Human Rights (Commonwealth)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion]

I absolutely support the work of the Kaleidoscope Trust, but a vast amount of work unfortunately remains for us to do.

It struck me forcefully when visiting the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg last week that many of the battles for racial equality had been won. It should be celebrated that apartheid is over, but segregation between homosexuals and heterosexuals continues in other parts of Africa. Many terrible cases from across the Commonwealth illustrate the appalling way that the LGBTI community and LGBTI activists have been treated. In Cameroon, Alice Nkom and Michel Togue, who are defence lawyers for LGBTI people, have received telephone calls and text messages on a daily basis from anonymous people who threaten them and their families with death. In South Africa, 24-year-old Noxolo Nogwaza was brutally murdered in KwaThema township. An active member of the Ekurhuleni Pride Organising Committee, she was raped, repeatedly stabbed and beaten to death. The police responsible for the investigation into her murder have so far made no progress and no suspects have been arrested.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech so far. Does she agree that that example shows that we must do a lot more than simply change the laws? South Africa has a rainbow constitution that is very much against discrimination based on sexuality, but the problems that she highlights still exist on the ground.

[Sarah Champion]

The fundamental problem is that, although equality is embedded within the Commonwealth charter, LGBTI rights are not mentioned explicitly, so these grey areas are exploited.

Last year, armed police raided a human rights workshop attended by LGBTI activists in Kampala, Uganda, arresting five staff of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project and 12 other participants. That happened in the context of the Ugandan Parliament seeking to pass an anti-homosexuality Bill, which could include punishing homosexuality with the death penalty. The Bill would create legal provisions to persecute and punish people just for being LGBTI, which directly contradicts all international human rights legislation and should be condemned by the international community. I am aware that Uganda claims that criminalising homosexuality is partly in the interest of public health. In reality, however, it further stigmatises and marginalises groups, making education about effective forms of sexually transmitted disease control considerably more difficult. HIV control is incredibly important as it is an enormous problem within the Commonwealth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and all the other speakers, several of whom were in South Africa with me last week. I hope that I do not repeat too much of the speech I made in Johannesburg, as they might find it much duller on a second hearing.

As a starting point, I want to echo what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, which was that the charter means nothing if it is just words on paper. It is very easy for people to sign up and say, “We all share these values”, and “We are one big happy family—aren’t we lovely people?”, and so on. What the Government do on the ground is what matters. It is about how they implement the charter and how they continue to review and monitor it, and make it stronger. The most important thing is that the charter must not be used as a fig leaf for human rights violations.

I also want to echo what the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said. When I spoke in Johannesburg last week, I was very conscious that we should not, as the UK, be going in and preaching to other people about human rights, particularly given our history as the colonial power in many of the countries that we are addressing.

As the hon. Gentleman said, it is ironic that, going back many years, we took Christianity to some of these countries and told them that things such as homosexuality were wrong, but now we are coming back and saying, “Hang on, we got it wrong that time. You have to think something completely different.”

One thing that came out of the response to my speech in Johannesburg was this. We were told by a few of the delegates, “You have to give us time, because we’re new democracies. You’ve been established a lot longer. It will take us longer to win hearts and minds and to progress these ideas of equality.” What concerns me about some of the countries is not that they are taking longer to reach the position that we are at with things such as same-sex marriage and allowing gay couples to adopt, but that they are moving backwards—in the wrong direction. I am thinking of things such as the Bill that Uganda has been debating for the past few years about bringing in the death penalty for homosexuality. The issue there is not people struggling to keep up with us and moving more slowly than us; that Bill is actually a step in the wrong direction. We also see that with other countries outside the Commonwealth, such as Russia, which is now moving in a very worrying direction on LGBT rights.

As was said, the Commonwealth charter refers to the Commonwealth’s opposition to

“all forms of discrimination”.

I want to pick up the point about LGBT rights being covered, we think, under the broad description of “other grounds”. I suspect that the intention was that because it would be impossible to get every Commonwealth country to sign up to a specific reference to discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, “other grounds” would be included so that countries that want to interpret that as meaning that we are against discrimination on those grounds can believe that, and those that are more reluctant to do so can pretend that it is not really in there. That lets some of the countries off the hook. I am referring to the 41 countries that will claim adherence to the charter, but will continue with their policies of discrimination.

Let me cite an example. I mentioned it in South Africa in response to the delegate from Cameroon. In June of this year, the gay activist Eric Lembembe said in response to attacks that were taking place on the offices of gay rights organisations in Cameroon:

“Unfortunately, a climate of hatred and bigotry in Cameroon, which extends to high levels in government, reassures homophobes that they can get away with these crimes.”

Two weeks later, he was horrifically tortured and murdered.

