Genocide: Bringing Perpetrators to Justice

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to bring the perpetrators of genocide to justice.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in opening this short debate I must declare that I am a patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response, and thank its founders, Luke de Pulford and Dr Ewelina Ochab, for their briefing note. I also thank the Library for its briefing note, and all participants, who will bring great expertise and knowledge to our proceedings. I also serve as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Burma, Uyghurs, Rohingya, and Hong Kong, and as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eritrea.

Dag Hammarskjöld, a truly inspirational Sectary-General of the United Nations, once said that the United Nations

“was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”

But as we will hear this evening, from Xinjiang to Burma, from Tigray to Nigeria, from Iraq to Sudan, and in many other parts of the world, the international community has fallen a long way short in saving millions of people from the hell of genocide and from atrocity crimes. While the victims suffer appalling violations, the perpetrators strut the world stage, confident of their impunity and the triumph of mercantile and other interests over our convention duties to prevent, to protect and to prosecute those responsible for these heinous crimes.

In the post-war years, men such as Raphael Lemkin, and women such as Eleanor Roosevelt, bequeathed the institutions that emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz—notably the International Court of Justice and, later, the International Criminal Court. It is to those bodies that the United Kingdom Government defer, stating as recently as this week, in reply to a Parliamentary Question, that

“The UK is fully committed to honouring its legal obligations under the Genocide Convention. The Government’s longstanding policy is that any judgment on whether genocide has occurred is a matter for competent courts. These include international courts, such as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and national criminal courts that meet international standards of due process.”


But as became clear during our proceedings on the genocide amendment to the Trade Bill, this is simply a convenient sleight of hand, disguising the shameful inability—or perhaps unwillingness—to bring perpetrators of genocide to justice. The Government cannot plausibly offer that response, simultaneously telling us that Russia and China will invariably use their Security Council veto to close routes to the international courts, while the Government themselves close routes to domestic courts.

The all-party genocide amendment to the Trade Bill offered a way out of the cul-de-sac and a route to our national courts, and it was given three-figure majorities in the House but opposed by the Government. My noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead, a former Supreme Court judge, and others, told the House that the current arrangements simply do not work and that our High Court was perfectly capable of adjudicating on whether a genocide is under way. When the proposal came within a whisker of defeat in the Commons, the Government offered the compromise of a committee to examine allegations of genocide. I have given the Minister notice that I would like to know when such a committee will be established to examine whether the Uighurs, for instance, are subject to a genocide. Can he also confirm that, even if a parliamentary committee determines that a genocide is under way, the Government will still not accept such a determination and intend to continue to say that it is just a matter that the courts can determine?

The Committee should note that a legal opinion from Alison Macdonald QC and Essex Court Chambers concluded that there is credible evidence of genocide in Xinjiang. We should also note that, on 22 April, the House of Commons voted to declare the crimes against the Uighurs in Xinjiang to be a genocide. The United States, Canada and European countries such as the Netherlands and Lithuania have all done the same, but not the United Kingdom Government.

On 27 April, the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, appeared before the House of Lords Select Committee on International Relations and Defence. I asked him whether it was his intention to accept the Commons declaration. In reply, he said that

“Parliament should hold the executive to account on all these matters. That has been our position all along. Our long-standing position is that a court should make judgments on genocide. Fundamentally, genocide creates obligation at the state level”.

Yes, he is right—we have treaty obligations at the state level—but we and others repeatedly fail to meet them, and refuse to reform our domestic and international mechanisms to address this lamentable failure.

When Mr Raab told the committee that he is an “ardent … reformer”, I asked him what we are doing to increase the efficacy of international institutions, to gather support for the proposed code of conduct regarding Security Council action against genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and in combatting genocide. On the code of conduct he said:

“We are a signatory to the accountability, coherence and transparency code of conduct … That allows all members of the Security Council, permanent and non-permanent, to make public commitments not to vote against credible resolutions intended to prevent mass human rights abuses.”


Perhaps the Minister can tell us this evening what progress this proposal is making and whether, realistically, in the absence of support by China or Russia, he honestly believes it will save a single life.

Mr Raab rightly warned the committee about the potential misuse of the word genocide. It is precisely because the definition is exacting that I agree with the Government that a court should evaluate the evidence and make the determination. But there is no point identifying the problem without willing the solution. This has become a circular argument, and it was to break this vicious circle that noble Lords tabled the genocide amendment—and why we are here again today. Voluntary codes of conduct are all very well, but at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Dominic Raab rightly said that what is happening in Xinjiang is “on an industrial scale”. That needs much more than a voluntary code of conduct. The Foreign Secretary told us legislative attempts in both Houses had “shifted the dial.” Perhaps, with the Biden Administration, we can push the dial further.

We have already worked together on Magnitsky sanctions, announced on 6 July 2020, and for which the Foreign Secretary, and indeed the noble Lord the Minister, deserve credit, but those sanctions are not a response to genocide. I have sent the Minister a recent Financial Times review of Geoffrey Robertson QC’s new book, Bad People. In summary, he argues that the sanctions regime is too opaque and liable to be used against soft targets rather than the worst villains. It does seem passing strange that a functionary such as Chen Quanguo, the CCP party secretary in Tibet and then Xinjiang, remains unsanctioned, as does Carrie Lam, in Hong Kong. Oversight of the Magnitsky sanctions by a Select Committee of your Lordships’ House is urgently needed.

I note, incidentally, as someone who has himself been sanctioned by the CCP for drawing attention to genocide against the Uighurs, that the European Parliament has frozen the EU-China infrastructure deal until sanctions against their parliamentarians are lifted. By contrast, in the UK, our Trade Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, tells us it his ambition to deepen trading links with a state credibly accused of genocide. Let me ask the Minister quite directly: does he think that it is ever licit to seek to deepen trade with a country credibly accused of genocide, or, for that matter, one which uses slave labour?

Will the Minister also provide a response to the recommendations in the Coalition for Genocide Response briefing? I would especially like a response on what it says about universal jurisdiction; prosecution in UK courts of Daesh fighters for their involvement in the genocide against Yazidis, Christians, gay people and others; and the importance of establishing a mechanism for evidence collection and preservation, about which I have written to the Minister, and which is urgently needed in Tigray, where there are reports of mass graves, rape as a weapon of war, summary executions and the targeting of religious figures—these are all detailed in the briefing provided by CSW to noble Lords.

It tells us all we need to know that China and Russia blocked attempts to discuss the allegations about what is under way in Tigray at the United Nations Security Council, while the 2016 recommendations of the UN commission of inquiry on Eritrea, which is now embroiled in Tigray, have never been implemented.

Can the Minister also say what we are doing to bring Burma’s illegal junta to justice and, in the light of the atrocities against Rohingya and Kachin, what we are going to do to take forward the Gambia’s admirable decision to pursue the Burmese military at the ICJ?

The dial may be shifting, but it is not fast enough for beleaguered and suffering people in Burma, Tigray, northern Nigeria, Xinjiang and elsewhere. Dag Hammarskjöld’s ambition to create effective mechanisms

“to save humanity from hell”

remains unfulfilled, but we must not throw in the towel. We have clear duties to hold to account those responsible for atrocity crimes and genocide, and in meeting those obligations we must redouble our efforts. Once again, I thank all noble Lords who have entered the list to speak tonight.