain as a ‘country of concern’”.

Let us hope that the meeting held last week between Bahrain’s Crown Prince and the main opposition leaders signals the willingness of the Bahraini Government and the opposition to engage in meaningful negotiations, leading to meaningful political reform, greater political openness, fairer representation and the end of discrimination. If it does not, I suggest that it is time to get much tougher with Bahrain.

The Foreign Affairs Committee Chair mentioned deportation with assurances, which is a very important point, because the FCO seems satisfied with existing arrangements and has rejected suggestions made by our Committee to strengthen the monitoring process for people returned under those arrangements, including to Ethiopia and Algeria. I urge the FCO to look at the matter again, and remind it that a DWA agreement was also concluded with Libya during the time of Colonel Gaddafi and was seen at the time as perfectly fine. I doubt, for instance, that, as the Chair said, a domestic human rights institution in Ethiopia that is widely known to be ineffective can be trusted to monitor the well-being of those returned to Ethiopia under the agreement.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should be much more careful about deporting people to countries that are not signatories to the convention on torture, as a way of protecting them against that and protecting our own legal position?

[Ann Clwyd]

Yes, I absolutely agree with that observation. Indeed, I think that these arrangements are of political significance and warrant some form of parliamentary control. The non-statutory nature of the memorandums of understanding involved does not prevent parliamentary scrutiny. I would also welcome the FCO’s reporting back to Parliament annually on how effective the monitoring arrangements have been and whether any allegations of abuse have been reported to it.

Like many of my colleagues, I look forward to receiving the findings of the independent investigation being undertaken by David Anderson QC into this policy, although I wonder why it has taken so long to get that investigation off the ground.

The Foreign Affairs Committee Chair also mentioned women’s rights. I join him in commending the Foreign Secretary for taking a lead with the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, but I would like to know whether and how the FCO will involve more UK parliamentarians, particularly in the light of the conference to be held in London in June this year. Women’s organisations are also questioning how the preventing sexual violence initiative and the conference can galvanise support for grass-roots women’s organisations in countries of concern.

Further to the women’s rights agenda, I think that we all need to focus on how to help to support women, including women MPs and civil society more generally, in Afghanistan during and after the NATO withdrawal. Sadly, I do not believe that it is “mission accomplished”. The real gains made for women in the past decade are fragile, and women are likely to become increasingly exposed in coming years. I have seen what has happened in Iraq. I criticise the lack of ongoing support for women in Iraq who are exercising their mandates as Members of Parliament with considerable difficulties. I would like to know what precisely we are continuing to do in Iraq before we start making promises about what we will continue to do in Afghanistan.

I would like to conclude with two points. The first is my concern about growing restrictions in many countries around the world on non-violent civil society activity, including, as Amnesty highlighted recently, the proliferation of “national security” and “public order” legislation aimed at restricting the space in which civil society operates. I would like to know whether the FCO has or is planning to put in place a strategy to counter those negative developments and to provide even more support to beleaguered civil societies in a number of countries. Without a thriving and diverse civil society, democracy is very unlikely to take root.

Similarly, I would like to reiterate concerns expressed by Human Rights Watch about Governments who adopt a feigned democracy, championing elections but rejecting basic principles: that laws apply to those in power and that Governments should respect free speech and uphold the rights of unpopular minorities in their countries.

Secondly, I must take issue with what the FCO report says about promoting “our” values, because what we are doing is promoting universal values. In this connection, I must stress how unhelpful the negative domestic discourse about human rights and universal values is. The UK does not exist in a bubble; what we do and say on human rights is seen not only by those in the UK, but by the rest of the world.

How can we take Russia to task, for example, for not respecting international human rights when we seem only too willing to disparage “universal values” and the rules-based international system when they do not suit us? The “Do as we say, not as we do” approach is unlikely to be very persuasive with others and is very likely to harm us all in the longer term. Without greater respect for human rights worldwide, we are likely to have to deal with more instability, more humanitarian crises, more radicalism and a less secure environment for UK business.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Robertson]

Clearly, we follow events in Bahrain very carefully and the Foreign Secretary spoke to the Crown Prince about the situation recently. With the full backing of the King, the Crown Prince has begun a set of meetings to start a political dialogue process. We very much hope that that will see concrete steps taken to improve the situation.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

What is the Foreign Office doing to object strongly to the stripping of nationality from 31 Bahraini citizens? That is a disgrace. Bahrain always cites the UK as an example of another country that has in the past stripped people of their nationality, so I would be glad if the Foreign Office would refute that.

