European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Ann Clwyd and Jeremy Corbyn

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

People voted in different ways in the referendum in 2016—that is obvious—but nobody voted to lose their jobs, or to find that their regulations and living conditions had been damaged. The function of Parliament is to hold the Government to account and scrutinise this agreement. A bare bones free trade agreement, which is what the Prime Minister is promising, would dramatically hit our country’s GDP, and would disproportionately hit the poorest regions and make everybody in this country worse off. It would also lock in the existing privatisation of our national health service, and nothing in this Bill protects our health service or public services from future trade deals.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that many EU nationals in this country are really afraid, because they do not know what their future is going to be? An Italian flower seller in a market in my constituency has lived here 15 years and has been constantly asked, “When are you going home?” Today, I have received an email from a doctor in the constituency, who said of a colleague:

“There are significant concerns about the tardy response by the ‘Brexit department’, for want of a better name for that organization, in that there has been no confirmation of—

this German doctor’s residency and—

“status going forward.

He is obviously very anxious and distracted by this situation.

We need to keep primary care morale up in the current difficult times and our valued European doctors—

and nurses—

need to feel confident about their future within the UK.

This doctor has been a cornerstone of the NHS in Wales for over 20 years.”

My right hon. Friend knows very well that we are losing doctors and nurses, and we cannot afford to do it.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. She says it with heartfelt passion and she is right: there are many people who have come to this country from all over the world, made their homes here and made a massive contribution to our lives and our society, and every one of us owes our health to those people who work in our NHS, whether they come from Commonwealth countries, other countries or the European Union. They should not be put through the strain either of the Windrush hostile environment or the sword of Damocles hanging over many at the moment because they know they have only five years’ definite stay in this country. I will just remind the House that in July 2016, my party, through Andy Burnham, then our shadow Home Secretary, moved a motion guaranteeing permanent rights and residence of EU nationals. The Prime Minister was the only Tory to support it at that time. I do not know what has happened to him since then.

On trade and investment, will the Chancellor do his job and provide the House with a comprehensive economic impact assessment on this deal? At the very least, will he do so before Report stage? This Bill falls hugely short in all areas.

Human Rights

Debate between Ann Clwyd and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[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.

Kurdish Genocide

Debate between Ann Clwyd and Jeremy Corbyn

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.

North Africa and the Near and Middle East

Debate between Ann Clwyd and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd]

If the hon. Gentleman is a little patient, I shall come to that point in a moment.

The report also states:

“A large number of individuals were prosecuted before the National Safety Courts”.

It went on to say:

“Numerous violations of due process rights were recorded…it appears that the Military Attorney General chose to rely on those statutory provisions that were the least favourable to the arrested persons and to the defendants appearing before the National Safety Courts.”

It continued:

“The manner in which the security and judicial agencies of the GoB”—

Government of Bahrain—

“interpreted the National Safety Decree also opened the door for the perpetration of grave violations of human rights, including the arbitrary deprivation of life, torture and arbitrary detention.”

The report also details that many of the detainees were subjected to torture and other forms of physical and psychological abuse while in custody, and it lists the methods as follows:

“blindfolding; handcuffing; enforced standing for prolonged periods; beating; punching; hitting the detainee with rubber hoses (including on the soles of the detainee‘s feet), cables, whips, metal, wooden planks or other objects; electrocution; sleep-deprivation; exposure to extreme temperatures; verbal abuse; threats of rape…and insulting the detainee‘s religious sect”.

Those subject to this were predominantly Shi’a.

Many of those held by the authorities claim that they were forced to sign confessions or admit to committing crimes. It is especially pertinent that the report notes on more than one occasion that the actions of the authorities were “systematic”. I emphasise that word, as it shows that these violations were not the fault of a few bad apples or rogue elements; the security personnel in Bahrain were carrying out actions that were expected of them and that were implicitly, if not explicitly, condoned by superiors and other branches of the Government.

With at least 35 deaths, thousands arrested, 4,500 employees dismissed for their support of the protests, more than 500 students expelled and 30 religious sites demolished, it is simply not credible that such a vast crackdown could have taken place at the initiative of the lower ranks of the Bahraini Government alone. The report categorically states:

“In many cases, the security services of the GoB resorted to the use of unnecessary and excessive force, terror-inspiring behaviour and unnecessary damage to property. The fact that a systematic pattern of behaviour existed indicates that this is how these security forces were trained and were expected to behave.”

It goes on to say that there is

“a culture of impunity, whereby security officials have few incentives to avoid mistreatment of prisoners or to take action to prevent mistreatment by other officials.”

