Shaker Aamer

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

First, I apologise for missing the first part of the contribution of the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison). I commend her for securing this debate and I also commend the campaigners who have done such an incredible job for so long.

What we have in Guantanamo Bay is a legal black hole, where no law applies, no justice applies, and those who remain there must wonder if they have any future whatever. That goes on with the complicity of the United States and—because of our inability to gain the release of everyone else from Guantanamo Bay— the complicity of many other Governments around the world.

In the recently produced “Human Rights and Democracy: The 2012 Foreign & Commonwealth Office Report”, there is—commendably—a section on Guantanamo Bay, in which the Government say:

“The Government maintains that the indefinite detention without trial of persons in Guantanamo Bay is unacceptable and that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay should be closed.”

The report goes on to say that the issue has been raised with

“the then US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta”

and that the Government will work with the USA to secure the release. I hope that, when he responds to the debate, the Minister can tell us what possible justification the US Government continue to offer for maintaining Guantanamo Bay despite the many protestations of President Obama before his election five years ago that the first thing he would do would be to close it down. There has been no problem whatever, as hon. Members have pointed out, with any of the British nationals who have been released from Guantanamo Bay, who, in fact, have made a commendable contribution to arguments for justice and for closing it down.

The treatment of Shaker Aamer is appalling by any standards. The stories he will be able to tell will frighten an awful lot of people, and they will show just how precious an independent legal system is and just how precious it is to be able to represent yourself and your case in court. He is stuck there, experiencing great difficulty and with no right of access to US justice. Indeed, if he was able to get into court at the present time I do not think that any British or European court would accept the case, because somebody who has been in detention for so long, who has been so badly treated and who has spent such a long period in solitary confinement could not possibly give any credible evidence. As a result, he would have to be released immediately.

I conclude by saying that our function as a Parliament in a democracy is to hold the Government to account, and it is the function of the Government to try to ensure that all British nationals and residents are able to enjoy freedom, democracy and access to justice. I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate, he can tell us exactly what excuses the USA continues to offer for this travesty of justice that is still going on and this appalling detention that is continuing.

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[Alistair Burt]

Let me now deal with some of the questions that colleagues have raised in the debate, starting with why Mr Aamer is in Guantanamo Bay, which is the central question. I will say what I said before: he is not being held by the United Kingdom, so we do not have a reason why he is detained. In our view the detention is wrong and he should not be there. I make that very clear. The United States must satisfy itself that it has reasons.

It is genuinely very difficult to comment on why the United States might think that Mr Aamer is rightly in Guantanamo Bay. We have to discuss the detail with the US to seek to secure his release. That is sensitive, and we do not discuss intelligence matters. We have always held the view that indefinite detention without review or fair trial is unacceptable. We welcome the President’s continuing commitment to closing the detention facility and to maintaining a lawful, sustainable and principled regime for the handling of detainees there. Beyond our making it clear that we do not consider the detention of Mr Aamer to be right or correct, the United States plainly has a different point of view. The process of our arguing for Mr Aamer’s release is seeking to persuade the US; to a certain extent the parliamentary and public pressure in the United Kingdom adds to that sense of persuasion that the detention is not right or appropriate. That remains the Government’s view.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will the Minister tell us exactly what the US Secretary for Defence says about why Mr Aamer is in Guantanamo Bay at all? What reason do the US offer for putting someone who was legally resident in this country in prison for so long, with no legal process?

[Alistair Burt]

Forgive me; that is one of the questions that I cannot answer in direct terms, because that forms part of the confidential discussions that we need to have with the United States in relation to this matter. A breach of its confidentiality in relation to it would damage the efforts that we are continuing to undertake in relation to Mr Aamer’s release. Although I fully understand the reason for asking the question, and the degree of frustration about my not being able to give a response, those are my reasons for not going into it. Plainly, there is an obvious difference of opinion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The fact is that both sides have a level of trust first in the United States, and then in many other countries in the world, including the UK, to take forward the process. I will visit the region in the coming weeks to reinforce that and to try to accelerate everything that we are talking about. In general in world affairs, I do not believe that sporting fixtures should be an obstacle to political progress of any form, and I do not think they will be in this case.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Does the Foreign Secretary not realise that any progress between Israel and Palestine is very unlikely to move on at all while the settlement building, the annexation of East Jerusalem and the siege of Gaza continue? Until Israel radically modifies its behaviour towards the Palestinian people, how can there be any progress?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman is well aware of our condemnation of settlement activity on occupied land, and I am happy to reiterate that today. It is one reason why carrying the process forward is such an urgent matter. Settlement activity means that within a foreseeable time, a two-state solution will no longer be practical. Secretary Kerry has put that case, and the United States Administration accept it. We have to try to make a success of the process, including by coming to a conclusion on all final status issues.

FCO: Human Rights Work

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Stanley]

I agree with my friend that that is an opportunity, but to be wholly frank and honest, I have grave doubts about whether it will be seized, because I fear that since the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, there simply has not been a majority in the Knesset that is really willing to embrace the concept of creating a separate, independent, viable Palestinian state.