[Hugh Robertson]

We have a regular programme of contacts with the Bahrain Government that cover a considerable number of areas across our bilateral relationship. That is an issue that we discuss with them regularly and it will most certainly be part of the Crown Prince’s new political dialogue. I very much hope that some progress will be made.

Sexual Violence in Conflict

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

My right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary is very supportive of this work. I will ask the Ministry of Defence to play its part—along with other Government Departments, which I know will be keen to do so—in the global summit next year. One of our objectives is to build into the work of militaries around the world the importance of this issue. That is what we are trying to do with the various training missions I mentioned. Our MOD has a lot to offer—it can contribute a lot in that regard—and we will discuss further how it can best continue to do so.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

As chair of the all-party group on human rights, I know it has done a considerable amount of work over the years in hosting women who are the victims of rape. The Foreign Secretary should add this one to his list. I have encountered victims of rape in many countries of the world, including in Rwanda, Iraq and East Timor, and in East Timor, in particular, there has been no follow-up to the rapes that were committed by Indonesian forces against many of its citizens.

May I also ask the Foreign Office itself to be more sensitive towards victims of rape who approach the consular services? Such victims have been treated with considerable insensitivity in the past. I think that the Foreign Secretary will know of the specific case to which I am alluding.

[Mr Hague]

The right hon. Lady is well aware of the importance of this issue because of all the work that she does. I hope that she will be heavily involved in all the work that we do next year, both personally and through the all-party parliamentary group. There are difficult issues for many countries to face in this regard, and we are trying to ensure that they face those issues by involving their leaders in what we are doing. That is continuing work.

It is very important for the Foreign Office to be sensitive to these issues in its consular work. The right hon. Lady will have seen the publicity about one particular case this week. The Foreign Office has apologised unreservedly for what happened, and, having looked into the case, I am satisfied that it is not representative of the normal work of the consular service, including its work in Cairo, where the incident took place. Our consular staff have been dealing with an average of five rapes and up to 25 sexual assaults a year, and the problems that arose in that case have not been apparent in others. Nevertheless, we will hold ourselves to high standards.

GCHQ

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to that. Part of the work of GCHQ is to make it easier for us to combat serious and organised crime. In many ways, the privacy of the citizens of this country benefits substantially from the work of our agencies, because of what they are doing to protect the country. There is a strong argument to be made about that, rather than that their privacy is invaded. So that is a growing threat, and in many cases it is up to the private sector, working with GCHQ, to ensure that we are well equipped to defeat it.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

As one who continues to campaign for the young US-British soldier Bradley Manning, and exchanges e-mails and telephone calls with his defence counsel, can I assume that I am free from any surveillance, either from the United States or Britain?

[Mr Hague]

I can only reiterate what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) about the Wilson doctrine, and I believe that the right hon. Lady can be confident in that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

11. What discussions he has had with his Commonwealth counterparts about the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo in 2013 and the progress being made on tackling human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

We have discussions with our counterparts in the Commonwealth on a variety of subjects on a regular basis, including on CHOGM. We make every effort to reiterate our concerns about human rights directly to Sri Lanka, whenever we get the opportunity. I was able to do that most recently in a meeting with the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister just yesterday.

[Ann Clwyd]

It is obviously not enough, because the Sri Lankans are not listening. They do not listen to the UN or the Commonwealth. It beggars belief that we think that they will listen more if CHOGM goes ahead there and we attend. I ask the UK Government to think carefully about the signal that it will send about their commitment to human rights if they go ahead with that visit.

[Alistair Burt]

I understand the concerns of the right hon. Lady, as do all hon. Members. This is a decision for the Commonwealth. It decided by consensus that the Heads of Government meeting should be in Colombo. The Commonwealth recognises the issues of concern in Sri Lanka. There is no doubt that whoever ends up going to CHOGM, from whatever country, Sri Lanka will be in the spotlight. The progress that can be made on a number of the positive recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission is a key topic that many will want to address. We want Sri Lanka to get to where it professes it wants to go. However, I agree with the right hon. Lady entirely that the evidence of that at present is pretty scant.

