Magnitsky Sanctions: Human Rights Abuses

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

I am normally very reluctant to draw direct parallels with what happened in Nazi Germany, but when we see detention camps, people being taken away from their families and people being identified by virtue of their genetic make-up, it feels remarkably similar. If the world chooses to turn away at this point, in the end it will regret it.

There is an important point here about the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which is known as the XPCC. It is a state-owned paramilitary organisation, known for its involvement in the mass imprisonment and severe physical abuse of the Uyghurs, and its use of forced labour to produce the majority of the region’s cotton. As the recent report by the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice shows, this cotton ends up in the global supply chain and people often cannot spot that the clothes they are wearing come from slave labour.

While the UK has recognised this use of forced labour and sanctioned a subsidiary of the XPCC, it has yet to sanction the corporation as a whole, despite the fact that it controls large swathes of the region’s industries, associated with widespread labour abuses. In relation to that, it is important that Peng Jiarui and Sun Jinlong, who have both held senior positions in the XPCC and have had command control over the arbitrary detention, ill treatment and forced labour of Uyghur Muslims, should also be added to the Magnitsky list.

Huo Liujun, the former party secretary for the public security bureau in the region, oversaw the use of artificial intelligence to racially profile, track and imprison members of the Uyghur community. Recent reports indicate this same system was used to target and forcibly sterilise Uyghur women. He should also be on the list.

Let me turn to Iran. As many Members will know, Iran’s arbitrary detention, torture and ill treatment of foreign and dual nationals for diplomatic leverage over other states has escalated since 1979, with state hostage taking becoming an institutionalised part of its foreign policy. We have seen this most notably with some of our own nationals, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is being held hostage in Iran and is now spending her sixth Christmas away from her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and their daughter, Gabriella. Also, Anoosheh Ashoori has now been detained in Iran for four and a half years. Our hearts go out to them.

I understand that detailed evidence about this has already been provided to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, but let me list some people who I think should be added to the sanction list. Ali Ghanaatkar has acted as head of interrogations and as judge in Evin prison. In his role, he has been involved in the ill treatment of detainees, particularly in the use of forceful interrogations and threats, and in bringing false charges against them. He should be on the list.

Gholamreza Ziaei is the former head of Evin prison, which has become synonymous with torture and death and is where a number of British nationals, including Nazanin and Anoosheh, have been detained. As the head of the prison, he was responsible for the inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners and was sanctioned by the European Union in April this year. He has been sanctioned by the EU, but not yet by us. I think he should be on the list.

Ali Rezvani is an Iranian state media journalist for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-controlled 20:30 News. He has not only been involved in the interrogation of detainees but has revealed detainees’ interrogation files, broadcast forced confessions, forcibly detained family photos and spread misinformation regarding political prisoners, dissidents and hostages. He has peddled propaganda against victims to justify and encourage their ill treatment, thereby promoting, inciting and supporting Iran’s practices. He should be on the list.

On 25 October 2021, the military staged a coup in Sudan, overthrowing the joint civilian-military transitional Government. Since then, violence has escalated rapidly, with reports of the military torturing and killing protestors and carrying out enforced disappearances. It all sounds remarkably like Argentina. Again, I understand that evidence has been provided to the FCDO, but let me give some names. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is the leader and public face of the military coup in Khartoum. Security forces under his command targeted activists, members of resistance committees and journalists, ordering their arbitrary detention or enforced disappearance. Al-Burhan has also implemented an ongoing internet blackout, trying to prevent news of his human rights abuses from leaving Sudan. He has failed, but he should be on the list.

Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, is the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, previously known as the Janjaweed—Government-supported militias that committed gross human rights abuses in Darfur. Under his leadership, the RSF played a critical role in the planning and execution of the coup and has repeatedly used excessive force to beat and kill protesting civilians in Khartoum. He should be on the list. Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo is reportedly an active member of what security analysts describe as a small security council responsible for the planning and execution of the coup. The council has directed the militarised response to the protest, including the use of live fire against peaceful protestors. He should be on the list.