In recent years, we have seen the Israeli Government ending the movement of Palestinians between Gaza and Israel, turning Gaza into one of the biggest prisons, de facto, in the world. We have seen the relentless and continuing removal of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem, with the clear political objective of preventing East Jerusalem from ever becoming the capital of a Palestinian state. We see the continuation of the intolerable violation of Palestinian human rights on the west bank. To expose that, we need go no further than the Israeli NGO—I stress that it is an Israeli NGO—B’Tselem in its last annual report. It said:

“In the West Bank, two and a half million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation while settlers live in enclaves of Israeli law within the same territory. Individual acts of violence by extremist settlers periodically capture the headlines, and discriminatory and inadequate law enforcement is indeed a concern. However, the major human rights violations result from the settlements themselves: their extensive exploitation of land and water, the massive military presence to protect them, the road network paved to serve them and the invasive route of the Separation Barrier, which was largely dictated by the settlements.”

Having made many visits to the British consulate-general in Jerusalem, I am well aware of the sterling and excellent work that is done by the Foreign Office from the consulate- general in trying to support and uphold Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories. However, in my view, a step change will be needed in the Israeli Government’s policy towards the Palestinians and towards the occupied territories if we are to see a genuine improvement in human rights. Does the Minister see any such prospect? From where I sit, and having seen the human rights deterioration taking place over so many years, I fear that we are moving to a position in which Gaza continues for the foreseeable future as one gigantic prison, East Jerusalem becomes an area where house after house belonging to a Palestinian family is taken over by the Israelis and, sadly, the west bank loses the possibility of becoming the core of an independent Palestinian state and becomes what I can only describe as a middle-eastern version of a Bantustan. Perhaps I am being too gloomy. I hope that I am, but I fear that I am not, given the progress of events.

I now come to a different part of the world and a different human right. I want to raise the case of Colonel Kumar Lama, a Nepalese citizen who came temporarily to the UK and who has now been arrested in the UK on the grounds of allegations of torture, committed not in Britain but in Nepal and committed not against British nationals but against Nepalese nationals. I wish to inform the House that although I have no registered interest to declare, I am the chairman of the all-party Britain-Nepal group.

I am raising this issue not because I want to take any position or make any comment on Colonel Lama’s specific case, but because it calls into question some very important human rights policy issues for the Government. In his letter to me this week, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has said that the arrest of Colonel Lama has been carried out to fulfil the UK’s obligations under the UN convention against torture. I cannot believe that Colonel Lama’s case is an isolated one. I cannot believe that Colonel Lama is the only foreign national in the UK against whom allegations have been made of torture committed against non-British nationals in foreign countries. Surely there must be scores and possibly even hundreds of others in the same category, so the key policy issue that I have to put to the Minister is this. Will he now confirm that, in the light of the Colonel Lama case, the British prosecuting authorities and the police will now arrest, in fulfilment of the UK Government’s obligations under the UN convention against torture, all other foreign nationals in Britain against whom there are allegations of torture committed against non-British nationals in foreign countries? That is the central policy question the Colonel Lama case raises. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

The key human right of freedom of expression embraces, in my view, freedom of speech, a free media and freedom to demonstrate peacefully. Freedom of expression is becoming ever more important in this electronic age, which gives Governments who are so minded greater and greater ability to suppress human rights and human rights activists. It enables Governments to combine unprecedented access to information acquired electronically with an unprecedented ability to carry out surveillance electronically.

I shall turn from freedom of expression generally to developments in that key human right in the Commonwealth. I am glad to say that we seem to have achieved a breakthrough on freedom of expression as far as Commonwealth countries are concerned. The first declaration of Commonwealth principles, made in Singapore in 1971 and followed by a repeated declaration of the principles 20 years later in the 1991 Harare declaration, was a major step forward in human rights for the Commonwealth, but in neither the Singapore declaration nor the Harare declaration were Commonwealth countries able to agree on including freedom of expression as a key Commonwealth principle and human right.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Like the right hon. Gentleman, I welcome the Commonwealth declaration, which is a good step forward, but there must be concerns about the treatment of lesbian and gay people, in Uganda and Malawi for example. Although the Governments appear to be able to sign the declaration, it remains to be seen whether that signature will translate into any change in attitude, policy or law in either country.

[Sir John Stanley]

The hon. Gentleman is correct. In some countries to which he refers, national law conspicuously contradicts the Commonwealth charter that has just been announced.

I am glad to say that we now seem to have had a significant breakthrough as far as Commonwealth countries are concerned. In the text of the Commonwealth charter, which the Foreign Secretary has just laid before the House as a Command Paper, we were all glad to see, for the first time, a statement that freedom of expression is an essential Commonwealth principle. I must say that the wording of the paragraph is not entirely as I would have wished. It contains no reference to the right of peaceful demonstration or protest and instead of referring to “a free media” refers to “a free and responsible media,” which will of course provide grounds for countries that regard any form of criticism of the Government of the day as irresponsible to snuff out freedom of expression. We have made a significant step forward however. Freedom of expression is now within the Commonwealth charter—something we have never achieved before.

In conclusion, I wish to add my congratulations to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on producing this substantial report—all 388 pages, all well worth the publication cost. I have said before, but I want to put on record again, that we owe the initiative entirely to the late Robin Cook, who began these particular FCO annual reports. I consider it imperative that the FCO continues to produce these annual human rights reports—and produces them in hard copy, please. It is equally imperative that they should be scrutinised annually by the Foreign Affairs Committee and that the Committee’s scrutiny comes annually before the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Havard. I am pleased to take part in the debate.