Kurdish Genocide

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) on securing this important debate, which, of course, has particular significance around this time. For years, I have chaired meetings in the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons and we have commemorated Halabja year after year. Indeed, in 1988 along with Members from across the House, I took a group of women to a hospital in London where some of the survivors of the Halabja incident were recovering. There were women who had been badly burned by chemicals, and some could not speak because the chemical weapons had harmed their windpipes. I hope that those people survived, and I was glad that at least some of them had the opportunity to be brought to London for treatment.

In 1988-89 my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who was in the Chamber earlier, attempted to protest at the Iraqi embassy about the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds. At the time, the ambassador told us that he knew nothing about it; it was all a mystery to him. He said, “Would you like to visit Baghdad?” We said, “No, we’d actually like to go and visit Kurdistan where the chemical weapons attack has taken place.” He continued to say, “I don’t know anything about it but I will get in touch with Baghdad and see what we can do.” He played a cat and mouse game with us for six months, at the end of which I sent a letter to the Financial Times saying that it was obviously just a game. However, it was not a game for us politicians who had followed the Kurds for many years. We protested in this House in 1988, 1989 and throughout.

I first became involved with the Kurds as early as 1977, before I was a politician, when many Kurds were students at Cardiff university. One, of course, was Barham Salih, and many prominent Kurds were at that university. There were also Iraqi students, and they told us what was happening in Iraq. It was difficult to get an accurate picture at that time, and it was not until the chemical weapons attack that the public in the west were made aware of the kind of weapons that Saddam Hussein was prepared to use against his own people. The charge of genocide was proved in the tribunal in Iraq, and many prominent Iraqis were tried. Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was subsequently sentenced to death. The charge of genocide was made against him and it was proved.

Some of us have campaigned over a long period. I chaired the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq—CARDRI—which many Kurds and Iraqis living in London were members of at that time. We continually published records of what was happening to the Kurds and Iraqis, and what was going on in the prisons. We had good but horrific accounts of the kind of torture being used against the people of Kurdistan and Iraq. Some of the kinds of torture were horrific. Later, I opened the genocide museum in Kurdistan, and I remember relatives of those who had been killed during the Anfal campaign coming up to me. It was a memorable day—it was snowing; it was grey—and going into that museum of torture and seeing where so many Kurds had perished left a lasting impression on us all.

Women were coming towards me with photographs of their relatives who had died. They were elderly women carrying photographs wrapped in cling film, and they showed me which of their relatives had died in that torture centre in Sulaymaniyah. CARDRI collected a lot of evidence. We had photographs and witness statements, and a few years later when Indict was set up, for several years it collected evidence of Iraqi war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. I am glad to say that the evidence was used in the trials that subsequently took place in Baghdad.

Many knew, or thought we knew, what was happening in Iraq, but things were not fully explained until after 2003. I first went to Kurdistan in 1991 and returned every two or three years after that. There were constant stories of disappearances and sightings of people in prisons. Nobody knew where their loved ones were.

The Anfal campaign was horrific. I have looked again at a Human Rights Watch report published in July 1993, entitled, “Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds”, which states:

“Allegations about enormous abuses against the Kurds by government security forces had been circulating in the West for years before the events of 1991; Kurdish rebels had spoken of 4,000 destroyed villages and an estimated 182,000 disappeared persons during 1988 alone. The…Anfal, the official military codename used by the government in its public pronouncements and internal memoranda, was well known inside Iraq, especially in the Kurdish region. As all the horrific details have emerged, this name has seared itself into popular consciousness—much as the Nazi German Holocaust did with its survivors. The parallels are apt, and often chillingly close…In…February 1990, Human Rights in Iraq, Middle East Watch reconstructed what took place from exile sources, with what in retrospect turned out to be a high degree of accuracy. Even so, some of the larger claims made by the Kurds seemed too fantastic to credit. As it transpires, this has been a humbling, learning process for all those foreigners who followed Kurdish affairs from abroad. Western reporters, relief workers, human rights organizations and other visitors to Iraqi Kurdistan have come to realize that the overall scale of the suffering inflicted on the Kurds by their government was by no means exaggerated.”