This is the important thing. Governments have a key role to play, but not just in the laws that they pass. They must recognise that the laws that they pass and the discussions that they have in Parliament filter down into horrific attacks on people in the streets. We see this even in countries such as South Africa. I echo what the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole said. The Deputy Speaker of the South African Parliament made an amazing speech, declaring her support for equality and saying that that was a country that had fought discrimination, and had fought apartheid. Thirty or 40 years ago, at that Commonwealth meeting, there would have been people arguing that apartheid was perfectly legitimate on human rights grounds, that different people had to respect different cultures and so on. However, even though that country has enshrined anti-discrimination measures in law, there is still that battle for hearts and minds that needs to be won at grass-roots level. The stories that we heard about corrective rape of lesbian women and the fact that the police were not really prepared to take those allegations seriously were very worrying indeed.

I therefore ask the Minister to tell us what the Government have done to pursue this agenda since our debate in March on Commonwealth day. He said then:

“We fundamentally believe that we should do much more and we remain concerned by recent attempts in several Commonwealth states to introduce punitive laws on homosexuality.”—[Official Report, 14 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 186WH.]

Is it the Minister’s view that laws criminalising homosexuality and, in particular, attempts to introduce the death penalty for same-sex relationships not only undermine the clause in the charter that talks about an appreciation for

“the dignity of all human beings”,

but violate international human rights standards?

I will mention very quickly the issue of the death penalty, because my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham was very comprehensive in her coverage. I am pleased that the UN Human Rights Council is looking at, in particular, the issue of the death penalty for under-16s, for pregnant women and for people with mental and intellectual disabilities, and the impact on the children of those who are executed. That has not been on the agenda before, so I welcome that, but would the Minister update us on the impact in the Commonwealth of the Government’s “Strategy for Abolition of the Death Penalty” and what attempts the Foreign Office is making to promote the second optional protocol to the international covenant on civil and political rights? That protocol specifically signs people up to opposing the death penalty. Does the Minister share my assessment that the death penalty—the use of capital punishment—does not comply with the spirit of the charter, and is that an argument that we will be advancing with other Commonwealth countries?

Let me briefly mention something else that I talked about in South Africa. We had just had news of the resolution of a particularly horrific case in the Maldives. It involved a 15-year-old girl who had been sexually abused by her stepfather for many years and ended up giving birth to his child. When she tried to report that to the authorities, she confessed to having some sort of sexual relations with another adult man and she was sentenced to a flogging—100 lashes—which could have been postponed until her 18th birthday. When I went to meet the relevant Minister in the Maldives, I was told that that should not have happened; she was a vulnerable child and should have been a ward of court. The people there were at great pains to assure me that it was a mistake. As it happened, the Government could not direct the court to drop the sentence, but that did eventually occur.

Yes, that is a particularly extreme example of someone who should not have been subjected to such an ordeal, but many other women still find that although they are the victim of a crime, they are treated as criminals. They are charged with adultery and receive the punishments that flow from that because they have been raped. Sometimes they are forced to marry their attacker. There is just the fact that flogging is used. I was told in the Maldives that they tend to turn a blind eye to adultery unless a pregnancy results, because that is concrete evidence that something has been going on. As a result, 95% of convictions and punishments for adultery are given to women, because it is obviously much easier to show that a woman has become pregnant than it is to show which man was involved.

The use of flogging as a punishment is, I would say, in clear breach of the prohibition on

“cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”

in the universal declaration of human rights. Are we pushing that point at international level to try to persuade countries that they should not be using flogging as a punishment? Women should have no fear of reporting crimes against them. They should be confident that they will be treated as victims, rather than being put on trial themselves.

The last thing that I will mention is CHOGM, which many other hon. Members have discussed. The Government’s long-standing and repeated position was that they would make a decision on attendance closer to the time. The Minister said during our debate in March that no decision had been taken, and I received a similar response in Foreign Office questions in April. The Government have a real opportunity to use this situation as leverage to say to the Sri Lankan Government, “We are reviewing whether to come to CHOGM. We are reviewing the size and scale of our delegation and, indeed, our attendance overall.” However, in May, the Prime Minister announced that both he and the Foreign Secretary would represent the UK in Colombo. Can the Minister tell us what changed between the end of April, when it seemed that that was still a matter for consideration, and early May? Why was the decision taken to send the most senior delegation, and why did the Government choose to announce that so far in advance?

It is not even clear that the Government are united behind the decision. In May, the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged in the House that it was a “controversial” decision

“in the light of the despicable human rights violations”.

He concluded rather vaguely:

“If such violations continue, and if the Sri Lankan Government continue to ignore their international commitments in the lead up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, of course there will be consequences.”—[Official Report, 15 May 2013; Vol. 563, c. 634.]

When I tabled a written question, however, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), was unable to tell me what those consequences might be and in which circumstances they would be considered. I hope that this Minister will be able to provide more clarification in his closing remarks.

I do not have time now to discuss the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights about her recent visit to Sri Lanka—some of my colleagues have mentioned that—but I hope that the Minister will do so. I know that he has limited time; he is looking at the clock, but he will get his 10 minutes. The UN commissioner’s conclusion was:

“The war may have ended, but in the meantime democracy has been undermined and the rule of law eroded”.

She warned that Sri Lanka, far from showing improvement, was

“showing signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction”.

I hope the Minister will tell us what consideration the Government have given to the UN commissioner’s report and whether it has influenced the size, scale and scope of the delegation going to CHOGM.