I shall take as my starting point the end of the speech by the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) on how the late Robin Cook, as Foreign Secretary, introduced the concept of an annual human rights report from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In return, the Foreign Affairs Committee must monitor it and put forward proposals, and then we get a debate in Westminster Hall, which seems to be a poor return for the amount of work put in by both the FCO and the Committee, particularly as the debate is limited to an hour and a half. I reiterate what I said last year, and I have said every year about the debates: the debate should be for at least three hours, in the main Chamber on a Thursday afternoon or another appropriate time—possibly in Government time. If we are to be taken seriously as a country concerned with human rights and with the influence that we can bring to bear on human rights around the world, we have to take ourselves seriously. Although I respect all hon. Members taking part in the debate, it needs to be given greater prominence. I am sure the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), would agree, because it would mean that he could speak in the main Chamber, rather than here.

[Richard Ottaway]

I am inscrutable.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

He is utterly inscrutable. He and I had an interesting debate in Cambridge two weeks ago, and he was less inscrutable then.

I wanted to raise many issues, but I shall try to be brief to take on the points you made, Mr Havard, about the length of the debate. We should consider the fact that the parliamentary process of human rights monitoring is complex. We have the Human Rights Act 1998, which applies to UK law. I am a strong supporter of it and our participation in the European convention on human rights and the European Court Of Human Rights. You, Mr Havard, chair the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which the 1998 Act set up. I welcome the Joint Committee and its work. It has been a valuable way to monitor what has gone on, but I remain to be persuaded that, with all the other responsibilities the Foreign Affairs Committee has, it would not be better to have an international human rights Committee of the UK Parliament to deal with international human rights issues and to put forward the strong cases that many Members make on many occasions about human rights issues around the world.

Things have moved on, in that Britain is a signatory to the International Criminal Court and our courts have pronounced a universal jurisdiction for human rights offenders and potential war criminals where there is prima facie evidence against them. That was a huge step forward. We have spent a lot of time raising human rights in Chile and the need to put General Pinochet and others on trial for what they did there, so I welcome the universal jurisdiction declaration. Much less welcome however is that Parliament has reduced its applicability by limiting the arrest warrant to an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions rather than an application from an individual citizen to Westminster magistrates court. That has not done our reputation much good.

When the Minister responds to the debate—obviously there are many issues and I guess he will not be able to reply to all of them—I would be grateful if he could answer this narrative issue. I welcome the way in which our representatives at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, which I quite often attend on behalf of a non-governmental organisation, regularly and effectively take up the issue of the death penalty; they are to be commended on that. It is quite noticeable that on every single report that comes up from a country that retains the death penalty, the UK representative gets up and objects to its use in that jurisdiction; I absolutely welcome that.

I am interested in taking international human rights and human rights law further. The International Criminal Court is an enormous step forward—there is no question about that—but the non-participation of certain countries in it, particularly the United States, obviously weakens it. Since the first world war, the US has had mixed feelings about involvement in any international organisation. What pressure was the Minister able to bring to bear on the United States regarding its participation, or indeed on the many other countries that still need to participate?

I am an officer of the all-party group on human rights, and a vast number of human rights abuse issues are brought to our attention. We try to take them up in the best way we can with our very limited resources. I want to bring up a general issue, but I will first deal with some specific countries.

I notice how rapidly human rights issues can change. In the “Human Rights and Democracy: The 2011 Foreign and Commonwealth Office Report”, one country that has not been listed for particular attention is Bangladesh. Yesterday, there was a demonstration outside this building concerning the current wave of attacks on minorities and the conduct of the war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh. Amnesty International reported last week:

“A wave of violent attacks against Bangladesh’s minority Hindu community shows the urgent need for authorities to provide them with better protection…Over the past week, individuals taking part in strikes called for by Islamic parties have vandalised more than 40 Hindu temples across Bangladesh.”

The report goes on to describe the attacks against religious minorities. To the credit of those who attended the small demonstration yesterday in Parliament square, there were representatives from Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim organisations. They wanted to see the retention of the secular constitution in Bangladesh and to question the conduct of the war crimes tribunal.

I have no problem whatever with any country deciding to investigate what were the most abominable abuses of human rights and the war crimes committed during the independence war of 1971. However, the case would be strengthened if international observers were specifically appointed to attend all the sessions, to give it a degree of support and approval, which was done in war crimes tribunals in other parts of the world. It is not to say that the war crimes tribunal is a bad thing—I think it is a good thing—but observer presence should be strengthened.

While I understand the deep anger that many people feel and the terrible sense of loss that many have suffered, I cannot, under any circumstance, support the death penalty for anything; indeed, that is now a narrative of our policies. I hope that we will make that clear, and also make it clear that the mobs that are attacking minority communities or anyone who is not seen to approve what they want are totally unacceptable. We should be saying that clearly to the Bangladeshi Government. I do not blame the Bangladeshi Government for the activities of the mobs, because those activities are largely directed against the Government, but all Governments have a responsibility to protect minorities and people in what is an extremely difficult situation. There is a large Bangladeshi community in this country.

The right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling rightly drew attention to the situation in Palestine. I was in Gaza three weeks ago, on a delegation with colleagues from the Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties, organised by Interpal. The issue of human rights and the treatment of prisoners are very current. Issues such as Palestinian parliamentarians still being held in prison, the frequent use of executive detention and the hunger strikes that have taken place, and continue to take place, among the prisoners are not going to go away.