The report goes on to say that Middle East Watch

“can now demonstrate convincingly a deliberate intent on the part of the government of…Saddam Hussein to destroy, through mass murder, part of Iraq’s Kurdish minority…Two government instruments…the…1987 national census and the declaration of “prohibited areas”…were institutional foundations of this policy. These instruments were implemented against the background of nearly two decades of government-directed “Arabization”, in which mixed-race districts, or else lands that Baghdad regarded as desirable or strategically important, saw their Kurdish population diluted by Arab migrant farmers provided with ample incentives to relocate, and guarded by government troops…The logic of the Anfal, however, cannot be divorced either from the Iran-Iraq War. After 1986, both the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the two major parties, received support from the Iranian government and sometimes took part in joint military raids against Iraqi government positions”.

The report goes on to describe the link, but it does not make any difference to what Saddam Hussein did to his own people.

Many will be familiar with the attacks in Halabja in March 1988—the incident caused a brief international ripple—but they might be surprised to learn that the first use of poison gas against the Kurds by central Government occurred 11 months earlier. All told, Middle East Watch recorded 40 separate attacks on Kurdish targets, some of which involved multiple sorties over several days, between 1987 and August 1988. Each of those attacks were war crimes, involving the use of a banned weapon. The fact that non-combatants were often victims added to the offence. In the Anfal, at least 50,000 people—possibly 100,000—many of them women and children, were killed out of hand between February and September 1988. Their deaths did not come in the heat of battle: those Kurds were systematically put to death in large numbers on the orders of the central Government in Baghdad just days, sometimes weeks, after being rounded-up in villages marked for destruction, or else while fleeing from army assaults in prohibited areas.

Two experienced researchers from Human Rights Watch spent six months in northern Iraq between April and September 1992, gathering testimonial information about the Anfal. Previously, one 12-year old boy had been the only known survivor of many accounts of Kurds —men, women and children—being trucked southward to the Arab heartland of Iraq in large numbers, and then ‘disappeared’. It was assumed they had all been summarily executed, but there was no proof.

I have had to stand at the side of many mass graves in Iraq, seeing the bodies excavated, and I remember one particular occasion in Kurdistan when what was assumed to be a mass grave of peshmerga was being uncovered. The relatives stood around as the skeletons were slowly brought out. One old man standing near me recognised his son, who had been a peshmerga, from the wedding ring on his hand. Those of us who have seen mass graves elsewhere in Iraq and Kurdistan will know how terrible it is for families to stand around waiting to identify a piece of clothing or jewellery.

In al-Hilla, I watched a team of British forensic scientists help with the excavation of a mass grave, and they found babies still held in their mother’s or father’s arms. When they could not identify a body, they would put the remains in a plastic bag and put it on the top of a grave. Then people would walk around the graves looking inside the bags to see if they recognised anything. That is an appalling way to have to identify the body of a dead relative, but it is still going on in Iraq and Kurdistan, because—as someone once said to me—Iraq is one mass grave.

I would like to see that work continue, because it is important that people have some closure. At least they would know that their loved one was shot there, died there and was buried there, because a lot of people still do not know. I have seen queues down the streets outside the Free Prisoners Association with people trying to find out if there is any information on a missing person. Many people in Kurdistan and Iraq are still grieving because they have not had closure on the death of their relative.

Based on the evidence we now have, Middle East Watch and other organisations urge the international community to recognise that genocide occurred in the Kurdistan during 1988. The legal obligations to act on the basis of that information, to punish its perpetrators and prevent its recurrence, are undeniable.

As I said at the beginning, many people came to CARDRI and told us what had happened to their relatives. In the 1980s, an Iraqi mother told us about her son who was typical of so many thousands of people who have died in Iraq. He was a medical student who went out one day and never returned. Many months later, she was told to go to the mortuary and collect his body. She was led to a room where his body was to be found. She said:

“When I entered and saw what was inside, I could not believe that there were people who could do such things to other human beings. I looked around and saw nine bodies. My son was in a chair. He had blood all over him, his body was eaten away and bleeding. I looked at the others stretched out on the floor all burnt. One of them had his chest slit with a knife. Another’s body carried the marks of a hot domestic iron all over his head to his feet. Everyone was burnt in a different way. Another one had his legs cut off with an axe. His arms were also axed. One of them had his eyes gouged out and his nose and ears cut off.”

There were so many of these chilling accounts that at times over the years I found it difficult to believe. The horrors of Saddam’s Iraq will continue to shock and to stun the world.

