Queen’s Speech

Baroness Cox Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cox (CB)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech affirmed the United Kingdom’s commitment to uphold democracy and to champion security around the world. Time allows me to raise only two related issues.

First, in Nigeria, Islamist terrorist attacks continue in northern and central states, with almost daily reports of killings, rape, abductions, mass forced displacement and land-grabs. The human rights organisation Inter- society reports that 4,400 Christians were killed within a nine-month period in 2021, in addition to the tens of thousands killed since 2009. Many others have disappeared, assumed dead, or have been taken into slavery. Thousands of students have been abducted from school, while hundreds of churches have been destroyed and entire communities overrun by jihadists. Many Muslims have also been killed. It is within this context that my small NGO, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, seeks to provide life-saving assistance, especially in the Middle Belt, where millions are displaced but where, I am sorry to say, UK government resources have been very inadequate.

I have personally witnessed the ruin of homes, farmland, food stores, churches, pastors’ homes and an orphanage, all attacked by Islamist Fulani militia in the past seven months. I stood at the grave of an 80 year-old woman called Sarah, who miraculously survived an Islamist attack on her village but was so traumatised by what she saw that she died of a heart attack. In a neighbouring village, a 98 year-old woman was burned alive by Islamist Fulani militia. Before being thrown into her burning home, she was mocked by her killers, who said, “You look cold, Grandma. Come this way.” I also heard detailed accounts of the deliberate targeting and slaughter of children, and people being hacked to death with machetes as they ran from rapid gunfire. Just last week, a young student, Deborah Samuel, was killed—beaten and burned in Sokoto by a mob falsely accusing her of blasphemy. I plead with Her Majesty’s Government to do more to apply pressure to prevent the murderous attacks on innocent civilians and to provide desperately needed aid.

I turn briefly to the tragic situations in Armenia and the historic Armenian land of Nagorno-Karabakh. It was invaded by Azerbaijan in 2020, and civilians suffered daily military offensives and widespread destruction of civilian targets, including schools, religious sites and the maternity hospital in Stepanakert—I saw the evidence of this. These are war crimes, horribly reminiscent of what is happening in Ukraine. I witnessed a very different Azerbaijan from that described by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. Azerbaijan has repeatedly failed to keep the peace agreement, which requires the release of all prisoners of war. Many Armenians remain in captivity—Armenia has released all its Azerbaijani prisoners—with evidence of humiliating torture by Azeri captors. For example, I wept with one mother who had received pictures of her son’s dismembered and decapitated body.

There are continuing reports of Azeri military offensives in Armenia itself, against Armenian villages in Syunik province, which I visited just last month. By megaphones and loudspeakers, villagers are ordered to leave their homes, while Azeri forces continue to accumulate military equipment and manpower in the region.

Serious concerns also remain over the fate of hundreds of Armenian Christian monuments and ancient cultural heritage sites, which are now under Azeri control, some of which have already been destroyed during the war or since—another war crime under international law.

In Baku there is a gruesome, grotesque victory park where they have a corridor of the helmets of scores of Armenian soldiers, and there are also grotesque mannequins of Armenian soldiers.

The United Kingdom’s consistent failure to call Azerbaijan to account could be seen as complicity. There must be no impunity for the most serious international crimes. Perpetrators of atrocities must be held to account. I hope very much that the Government will no longer turn what seems to be a deaf ear to the suffering of the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia itself, and of the people of Nigeria.