Effectively, 1.7 million people are in a prison called Gaza, with very limited access to Israel and no access whatever, as far as I can see, to the west bank through Israel. The population is imprisoned unless Egypt can be persuaded to open the Rafah crossing fully, which would in turn make Gaza part of Egypt rather than part of Palestine. That may well be the intention of some, but we must be firm that the continued corralling of people in Gaza is an abuse of their human rights on a collective scale.

There is something tragic in talking to brilliant young people in Gaza. Some 55% of the population are university graduates—the best educated population in the whole region—but unemployment is at 70%. Their life chances and career possibilities are limited. It is a cauldron, of course, that explodes from time to time, and unless the fundamental issues are addressed, that cauldron will continue to explode.

I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) said about Sri Lanka and the treatment of Tamil people. I hope that the Government will continue to put all the pressure they can on the Sri Lankan Government. Above all, I hope that the embassy and particularly the Home Office will follow up cases in which someone is forcibly removed to another jurisdiction.

My final general points are about thematic issues. Dalit people in India and many other countries suffer a collective abuse of human rights because of a perverted view of Hinduism. Hundreds of millions of people suffer from that. We have an opportunity to support what the House of Lords has done and defend its amendment to our legislation that would mean that it will be illegal to discriminate by caste and descent in this country. That is illegal in the Indian constitution, but collective discrimination takes place on a massive scale. While the Department for International Development has done well in targeting aid programmes, which ensures that that does not happen in any project that we fund, we must be as tough as possible with the Indian Government and other Governments in whose territory discrimination by caste and descent takes place.

Around the world, there are individual and collective abuses of the human rights of people in the circumstances that we have outlined. There is also an appalling lack of human rights, dignity and access to democracy for large numbers of desperately poor migrants around the world. They are the people who are exploited in big cities and who die when they try to cross the Mediterranean, get to the Canary islands in the Atlantic or travel through Mexico to get to the United States, where they hope to gain some kind of economic salvation. We must address the collective human rights issues of millions of people around the world who suffer the most appalling privations and often death while trying to find a place of economic and political sanctuary. It is up to us to be more alert and aware of the causes. That is surely what being in a democratic Parliament is about.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

I must correct Mr Corbyn: it is not my Committee. The good work is down to Dr Hywel Francis who is the chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, not me. It is probably because we are both Welsh that we have a great interest in human rights.

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[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)]

Mr Havard, I welcome the opportunity to set out in this debate the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s work on human rights. I begin by thanking the Foreign Affairs Committee for its positive and constructive engagement with us on our human rights work. I am delighted to speak for the Government today on behalf of Baroness Warsi, the Minister with responsibility for human rights.

Given the slight shortage of time, I am rather inclined to support the idea that we should debate these matters for longer and I will simply be unable to respond to all hon. Members who have spoken. I have made a note of hon. Members’ questions—they are extremely good questions—and I will try to answer them, but if I do not I will commit to writing my replies.

At the outset of the debate, there was some discussion and some concern about the UK’s overseas interests and our human rights agenda, as if they were in some way contradictory. I do not really share some of the cynicism that was expressed, because the promotion and protection of human rights is at the heart of our foreign policy. Britain stands for democratic freedoms, universal human rights and the rule of law. We believe that individual demands for a better life can only be truly satisfied in open and democratic societies, and that it is peaceful, open economies that allow trade and investment to flourish.

I turn first to the 2011 report that we are debating, and our work in that year, and then I will move on to human rights developments during the course of 2012.

In response to the Committee’s feedback on the 2010 report, we made a number of changes to the 2011 report. We featured an in-depth look at the Arab spring and a chapter on our human rights priorities, and we reintroduced case studies to highlight issues of concern in countries whose overall record did not merit their inclusion in the countries of concern list.

In terms of achievements in 2011, the UK made a significant contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide. I shall limit myself to mentioning just three countries in particular. On Libya, we were instrumental in negotiating UN Security Council resolutions that paved the way for NATO action to protect civilians threatened by Gaddafi’s forces. Across the middle east and north Africa, the £110 million Arab partnership fund helped us to build more open and free societies on key issues such as empowering women, and promoting democracy and the rule of law. In Burma, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary witnessed at first hand the positive changes that have taken place in the country when he became the first British Foreign Secretary to visit Burma since 1955. I subsequently visited Burma in December last year, and was able to visit Rakhine state, which is a subject of great interest to the House.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Swire]

I will take just one intervention; I ask other Members to let me make some progress.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I will make a very brief intervention. We obviously welcome all the democratic changes in Burma, but in his discussions in Burma did the Minister express any concern about the treatment of Muslim minorities and other minorities in the country at the present time?

[Mr Swire]

Yes, I can confirm that I have been doing a lot of work on that issue. I was the first Minister from Europe to go to Rakhine; I went to Sittwe and five different camps, and ever since then I have been raising the issue of the Rohingya people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, asked a number of questions about Burma, including about the sanctions against Burma. The EU Foreign Affairs Council will review the sanctions against Burma in April. We have always said that the outcome of that review will depend on the progress that the Burmese Government have made against the benchmarks set out in the council’s conclusions of 12 January, including the need for meaningful progress on reconciliation with armed ethnic groups.

My hon. Friend also asked about political prisoners in Burma, which is another issue I have raised repeatedly with the Burmese. Independent experts estimate that there remain about 240 political prisoners in Burma, and we welcomed the announcement by the Burmese Government that the International Committee of the Red Cross has access to all jails and prisoners. We also welcomed President Thein Sein’s announcement on 7 February that the prisoner review mechanism will contain civil society leaders and Members of Parliament. We really want to see that happen.

