FCO: Human Rights Work

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Dai Havard

Thursday 14th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[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.