Human Rights Abuses and Corruption: UK Sanctions

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered UK sanctions for human rights abuses and corruption.

The UK’s Magnitsky sanctions regime has, as many of us will accept, provided the UK Government with an important tool for tackling the most egregious cases of human rights violations and corruption committed around the world, but several problems undermining the effectiveness of our Magnitsky sanctions regime still exist. From a standing start, at a low base, in the first year of the regime the UK made good progress and sanctioned 102 perpetrators for human rights violations and corruption. Strangely, that number has fallen to only six perpetrators in the second year.

Let us contrast that with what has happened in the United States of America, which is a good benchmark. To mark international Human Rights Day and International Anti-Corruption Day in December 2021, the US announced sanctions on 108 perpetrators; 16 countries were targeted, including China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Liberia, Iran, Syria and Ukraine. In the same week, the UK Government announced just one human rights designation under the Magnitsky regime and four designations under the Myanmar country regime—no sanctions were issued for corruption. That is surprising, because there is a lot of evidence out there about corruption and somehow we did not seem to get moving on it.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has said that it recognises that sanctions are most effective when imposed in concert, yet even as it says that the UK fails to keep pace with its allies, particularly the US, which, again, I come back to as a benchmark. The UK has sanctioned only 20% of the perpetrators sanctioned by the US. That is inexplicable; I have no idea what the US knows that we do not know and why it can act faster and more heavily than we can. We are allowing those sanctioned by the US and other jurisdictions to use the UK as a haven to enjoy much of their ill- gotten gains.

The belated lesson we learned from the international response to the Ukraine crisis shows that such co-ordination is possible, but only if there is sincere determination. That must be reflected in the Government’s effective use of these sanctions. In response to the Ukrainian crisis, the FCDO tripled the size of the sanctions taskforce, but that cannot be just for one country. It is surely vital that the increased organisation does not just focus on Russia; there is an awful lot going on around the world where people are getting away with corruption, brutality and criminality.

That brings us to enforcement. The effectiveness of sanctions is too often undermined by a complete lack of enforcement. Before the invasion of Ukraine, the total value of frozen assets in the UK had not changed significantly since the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation’s first full year of operations, starting at £12.7 billion in 2017-18 and dropping to £12.2 billion in 2020-21. That does not look to me like an awful lot of increased enforcement, although perhaps somebody knows something that we do not. If we look at the money, we see clearly that there was next to nothing happening.

For many parliamentarians, across all parts of the House, oversight of the Government’s use of sanctions has decreased due to amendments made by the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022. I say to the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), who is on the Front Bench, that the UK Government must recommit to reporting to Parliament annually on their use of sanctions and their rationale. On 28 June, the Foreign Secretary told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the FCDO is working with the Home Office and Treasury on confiscating frozen Russian assets. No matter the result of the current leadership race, which I will park for the moment, the Government must surely remain committed to this issue. I want to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister exactly how committed they really are.

The UK has sanctioned over 1,000 individuals connected to the Russia regime, with a total global wealth, I am told, in excess of £150 billion, so we cannot miss this opportunity to finance reparations for the victims of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. During the Westminster Hall debate in December last year, members of the all-party parliamentary group on Magnitsky sanctions named 12 individuals and entities involved in some of the most egregious cases of human rights violations across the world. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and I named them to make sure it was clear and that there can be no excuse for the FCDO to suddenly say that it does not know who they are. We went out of our way to make sure it knew, and we have repeated their names consistently. The media have picked this up and repeated them, too. The names are known and these people are known.

There are a number of other cases where the UK also has to take action. All those involved with the all-party parliamentary group will be making recommendations relating to China, Russia, Iran, Sudan, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh and Nigeria. We will try to list many of them in the time available, without delaying the House any longer than we have to. I want to run through what has happened in China and why we have so signally failed to deal with the perpetrators of the brutality and crackdown in Xinjiang and Hong Kong—after all, we the guarantors of Hong Kong.

Those sanctioned here in the UK over Xinjiang include Zhu Hailun, former secretary of the political and legal affairs committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region; Wang Junzheng, deputy secretary of the party committee and previous secretary of the political and legal affairs committee; and Wang Mingshan, secretary of the political and legal affairs committee; Chen Mingguo, vice chairman of the Government of the XUAR and the public security bureau of the Xinjiang production construction core. Many Chinese Government officials known to be directly involved in perpetrating abuses in the Uyghur region remain unsanctioned.