In 1989, Saddam Hussein was still considered a valued friend by this country, and the Government of the day still sent trade missions to Baghdad. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North will remember, we were invited to a cultural festival in Baghdad. We protested time after time after time in this Chamber about the fact that our trade links were still in place, and we called for sanctions against Iraq.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My right hon. Friend raised these issues many times in the 1980s. Does she recall a delegation that she and I went on to both the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and Industry to suggest that we should not take part in the Baghdad arms fair in 1989? We suggested that they should suspend all arms trade with Iraq and were rebuffed by Ministers on that occasion.

[Ann Clwyd]

I remember that very well. It was not the only occasion we were rebuffed, because we, and many others who are long gone from this House, continued the campaign.

We should recognise that although Saddam Hussein was executed on the basis of a previous trial, the rest of the co-defendants were charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Anfal campaign. As I said earlier, Ali Hassan al-Majid was convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the Anfal campaign, and sentenced to death. However, he was not executed until 2010. A number of others were sentenced to death, but not on charges of genocide. The case has been well made over a long period of time and I am very happy to support the motion. The Kurds need recognition, and we and others are in a position to recognise genocide.

Syria

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am very conscious of the points made by my right hon. and learned Friend and I hope that he will agree on the position we have taken. Although we are trying to help in the mass of ways I set out in my statement, we are cautious, in the light of all the lessons of history. As I was pointing out to the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), I am not standing here advocating military intervention. So we keep our options open, but that is not some sinister disguise for a change in Government policy; if there were to be a change, I would bring it to the House.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary has spelt it out very clearly that by the end of the year about 100,000 people might be dead in Syria. Will he confirm that although Security Council authorisation to use force for humanitarian purposes is now widely accepted, force can also be justified on the grounds of overwhelming humanitarian necessity without a UN Security Council resolution as long as certain criteria are met, such as that it is objectively clear that there is no practical alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved?

[Mr Hague]

I agree with the right hon. Lady, as that is our broad understanding of international law. There is, of course, a further argument about the wisdom of such intervention, but in a situation of overwhelming humanitarian need with no clear alternative a strong legal case can be made.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)]

We are obviously very concerned about what is going on in the Gambia, because there has been an effective moratorium on the death penalty since 1985. All of those on death row, including General Mbye, the husband of my hon. Friend’s constituent, had effectively had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. We have made very strong representations to the Gambian Government. I will meet Gambian Foreign Minister Tangara in the near future, and we will push them very hard indeed on this matter.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Do the British Government intend to have any observers at the trial of Bradley Manning? There will be a pre-trial hearing in about a month’s time and the full trial will start next February.

[Alistair Burt]

It is difficult at present to go into the circumstances because of confidentiality issues, but as the right hon. Lady knows, representations have been made on behalf of the British Government to those representing Mr Manning. The indication has been that he has not wanted that involvement, so it may not be possible— and indeed it is not always the practice—to have observers. I would be very happy to meet the right hon. Lady privately—arranging such meetings seems to be a feature of my exchanges this afternoon—to discuss the issue further.

UK-Turkey Relations

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I, too, have a taxi story, following the one from the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter). My taxi story started in Diyarbakir in the south-east of Turkey some years ago, when I was going to the very south-east of the country to look at the Ilusu dam area and the flooding of Batman and other areas which are of historic importance to Turkey and particularly to the Kurds. My taxi driver said to me, “I’ve sold my only cow.” I looked at him in amazement and he said, “To buy a satellite dish.” At that time he could see television programmes only in the Turkish language, and he wanted to see programmes in the Kurdish language. Things have moved on quite a bit since then,

I am pleased to say I have a long association with Turkey and want to see it in the European Union, and I can say strongly that this country is a friend of Turkey and also wants to see it in the European Union.

My friend the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, gave a comprehensive account of the areas the Committee has looked at and the recommendations it has made. I still have many concerns about human rights in Turkey. When I chaired the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s committee on the human rights of parliamentarians —you know it well, Mr Deputy Speaker—which is based in Geneva, we always had delegations from Turkey at its conferences twice a year because of complaints about the way members of the Turkish Parliament were being treated.