Some months ago, before the summer recess, I, on behalf of the all-party group on human rights, and Lord Avebury, the vice-chair, went to see the ambassador of Bahrain at the embassy in London. He was Mr al-Khalifa, a member of the royal family, and Eric Avebury, in particular, had detailed knowledge of the complaints made by some of the medical personnel—he knew some of the doctors personally. He was very specific when we put those accusations to the then ambassador, who said that he knew nothing about it but that he would come back to us with a detailed explanation of all the allegations. We heard not one word from the ambassador and surprisingly—or perhaps not—two weeks later, he was gone from the embassy, never to return. He was replaced by another ambassador, who did not give us any more information.

I remain concerned about the trials of doctors and nurses in military courts and the harsh sentences handed down. Although the King subsequently intervened and most of the health workers are now under house arrest awaiting trial in civil courts, the report’s findings on the brutal manner in which people were arrested and detained prompts the question of whether any subsequent trials can be fair and whether there is any justification for those people being held at all.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I compliment my right hon. Friend on her meeting with the ambassador and the efforts that she and Lord Avebury have made. Does she agree with me, however, that the current process in Bahrain is pretty awful but not particularly new and that it goes back to the suspension of the constitution a couple of decades ago and the continual denial of rights of free expression ever since? This is a merely a descent into that and much of the surveillance of the opposition is done using equipment supplied by Britain.

[Ann Clwyd]

I thank my hon. Friend for making those points, which I attempted to make to the Foreign Secretary earlier. It is inappropriate: if we are still selling arms to the Bahrainis or training Bahraini military personnel in this country, that should not be done in the light of human rights abuses going back not just to the beginning of this year but to earlier years, too.

If the Government of Bahrain are to retain their legitimacy domestically and their credibility internationally, given what the BICI has established as the systematic nature of the serious human rights violations by Government officials, they must ensure that accountability for those violations goes right to the top. If I have one criticism of the report, it is that I feel it could have gone further, with a more precise allocation of responsibility for specific violations, stating who ordered what and when. The Government of Bahrain will, we hope, do that now.

We should make no mistake: Bahrain is at a crucial crossroads and can redeem itself in the eyes of its citizens and the international community by ensuring that, first, the rule of law and then wider democratic reforms prevail; by putting responsible officials, including those at the top of the chain of command, such as Government Ministers and senior military leaders, on trial; by engaging meaningfully with the Opposition; and by implementing the recommendations of the BICI report in good faith. Alternatively, it can bury its head in the sand and set the stage for further and more pronounced instability in the future.

Perpetuating the myth that Iran was responsible for the unrest is, in my view, not only unhelpful but dangerous. I am no apologist for the Iranian regime—I am only too well aware of the terrible human rights violations perpetuated on a daily basis on its own people and of the profoundly destabilising effects of its foreign policy—but it is important to note the report’s findings in this regard. It said:

“The evidence presented to the Commission…does not establish a discernible link between specific incidents that occurred in Bahrain during February/March 2011 and the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

It is critical that leaders in Bahrain take responsibility for their own failings and acknowledge legitimate grievances rather than dismissing them as nothing more than “foreign agitation”.

The Bahraini King has said that he is determined to ensure that the report’s insights will act as a “catalyst for positive change”, and has since issued a decree to form a national commission with powers as advised in the report. However, the King still seems reluctant to face up to the enormity of the task ahead, given his carefully worded statement on receiving the report last Wednesday in which he referred to

“the unprecedented challenges faced by our authorities as they confronted relentless provocation, from hostile sources both inside and outside the country,”

and to

“instances of excessive force and of the mistreatment of persons placed under arrest.”

I trust that the UK Government will, as I think the Foreign Secretary has indicated that we will, as a friend of the Bahraini Government, encourage and persuade them to do what is right in the longer term, however difficult that is in the short term, for the people of Bahrain, the region and the wider international community.

The following words from the BICI report sum up what I want to say on Bahrain:

“During the beginning of the events in Bahrain, as during the past decades, the demand was for reforms, not for regime change. This was the same in the early stages of the demonstrations and protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen. But as experience shows, when demands for reforms are rebuffed, the demands become for regime change. In the end, the society becomes both polarised and radicalised. This situation leaves little room for a centre that could bring together people from all ethnic and sectarian groups and from all social and economic strata to work for reforms based on well established principles and processes of democracy, good governance and respect for internationally protected human rights.”

Turning briefly to Syria, as both Front-Bench spokesmen have said, it presents a more precarious and volatile situation, with catastrophe looming for Syria, the region and the international community if the Ba’athist regime under the current President, Bashar Assad, does not renounce its long-established methods of brutality and authoritarianism. At least 3,500 people, not including members of the security forces and the army, have already been killed. The Syrian Government have been violating the rights of their citizens for many years and Syria has long been a police state. Emergency rule was imposed in 1963 and has remained in effect ever since.