On the issue of Rakhine, which was mentioned earlier, I have just told the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) about my work there.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) raised the issue of Russia and the whole question of Mr Magnitsky. Yesterday both my Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe met the Russians and raised these issues with them repeatedly. As is well known—my right hon. Friend will know it if he has read the papers today—the Foreign Secretary met Russia’s Foreign Secretary Lavrov yesterday, and we will continue to raise these issues and bring those responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s death to account. We also raised concern over the new measures restricting freedom of expression and putting pressure on civil society. It is worth saying that we fund a number of projects to support Russian civil society, and we continue to meet and provide support to those who are subject to harassment. I give an assurance that we will continue to do all we can to protect British nationals and our staff in Russia, as my right hon. Friend asked us to do.

Syria

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I entirely understand my hon. Friend’s concerns. What I am confident about is that giving the active support that I have described to that modern and democratic opposition is the best way of helping to ensure that they are the ones who are successful. Our hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) rightly pointed out that it is often the moderate forces who lose out to extremists in circumstances such as these. The longer this goes on and the less support those forces receive from outside, the less will be their chances of success in standing up to those extremists. We must make a choice about whether we are prepared to give that support, and I think that the right choice for the United Kingdom is to increase the level of support for people who we would be prepared to see succeed.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The situation in Syria is obviously appalling, and the humanitarian crisis is absolutely devastating, but the ending of every war requires a political solution of some sort. What serious negotiations are being undertaken with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are fundamentally the funders of the opposition forces in Syria, and what serious engagement is taking place with the Government of Iran, particularly in regard to bringing about some kind of comprehensive peace negotiation and peace process? Without that, there will be more suffering, more deaths and more difficulties for everyone.

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. If regional powers were able to agree among themselves about the situation and about a solution, that would be an enormous step forward, just as it would be a vital step forward if we, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, were able to agree among ourselves. There have been some attempts. Last autumn, the Egyptian Government convened a group consisting of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey to consider the situation together and to see if they could agree on a way forward. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that they did not reach an agreement, but that is not to say that such a group could not be revived in the future. We have absolutely no problem with that. It did not succeed before—the reason it did not succeed is that Iran has not been prepared to agree on a way forward with other countries in the region—but that does not mean that it should not be tried again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Like the hon. Members for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), I was on an Interpal delegation to Gaza last week. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us what is being done to lift the blockade on Gaza so that the terrible water situation can be addressed. Sewage cannot be processed, fresh water is unobtainable because of the pollution of the aquifer, and the material to set up a desalination plant or something like it cannot be brought in to provide a decent standard of living for the people of Gaza.

[Alistair Burt]

Following the end of the conflict towards the end of last year, there have been renewed efforts to ensure that Gaza progresses towards a normal economic situation and that the resources that are needed to rebuild the infrastructure can go into Gaza. The United Kingdom is clear that unless that happens, the divide between Gaza and Israel will remain. It is essential that that work proceeds and that the UK plays a full part in urging those changes.

Kurdish Genocide

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is quite right. I do not think that the Kurdish people can get closure on the horrific crimes that were committed against them in Iraq, but if Parliament today recognises that what took place was genocide, they will be one step closer. We will also send a clear message to all those countries that might at some point be tempted to attack their own people because of their ethnicity to think twice. I thank him for being here and for supporting the motion.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate and on his speech, which will do a great deal to create greater understanding of the plight of Kurdish people in all countries. Will he reflect for a moment on the fact that, although what happened in 1988 was genocide and was appalling, this country, to its shame, continued to sell arms to Iraq, and indeed took part in the Baghdad arms fair less than a year later, and that the weaponry it continued to supply might well have been used in the oppression of the Kurdish people?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I said in my opening remarks, Saddam Hussein’s spin machine and many instruments of power were available to him, including a number of people who lobbied this Parliament and the Government very hard at the time to continue to do business with him. At this point, I must recognise John Major’s contribution to safeguarding the Kurds in ’91 when Saddam used his helicopter gunships to attack the Kurdish people after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. This country decided to put in place a no-fly zone to protect the Kurdish people and the Shi’a people in the south of Iraq, who were coming under similar attack.

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[Meg Munn]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing that partnership to the attention of the House. It is true that in the UK there are very many doctors of Iraqi and Iraqi-Kurdish origin. While they have continued to serve and provide support for our community, they are also doing such things as my hon. Friend described and doing what they can at a time when the health services in Iraq still need a great deal of investment to develop to serve an ordinary population, let alone one that has suffered the kind of trauma, torture and chemical attacks that have been suffered in Iraq, particularly in Kurdistan.

Alongside the physical impact of repression on the population, we must not underestimate the psychological effects: living with the grief of lost family members, remembering the terror of attacks and, above all, the constant fear. As a woman says in one of the DVDs I mentioned, Iraqi people had no dignity because they had to sell out their consciences to Saddam Hussein to stay alive.

Thirty-five years of dictatorship are not easily forgotten, but there have been positive moments since the 2003 invasion. We remember the TV pictures of the purple-stained fingers shown with pride when the Iraqi people were able to exercise the right to vote—something that we take for granted. They were excited about being able to take part in the first democratic elections. But of course voting is only the first act; building the institutions and democratic habits are much more difficult—all the more so when people have not been allowed to make their own decisions, and acting on their own initiative was a risky thing to do.

