Queen’s Speech

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, my brief remarks today will urge Her Majesty’s Government to do all they possibly can to engage with China, especially in Africa and on the Korean peninsula and on questions of human rights.

Yesterday, with my noble friend Lady Cox, I met Bishop Macram Gassis, whose whole life has been spent working with the Dinka and Nuba people in Sudan. I subsequently spoke by telephone with the Minister for Africa, Mr Henry Bellingham MP, and relayed Bishop Gassis’s description of the murder and mutilation of children and the rape of women in South Kordofan.

Earlier today, along with my noble friend, I drew the attention of the House to the recent assessment of Dr Mukesh Kapila CBE that the second genocide of the 21st century is now unfolding. More than 1 million people have been affected as a regime, led by a president indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, systematically kills its own people. In parenthesis, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who responded to the Question earlier today, that what makes Sudan unique is that President Omar al-Bashir is the only head of state anywhere in the world to be indicted by the International Criminal Court. To have business as usual, including the visits of parliamentarians and business leaders to Sudan promoting business interests in Sudan, cannot be right when in Darfur 200,000 people were killed, in South Sudan 2 million people were killed and now, today, the second genocide of the 21st century is being played out in South Kordofan.

On 26 March I described the paralysis of the international community in addressing this issue, and nothing has changed. It is now a year since I told the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, about the situation there. He said in response:

“Reports of such atrocities will have to be investigated and, if they prove to be true, those responsible will need to be brought to account”.—[Official Report, 21/6/11; col. WA 294.]

Nine months later, he said that,

“we continue … to seek urgent access to those most affected by the conflict”.—[Official Report, 9/11/11; col. WA 66.]

However, no one has been brought to justice, the bombs continue to rain down, a genocide is unfolding, and a plane last tried to take in aid in November last and was pursued for 50 miles by Sudanese war planes.

So what can we do? Seventy per cent of Sudan’s oil is in the south and most of it is bought by China. While the killing continues, the oil will not flow. More than any other country, China is in a position to insist that the bombing stops, that humanitarian relief is allowed in, and that all sides participate in peace talks, which China should broker.

North Sudan is also considerably indebted to China. It has external debts of around $38 billion. Both China and the United Kingdom should use the leverage of debt relief to insist on an end to aerial bombardment and access for humanitarian aid. It is unconscionable that Britain should write off Sudanese debt while it kills with impunity, and I hope that when the Minister responds he will tell us that he concurs with that view.

China is in Africa because it has a scarcity of oil, minerals and food. Africa provides a solution. The big question will be: can China avoid the age-old temptation to exercise hegemony and, instead, use its statecraft to resolve conflict? Short of the arms trade treaty, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, a few moments ago, it would make a dramatic difference if China and the United Kingdom stopped the flow of arms—many made in China—into Africa. However, if we need to engage with China in Africa, we must also encourage it to use its diplomacy and genius elsewhere too.

Last night, at a meeting of the North Korea All-Party Parliamentary Group, which I chair, we heard from Mark Fitzpatrick, the director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Mrs Sun-young Park, a member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. I have sent the Minister a copy of their papers. Three million people died in the last Korean War, including an estimated 400,000 Chinese soldiers and, I might add, 1,000 British servicemen, more than in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands combined. We need to engage with China to encourage the United States formally to end the state of war with North Korea. This does not imply appeasement—quite the reverse. It is what we did with great effect during the Helsinki process. There are some welcome harbingers.

China's recent decision to repatriate North Koreans to Seoul is to be welcomed; so is their admonition to North Korea to look after the welfare of their own citizens rather than to promote nuclear ambitions; China’s decision not to obstruct the recent United Nations Human Rights Council's statement on human rights issues in North Korea; and the Security Council statement on the recent rocket launch. What is really needed is a Beijing peace conference where old hatreds are set aside and constructive, but critical, engagement seeks ways to achieve a lasting peace, prosperity, reconciliation and the reunification of the Korean peninsula.

In addition to China’s role in the world, I want to mention one other question concerning human rights. The world's attention has recently been focused on the plight of Chen Guangcheng, the blind civil and human rights activist, jailed for four years after challenging China's one-child policy. I have raised this case in your Lordships' House many times. Having taken sanctuary in the US Embassy in Beijing, Chen is now held in a hospital unit. The Economist, in its editorial last week, said:

“At rare moments, the future of a nation, even one teeming with 1.3 billion souls, can be bound up in the fate of a single person”.

It said that what happened to Chen,

“matters enormously to China's future”.

That also matters to the United States. If they have removed Chen from safety but failed to secure safe passage for him and his family, it will cast serious doubts on American diplomacy. Have they let a brave man down? Have they been taken for fools? If Chen is punished and the US humiliated it will signal a troubling shift in superpower relations.

Chen's case also matters to countries like our own. We have aided and abetted the very policies that led to Chen's imprisonment in the first place. It has taken a blind man to see that to which we have shamefully closed our eyes. This remarkable Shawshank has caught the public imagination and blown open a policy of coercion and eugenics, a policy which I sought to outlaw the last time we had a Bill on development aid before your Lordships’ House. Over three decades, British aid given to UNFPA and IPPF has gone to the China Population Association. The CPA, in turn, has implemented a one-child policy that makes it a criminal offence to be pregnant and illegal to have a brother or a sister. It is a policy which has led to an estimated 400 million babies being aborted or killed through infanticide; a gendercide policy which favours the birth of male children so that one out of every six girls is aborted or abandoned. China is a country where 500 women take their own lives every single day. China has the highest suicide rate for women anywhere in the world.

China is a great nation, but it does itself no credit with something like the one-child policy. We must engage with China both on human rights questions and on its role in the world, not least on the Korean peninsula and in countries like Sudan.