The abuses now being committed in Syria are extremely serious and widespread. As has been recently documented by Human Rights Watch:

“Torture of detainees is rampant. Twenty-five former detainees from Homs were among those interviewed by Human Rights Watch. They all reported being subjected to various forms of torture. Human Rights Watch has independently documented 17 deaths in custody in Homs, at least 12 of which were clearly from torture. Data collected by local activists suggest even higher figures. They say that at least 40 people detained in Homs governorate died in custody between April and August. Former detainees report security forces’ use of heated metal rods to burn various parts of their bodies, the use of electric shocks, the use of stress positions for hours or even days at a time, and the use of improvised devices, such as car tyres…to force detainees into positions that make it easier to beat them on sensitive parts of the body, like the soles of the feet and head.”

Human Rights Watch has stated that the systematic nature of abuses against civilians in Homs by Syrian Government forces indicate that crimes against humanity have been committed. Syrian Government officials right up to the top will have to be held accountable for these despicable crimes.

I applaud the suspension of Syria from the Arab League and the Arab League members that agreed to impose sanctions on Syria this weekend in their attempt to ramp up the pressure on the Syrian Government to comply with an Arab League peace plan, which they had supposedly accepted. The Arab League’s initiatives come in the wake of sanctions imposed by the US and the EU. It is time now for the international community and particularly the UN Security Council to do more to bring the Syrian Government to their senses, to get them to end the violent crackdown immediately and to allow for the immediate deployment of monitors on the ground.

Of course, there are no easy solutions. I do not underestimate the challenge of getting the current Syrian Government to stop their brutal campaign of repression, and of avoiding civil war. Military intervention by outsiders may also be counter-productive. I fear it may now be a case of too little, too late, with the international community having done almost nothing over the years to encourage the Syrian Government to change their ways, but we cannot abdicate our responsibility now. We cannot continue to leave the many brave Syrians at the mercy of a Government who have never had any regard for them.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Ann Clwyd and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd]

The amendment would remove clause 152. At the outset, I should like to say that whatever one’s views on the changes proposed by the clause, it should not be part of the Bill. It is a justice measure in a Home Office Bill, which is already packed. It would be better if the Government had not crow-barred it into the Bill. However, I am glad that we have an opportunity to debate the measure, although we cannot debate it to the extent that other Members and I would have liked.

The Government propose to change the law on the procedure for obtaining an arrest warrant in a private prosecution in a universal jurisdiction case. Such cases are concerned with the gravest crimes against humanity: war crimes, torture, genocide and so on. The Government propose that the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions should be required before any such arrest warrant can be issued.

My area of interest is human rights, so it is on the human rights implications of the clause that I shall focus. I object to the clause and the Government’s proposals because they will undermine the UK’s standing on international human rights issues. The current situation in Libya and recent events there and elsewhere in north Africa and the middle east provide a helpful context for the debate. For example, if anyone from Gaddafi’s regime—his sons or other senior political and military cohorts—tries to visit the UK at some point in future, they will be affected by this change in the law.

The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and other Ministers have been strong in their condemnation of Gaddafi, in their calls for him to face justice, and in their support for the International Criminal Court investigation. I agree with them. The best place for Gaddafi to end up is in front of a court on an ICC indictment for crimes against humanity. However, the existence of the ICC does not absolve us of responsibility to ensure that those most serious of crimes can be prosecuted within our jurisdiction.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the current situation is the best one, because it keeps the Government away from allegations of political bias in cases in which arrests are sought for a court in this country? Clause 152 will bring every prosecution into the political orbit, where it certainly should not be.

[Ann Clwyd]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head as usual, and I shall develop that argument in a few minutes.

We still have obligations under the Geneva conventions —they are obligations, and not discretions or permissions —to bring before a court persons suspected of committing the gravest crimes against humanity when we are able to do so. This change in the law will undermine our commitment to those Geneva convention obligations.

Why, then, are the Government seeking to change the law? The Justice Secretary, yesterday, and the Foreign Secretary, last Thursday, set out clearly in replies to questions in the Chamber the reasons why the Government are seeking to do so. The first reason that they gave was that it is too easy to obtain an arrest warrant. They suggested that anyone could turn up on a frivolous pretext, spin a yarn to the court and walk away with an arrest warrant—put a penny in the slot and out comes a warrant! I cannot believe that that argument has carried any weight with anyone at all.