My involvement with the Kurdistan regional and Iraqi national parliaments has shown me just how difficult this task is, but it is a task to which many brave Iraqis are committed. To take on these tasks and build a new society is complex and demanding; it will take time, dedication and determination. We should continue to support them in this. An important way to do that is formally to recognise what happened to them. Former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner argues that

“human rights should mean that people are protected within their own countries”.

When these rights are violated, it is the duty of the international community to honour victims and to ensure that history cannot repeat itself. If democratic Governments cannot be clear about genocide and say that such crimes must be stamped out, then who will?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my hon. Friend for the interesting points she is making. Does she accept that there is systematic discrimination against Kurdish people, culture and language in all the neighbouring countries—it is a product of the break-up of the Ottoman empire at the end of the first world war—and that those countries have to reckon with a multicultural, multilingual and multi-ethnic society if there is to be long-term peace in the region?

[Meg Munn]

Building the kind of society described by my hon. Friend, which recognises people’s rights to their own language and culture and to celebrate their background, is enormously important and very much part of this process. Although building democracy in Iraq and working with Iraqi parliamentarians is difficult, it is encouraging to see Iraqis across all political groups and backgrounds working together. The services and reconstruction committee of the Iraqi Parliament will visit us next week. It is chaired by a Kurdish-Yezidi woman and is comprised of people from different backgrounds who are working together to try to build things for the Iraqi people. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend has said.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and others for their speeches and their contribution to this whole issue. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) for his speech. As he pointed out, he is the first Kurdish Member of the British Parliament. He and I have shared platforms at Kurdish events and I have no doubt that we will do so again in the future. He made a very good case for the recognition of what was a genocide of the Kurdish people in Iraq in 1988 and I absolutely support what he said. Next month will be Newroz, the Kurdish new year, which will be celebrated across a wide range of communities both in this country and all over the region.

One hopes that we will be able to draw attention to what happened in Iraq in 1988. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) pointed out, she and I were both Members of this House at that time and we both frequently raised the issue, including in the British media. Although the lack of knowledge among much of the public is understandable because of how the media failed to report things, we must be honest that it took a long time for most of the media and the political establishment in this country to cotton on to what was happening to the Kurdish people in Iraq. To be honest, a lot of British Government policy was blindsided by their obsession with supporting Iraq against Iran in the dreadful Iran-Iraq war and Britain’s considerable economic interests in Iraq at the time, not least in oil exploration and exploitation and so on. We must have a sense of deep self-criticism about the process. If we do not have that, it does us no favours.

The news finally came out about the use of gas and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) pointed out, how the villages were bombed first to break the glass so that the gas had the maximum effect. That was an evil piece of work in which a large number of wonderful, brilliant people lost their lives. In remembering a genocide, we must work out how it happened, how it came about and how we can prevent it from happening again.

Let me say a few words in general about Kurdistan, the Kurdish people and how we can move on. There is a complicated narrative in world history of equating nations, ethnic communities and languages with nation states, which does not always work. The end of the first world war was a seminal point for the whole region—this is germane to the history of the region. The Kurdish people had been part of and had recognition within the Ottoman empire, and operated with a Kurdish identity and language. They took at face value Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, as did many people in the region, including Palestinian people and many others, and assumed that they would achieve nationhood as a result. The high point of Kurdish recognition was a sandwich between the treaty of Sèvres and the treaty of Lausanne. Between those treaties there was recognition of a Kurdish state. Modern Turkey was established, the western interests were more interested in a buffer against the Soviet Union and in the mandates that France and Britain achieved further south, and the Kurdish people and their wishes were obliterated. Britain did not have clean hands in this. We took part in the establishment of modern Iraq and the first aerial bombardment of people using chemical weapons was by Britain in northern Iraq in 1922 against Kurdish people. So there is a history of obliteration of the Kurdish people, their language, their culture and identity. What Saddam was doing was the ultimate in oppression of a nation or people, but the treatment of Kurdish people in other countries in the region to this day needs to be examined—in Iran, in Syria and in Turkey.

I have a substantial Kurdish population in my constituency, mainly but not all emanating from Turkey. Indeed, I have visited most parts of Kurdistan over the years. It is sad to report that we still do not have full recognition of Kurdish people in modern Turkey, or mother tongue teaching in all Turkish schools, or indeed in any Turkish schools except those where Kurdish is the first language. It is incumbent on us, if Turkey wants to be a partner in the European Union or anything else, to put a great deal of pressure on it and say, “You have to give greater recognition, linguistic rights, cultural rights and all the other things to the Kurdish people in Turkey.”

It does not particularly help when the mayor of a major city such as Diyarbakir is put on trial for producing information in the Kurdish language, which is the normal language for that part of the country. The break-up of the Ottoman empire led to that situation, and there has been this passion ever since for recognition of the Kurdish. To a huge extent, that has been achieved with the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. It is not totally correct to call it independent because in international legal terms it is not an independent recognised state, but in reality it is recognised as a representative place of the Kurdish people.

It is more than welcome that over the past few weeks, under pressure following hunger strikes and the dreadful assassinations in Paris a few weeks ago, the Turkish Government have openly admitted that they have to talk to Öcalan as a recognisable leader of the Kurdish people in Turkey. There is a growing sense of unity between Kurdish people within the nation states and a recognition that they have to come together. Does this mean that there is going to be a country called Kurdistan that encompasses parts of the other countries in the future? I do not know. As far as I am aware, none of the Kurdish national movements calls for an independent Kurdistan outwith national borders any longer. They all call for recognition within national borders. We have to understand, welcome and recognise that.

