Child Prisoners and Detainees: Occupied Palestinian Territories
Debate between Gregory Campbell and Andy Slaughter(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I will speak briefly, although I must first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on an excellent speech and on securing the debate. The number of Members in attendance—I think there are almost 50—shows the importance that is given to this issue. I am sure that we will not do justice to the number of briefings we have received. I will only refer to one, which is from Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. It goes beyond the many compelling individual cases that we have read about in those briefings and talks about the basic legal issues.
To return to the point I made in my intervention, paragraph 4 of that briefing says:
“There is an inextricable link between the systemic human rights violations of Palestinian children held in military detention and the overarching context of prolonged military occupation. The realisation of the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people is the optimum solution for the complete removal of ‘widespread, systematic and institutionalised’ violations against Palestinian children held in military detention.”
Now, some of my hon. Friends may think that that is rather stating the obvious, but given some of the comments today, I think it is worth putting on the record because some Members seem to be living in an Alice in Wonderland world. The speech that we have just heard is very illustrative of that point because, according to that, the blame for all that goes wrong in the occupied territories apparently lies with the Palestinian people. There is a very easy solution to that, which is to let the Palestinians govern themselves. Last year, this House voted to allow them to police themselves in that way and not to lead to this situation.