I see myself as a critic of Turkey and also a friend. When it needs a pat on the back, I am pleased to do so, but I will also kick it when that is necessary to get some action on human rights. There have been great changes in Turkey, and I have to say that the AK party Government have contributed much towards that. The change has not been as fast as some of us would like it to be, but nevertheless there has been considerable progress on human rights.

I still have concerns about the treatment of the Kurds in the south-east of the country, to which my friend the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) also referred. Few people have visited the south-east and seen for themselves where the majority of Turkey’s Kurdish population live and the strong feelings they have about the use of their own language. They want the right to speak in Kurdish whenever they want to do so. Of course, in the past that was very difficult and many have been put in prison for using Kurdish, which the Turkish Government have very strong views about.

I want to talk briefly about a friend of mine, Leyla Zana. I first met her nearly 20 years ago when I visited her in prison in Ankara. She had been a member of the Turkish Parliament, one of the first Kurds to be elected to it, and when she was sworn in she took her oath in Kurdish and wore Kurdish colours in her hair. It was not long before she found herself in prison. She was put in jail for 10 years because it was believed that she was strongly associated with the PKK. Of course, some of the PKK’s aims include language rights for the Kurds. I went to see her in jail and took her a birthday card, because it was her birthday. I had written the card in Welsh, which the Turkish authorities of course could not make out, and so was able to deliver it and wish her a happy birthday. The prison governor allowed me to stay with her for about an hour and a half, and afterwards he said to me, “You know, she shouldn’t be here.” I knew that she should not have been there.

Unfortunately, in the past few weeks Leyla Zana has been sentenced to another 10 years in jail, but because she is a member of parliament she has immunity, but there is no certainty that that immunity will remain. There are concerns that she could still face another 10 years in jail, which would be a disgrace. It is interesting that in the past few days Prime Minister Erdogan met Leyla Zana and they had a discussion, and she made some comments after it. The Prime Minister told journalists that it had gone very well and I believe that it was very productive. After the meeting, Leyla Zana spoke to the press and called on the Government to restart talks with militants, meaning the PKK. It is important that those talks take place. There have been awful incidents on both sides, and many people on both sides of the argument have died. Many in the military have been killed, but PKK personnel and innocent civilians have, too.

Ms Zana said that security-based policies had not worked, and she made the suggestion, anathema to many Turks, that Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader serving a life sentence, could be transferred to house arrest. She also praised the Prime Minister for meeting her, saying:

“He showed his sincerity on the need to open channels of dialogue. When I decided to meet with him, I based it on my reasoning, political experience and insight.”

Their meeting was dismissed by the PKK, which said:

“They have entered into a military-solution process. The AKP government lost the war it staged against the Kurds and Kurdish freedom movement in the last year.”

Interestingly, however, Leyla Zana could take over as leader of the PKK, and, although it is described as a terrorist organisation, we in this House all know how many times we have described organisations as terrorist and then sat down to talk with them. Such talks are beginning to take place, and I commend the Turkish Government on initiating that dialogue, which I very much hope will continue.

I am concerned also about the treatment of journalists in Turkey, as I know our Government are, and in our report we made several comments on that, stating:

“We recommend that the FCO should suggest that the Turkish government encourage prosecutors and judges to exercise restraint in the use of arrest and pre-trial detention, pending more thorough-going reform of the justice system.”

When I was in Istanbul I met journalists and journalist associations. They are afraid of saying anything that is sensitive to the Turkish Government, and too many of them are in jail. Our Government have welcomed recent steps to address those issues, because freedom of expression is a very necessary freedom, which any potential EU member must support, but Turkey need not be as sensitive as it is, because it has made substantial progress.

Indeed, I have paid tribute to Turkey for that progress over the years, because my first visit to the country took place when the military were in charge. I went on behalf of Amnesty International to a trial at a prison in Istanbul, where people who were the equivalent of members of CND were on trial, and that was a horrible time in Turkey’s history. Things are changing, however, and with a bit more initiative they will improve even faster.

Some time ago, in talks with the Foreign Office, I suggested that we invite Turkish MPs to this country to see bilingualism in practice and to show them that it does not mean separation. We now have bilingualism in Wales, and it was hard fought-for, but the Turks could learn a little from the process. All the Turkish MPs whom I have met have seemed very keen on the idea of coming to see how bilingualism works in practice, and, if they were convinced of it, the Kurdish problem in Turkey could be solved.