If you oppress people, deny them their language, deny them their cultural rights, drive them into the ground in the way minorities have been treated prior to genocides all over the world, including native Americans, Jewish people and many others in the past 150 years, you end up with the acceptance of the ultimate oppression, which is what happened in that genocide in 1988. So I support the motion that is before us today.

Many have drawn attention to the achievements, such as they are, in modern Iraq with the Kurdish Autonomous Region, and I recognise those. Indeed, I visited the region after the Gulf war in 1991. With colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), I opposed the Iraq war in 2003, not because I was in any sense ever an apologist for Saddam Hussein or what he did, but because I did not believe that the motives for the war were the right ones—I believed they were more to do with American military power and military resources than anything else—and I thought an awful lot of people would die and an awful lot of money would be spent as a result of the war. Although we will never agree completely on that, I think we all agree that successive Iraqi Governments have an abominable record on their treatment of the Kurdish people. One hopes that the Kurdish Autonomous Region will be recognised universally and that it will be a place where Kurdish people can live.

When we talk of genocides and holocausts, the holocaust against Jewish people in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is paramount in everyone’s thoughts. Attending Holocaust memorial day ceremonies is an important thing, as is young people understanding what the holocaust was about, but it is also important to understand that there have been other genocides around the world. There is no time to go through all of them or define them all now, but the European treatment of native Americans during the colonisation of north America from the 16th century onward, but particularly later on, was to all intents and purposes a genocide against those people; other examples are Cambodia and Rwanda—an abominable and appalling series of events. Taking place closer to the region we are discussing today was the Armenian massacre in 1915.

Whenever one of us tables an early-day motion recognising and associating that massacre in principle with what has happened to the Kurdish people, we attract great criticism from people in Turkey who, frankly, ought to know better, but who say that we have no right to draw attention to that. It is important that we understand the history of the abominable treatment of people because of racist attitudes and approaches, which end in the vilest abuses of human rights being condoned.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Holocaust memorial day. Having been slightly involved in what I consider to have been a holocaust, in Bosnia, whenever I speak at or attend a Holocaust memorial day ceremony, I do not think only of the Jewish holocaust. I certainly think of Armenia, the Kurds and the Cambodians as well. I totally agree with him: when we speak of a holocaust, we must mean more than one particular nation.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point, on which we agree.

I am proud to represent a significant number of Kurdish people in my constituency. I am proud of the contribution they make, whether they came to this country or were born here. In a month’s time, when we celebrate Newroz in Finsbury Park, that will be, as ever, a joyous celebration—hopefully this time with the greatest possible unity between Kurdish people from every part of the Kurdish area.

If we recognise a genocide, that is a big step. We are recognising something that is defined in law as an attempt to obliterate a people because of their identity, their race or their ethnicity. In doing that, we recognise that something awful happened, and we have to examine ourselves and what we as a country or one of a group of countries did or did not do at the time. But doing that helps the next generation to understand that not forgetting puts one in a position to try to influence the future and protect minorities, wherever they are in the world. Tragically, the genocides we have been discussing today were not the first, and although I hope they were the last, I am not sure that they were. It is recognition and understanding of peoples, their rights, their identity, their culture and their traditions that bring about a safer and more secure world. Achieving that is not necessarily about wars, bombs and invasions; it is much more about understanding and a recognition of people and their rights, and sharing resources not stealing them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Simmonds]

The Government are significantly engaged in multilateral discussions aimed at precisely that point and to address high and volatile global food prices, notably at the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the G20’s Agricultural Market Information System.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

What contact are the Government having with the Government of Iran, and what are they doing to ensure that the aspiration of a middle east nuclear weapon free zone conference takes place, given that the one due in Helsinki was postponed?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

As co-sponsor of the conference, we are determined to see it progress. It was not possible to hold it by the end of last year, but I remain in contact with Minister Laavaja, the facilitator, to see whether it can make progress. It is the United Kingdom’s intention to continue to press for this.

Mali

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Simmonds]

The discussions relating to the problem in northern Mali have been going on for some considerable time in the Foreign Office, the Ministry of the Defence and the Department for International Development. The response that the Prime Minister gave to the request from President Hollande, who was responding to a request from the Malian Government, was a crisis response. It was not a detailed, thought-through response—it has been thought through since—but a response to a particular need at a particular time of crisis. As my hon. Friend will be aware, these things are monitored persistently and continually. I do not have the numbers with me on the military personnel who are being deployed to Paris and Bamako, but I can tell my hon. Friend that the number of people operating the military aircraft and those who will be protecting them will be very small.

In response to the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), the Danes have said that they are going to make commitments on logistical support, as have others in the international community beyond the immediate region.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Minister will be well aware that there is a great deal of antagonism towards the Malian army and its human rights record in the north of the country, that the Tuareg people have been systematically excluded from the political process, and that that has laid very fertile ground for this conflict to break out. Is he concerned about mission creep and the unintended consequences of Britain’s and France’s involvement in a war that will create a growth in the forces he is seeking to oppose, rather than bring about the political settlement that is necessary to achieve peace and prosperity for the people of the country?