Let me compared that with the US, which sanctioned Chen Quanguo, the key architect of all that has been going in Xinjiang. He is a brutal and ghastly individual who is exercising his power to destroy lives. The US sanctioned the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a state-owned paramilitary organisation that runs the region’s mass coercive labour transfer programme —slavery—which puts at least 1.6 million Uyghurs at risk of slavery in factories and in other locations. The UK sanctioned the XPCC public security bureau, the subsidiary responsible for running the prison camps, but for some strange and peculiar reason not the corporation as a whole. The US also sanctioned Peng Jiarui and Sun Jinlong, both senior officials in XPCC, and Huo Liujun, the former party secretary for the Xinjiang public security bureau. What is it that the US knows that we do not know?

The EU is also carrying out sanctions at a higher and faster rate than we are. I have four names of people who have been sanctioned by the EU and who remain unsanctioned here, including Zhao Kezhi, Guo Shengkun and Hu Lianhe. They are all sanctioned by the EU, but not by us.

On Hong Kong, we are a guarantor of one country, two systems, a signed international treaty, so we have a unique responsibility. The perpetrators of the crackdown in Hong Kong have arrested peaceful democracy campaigners and others, including even a cardinal, even for opening their mouths and saying anything against the regime. That is a brutal concept that we in this place are meant to stand against. We have still done very little compared to the US. I will leave it to the hon. Member for Rhondda to name them specifically, if he will.

With regard to Hong Kong, 11 people in the Administration have been sanctioned by the US Administration, not one of whom has been sanctioned by the UK Government. What is going on? I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that there is no dodging this. The reality is that we are not doing what we are supposed to do. The UK should sanction these officials because they have undermined the rule of law, dismantled Hong Kong’s democracy, cracked down on a free press—a thing we take for granted that is no longer in existence in Hong Kong—and allowed police brutality against protesters. In fact, I discovered quite recently that UK Government money had been going to a British company helping to train the Chinese police force in different methods. I now gather—my hon. Friend might confirm this—that that financing has stopped, but it should not have taken some of us to call for it to be checked and stopped for that to happen.

I want to touch on two other areas, Sudan and Nicaragua, because this is not just about China and Russia. There is more to come, as I say, with names on China. In Sudan, as has been highlighted before, the US has taken action against the Central Reserve police, who are responsible for the use of excessive and lethal force against protesters. The UK is yet to take action. The Foreign Secretary is committed to looking into this, and I welcome that, but that commitment must yield the force of the UK’s sanctions regime.

In Nicaragua, there have long been allegations against the Ortega regime for its use of torture against political opponents. I want to draw attention to one particular individual in this context—Sadrach Zeledón Rocha, mayor of the city of Matagalpa, who was sanctioned by the US for his involvement in violence inflicted against peaceful protesters. We also understand that the FCDO has received detailed evidence of his involvement in the physical torture of and sexual violence against political prisoners.

I say this to my hon. Friend the Minister: we should be a beacon of freedom, decency and anti-corruption in the world. People should look to the UK as the country that sits on a hill and shines its light of freedom everywhere, into every nook and cranny of the dirty, foul dealings of people who use their money and influence, often here in the UK. I ask him to commit the UK Government, at a minimum, to immediately doing all the sanctioning that the US Government have done. They have the evidence and we have the ability to do it. I simply ask that at the end of this debate he says, “Yes, we haven’t done enough, but now we are going to do all of it immediately.” If he can say that, then he will certainly please us, and he will send hope of freedom to many around the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I start by thanking Redress, which has been hugely influential and important. Without its data, we would not have been able to have this debate today.

My hon. Friend the Minister must not take this personally, but this is not good enough—I am sorry. He set out a very laudable list of people and countries, but the fact remains that we have sanctioned only 20% of what the US has sanctioned. There is no answer yet as to why the US knows more than we do, and why we have not asked it for what it knows that we do not know. As we go into recess, the Government now have a few weeks to get this sorted out and to come back with a list of all the people they will sanction just to get us level with the US. I would like to see us sanction more, but there we are.

I draw the House’s attention to the reality in Xinjiang, where the Uyghurs are being decimated. It is the crime of all crimes: genocide. How have we not sanctioned the architects of this brutal, foul crime? Will my hon. Friend please go back to his office and say, “Get the names of those the Americans have sanctioned, and let us now sanction them immediately.”

We should stand for freedom, human rights and the rule of law, which are features of what we do here. If we cannot spell out to the world that we will not allow these acts of brutality and corruption to take place anywhere in the world, and even in London, we are not worth that title. I believe we are, so can we please come back in September and sanction everyone we can?

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered UK sanctions for human rights abuses and corruption.