I turn finally to Rwanda. In August last year, Paul Rusesabagina, the subject of the film “Hotel Rwanda”, which many Members may have seen, and a vocal critic of President Kagame and a cancer sufferer, was drugged, bound and forcefully returned to Rwanda, where he has been imprisoned and tortured. I have met his daughters online, and it is a very upsetting story. A large number of international human rights organisations have recognised this case as one enforced disappearance. Two individuals are directly involved.

First, Johnston Busingye, Minister of Justice at the time of Mr Rusesabagina’s arrest and under whose authority he was detained and tortured. During a televised interview, Johnston Busingye admitted that the Government of Rwanda paid for the flight that transported Mr Rusesabagina back to Rwanda. He has since been removed as Minister of Justice and appointed high commissioner to the United Kingdom. As far as I understand it, the UK Government have still not given their agrément to the appointment. I hope they will announce today that they have absolutely no intention of doing so. He should be on a list of sanctioned individuals, not of people to be escorted to Buckingham Palace to have their credentials agreed by Her Majesty. Secondly, Colonel Jeannot Ruhunga, secretary general of the Rwanda Investigation Bureau, was also heavily involved with that unlawful kidnapping and the associated human rights violations. All these names should be added to the list of those sanctioned by the United Kingdom.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for his work as one of the co-chairs of the APPG. If I am fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mrs Miller, I hope to raise the case of General Shavendra Silva, current chief of defence staff in Sri Lanka and apparently responsible for gross human rights violations including torture and extra-judicial killings. I appreciate my hon. Friend’s need to focus his remarks today, but I ask his APPG to consider that case at a further session down the line.

[Chris Bryant]

My co-chair, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), is telling me that we will, but my hon. Friend makes a really good point, which is that we need a proper process whereby we can feed into the Government all the suggestions and concerns that individual Members have from their connections with other parts of the world, and get good outcomes.

Right at the beginning of the process, I think I asked the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), something like 27 times when the Government would introduce Magnitsky sanctions. We now have them in place, but the whole idea was that there would be a parliamentary process for assessing who else should be added. We want to work with the Government to achieve that, because in the end we all share our humanity. If a child goes hungry in Botswana, that is a problem for the children of this country. If somebody is deprived of their freedom in Russia, Chechnya or any part of Africa, that is a matter for our freedom too. We all share in the same humanity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I cannot compete with the quality of the two previous speeches. They were both excellent. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for securing the debate.

I simply want to raise the case of one particular individual, who now holds the position of chief of the defence staff and commander of the Sri Lankan army, General Shavendra Silva. Those who have followed the terrible events in Sri Lanka at the end of the conflict in 2009 will be aware that evidence has emerged over the last 12 years of widespread human rights abuses at that time, including extrajudicial killings and extensive use of torture, deliberate attacks on civilian targets, including hospitals, and the use of weapons that have been banned internationally, such as white phosphorus and cluster munitions.

Despite repeated efforts by the international community, the Sri Lankan Government have resisted any efforts to bring to account any of those responsible for those abuses. Despite their best efforts, however, groups of individuals and non-governmental organisations have chronicled the evidence of those human rights abuses.

I hope that the Minister is aware that on 9 April the International Truth and Justice Project submitted to her Department a 50-page dossier setting out General Shavendra Silva’s complicity in the human rights violations that took place in the north of Sri Lanka towards the end of 2008 through to May 2009. General Silva was then commander of the elite 58 Division of the Sri Lankan army, which was very much involved in the conflict.

The US has already imposed a travel ban on General Silva and his family, having found him accountable through command responsibility for

“gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings, by the 58th Division of the Sri Lanka Army”.

The question is why we as a country have not followed suit and imposed similar restrictions on Mr Silva, particularly around travel but also around financial assets and so on, or used the tools available to us under the Magnitsky package of measures to hold at least one person properly responsible for those terrible abuses at the end of that conflict.

Although the Minister will quite rightly feel a responsibility to answer the questions and points put by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, I will be very interested to hear, as will my constituents and many others across the UK, what her Department’s reaction is to the dossier that the ITJP submitted back in April.