[Mark Simmonds]

I reiterate that the Prime Minister made it very clear that we were offering only limited logistical support—two C-17 planes and no combat troops—and have no plans to provide more military assistance. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, though, to say that it is necessary to bring the Tuareg and their representatives into the political process and the political governance structures of an integrated Malian state. That is being discussed at the United Nations and at a regional African level, led by the African Union and other senior figures in ECOWAS.

Sri Lanka

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. May I say to the hon. Gentleman that I have never been invited to Sri Lanka? Generally, I do not do international travel in my role as an MP, because I am constituency-focused. I secured this debate, and I have become involved in the Tamil cause, because of the Tamil community in my constituency and because of the information that I have received from them. I have become aware of the despair and distress that they experience. My own experience as someone who is London-Irish—I have Irish parents— is that people cannot just ignore what happened in the past. People cannot just move on and forget, because people do not forget. If we do nothing now, we will say to the next young generation that violent struggle will continue. We must address the issues now, in order to make progress.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I compliment my hon. Friend on her work and I urge her to resist the temptations from the Sri Lankan Government lobby that is in Westminster Hall today and trying to claim that all is well in Sri Lanka when the reality is that it certainly is not. Furthermore, holding the Commonwealth conference in the country would be an endorsement of the Sri Lankan Government’s policies on the Tamil people, and would be extremely damaging to the cause of human rights, to the image of Sri Lanka and indeed to the prospect of a peaceful future for the country.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I will obviously take his views on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I will be brief, Mr Hollobone, so that the other Members can get in. I compliment you on your chairing of the debate and on your announcing in advance the line of speakers. That is helpful, and it is a good precedent for Westminster Hall debates.

I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and the hon. Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) on their contributions and on their work within the all-party group for Tamils and in support of the Tamil diaspora. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and I have been involved in issues regarding the Tamil people and Sri Lanka ever since 1983, when we were both first elected to the House, and I have never forgotten the huge demonstration that took place in July of that year in London because of the problems that there then were in Sri Lanka. There has been a litany of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka for the past 30 years and beyond.

It is not an accident that there is a large Tamil diaspora in London. Many Tamil people came to this country to seek a place of safety because of the civil war in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and the years before. I pay tribute to the diaspora community for pulling together. It supported the hunger strikes that took place out here in Parliament square and mobilised 200,000 people to march through London in support of the rights and survival of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka. Mobilising 200,000—almost the entire diaspora community—was a remarkable achievement; but, disgracefully, the British media routinely and almost totally ignored it. They were more concerned about traffic disruption in Parliament square than about human rights in Sri Lanka.

I recognise that things have changed and that things have to move on. There has to be a peace process, reconciliation and a reckoning with the past, which we are looking at to move forward.

My two essential points are that the UN report of last November specifically refers to the shelling of hospitals and civilian areas by the Sri Lankan armed forces and the way in which UN staff were driven away from the areas of conflict in 2008. I hope those issues will be seriously examined at the UN Human Rights Council meeting next month, which I hope to attend, as I have attended many Human Rights Council events

If we do not consider those issues, if we do not ensure the closure of what I do not refer to as welfare camps—at the end of the conflict, they were more like concentration camps—and if we do not address rights and opportunities for Tamil people in Sri Lanka, the war will return in a different form at a later stage. It is not a question of the Sri Lankan Government claiming victory over the Tamil people and the Tigers, as they have done; it has to be a question of their perception of the future of that country, otherwise in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time, if any of us are still here, we will be debating the same thing again: yet another massacre of Tamil people and yet another wave of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka trying to flee to a place of safety.

I hope that the Minister is able to tell us that the Government will be robust on the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting and will play a robust role at the UN Human Rights Council next month to show that the UN, the Human Rights Council and the human rights of the Tamil people matter in bringing about long-term peace in Sri Lanka.

Palestinian Resolution (United Nations)

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

As I mentioned, there will be serious and accumulating consequences for Israel of failing to bring about a two-state solution. Settlement building is a major contributor. It is the single biggest factor in removing the time and opportunity to create such a two-state solution. So, yes, Israel will face greater problems in future. As for other measures—my hon. Friend is seeking diplomatic penalties and so on for Israel in future—that arises when we turn our minds to how the United States should restart the peace process, and how European nations can support that. We will want to do so in a very active way, but I do not want to speculate about what measures we could take at this point.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary must be aware of the misery of refugees living for 60 years in the camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria; of the people of Gaza, imprisoned effectively by the Israeli blockade; and of the west bank under occupation. Why has he made a statement that effectively says that the diplomatic objectives of the US and Israel are holding a veto over our vote at the UN tomorrow? Will he not put himself on the side of history, rather than talking about the hand of history, and vote for the unconditional recognition of Palestine?

[Mr Hague]

I do not think that I was talking about the hand of history. That was a Tony Blair phrase—I have not adopted it. The lesson of history—I shall return to that point—is that we need a negotiation to succeed. The hon. Gentleman asked why the opinions of Israel and the United States matter so much. It is because we will only alleviate these problems and help decisively the people to whose plight he rightly drew attention with a negotiated settlement with Israel. Of course, one has to allow for opinion in Israel as well, and the nation with the closest relationships with Israel and the biggest leverage over its foreign policy decisions is the United States. That is why we must have due regard for its opinions. That is the practical and diplomatic approach that foreign policy must allow for. As I said, we are exercising the vote of a country and exercising our foreign policy, not making gestures.