Syria and Iraq: Genocide

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I bear in mind victims of Daesh whom I have personally met, both here and in Iraq. I am not therefore going to get involved in what may or may not be procedural niceties. It is clearly a matter for judicial authorities to determine whether a genocide has taken place. The noble Lord referred to a comment by my honourable friend in another place yesterday, when he expressed his personal view, which he has expressed before, when he said:

“I believe that genocide has taken place”.

He added that,

“as the Prime Minister has said”—

and I am aware that the Prime Minister has written to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on this—

“genocide is a matter of legal rather than political opinion. We as the Government are not the prosecutor, the judge or the jury”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/4/16; col. 995.]

We may not be all those things, but I say to Daesh and to the perpetrators that we have a long memory; we have allies, and we are working with the Government of Iraq. We will not forget the perpetrators, and they will pay the price.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, the government Ministers abstained yesterday. Of course, the House of Commons spoke with a clear and unanimous voice yesterday, and there is no doubt that Daesh is killing people because they belong to ethnic, racial or religious groups. What it is doing has all the hallmarks of genocide, as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Government have moved on since the Minister spoke to this House in December, and Tobias Ellwood yesterday repeated what he said earlier in the month that we are helping to gather evidence that could be used to hold Daesh to account appropriately. He said, ultimately—and I repeat what the Minister said—that,

“it is not for Governments to be the prosecutor, judge or jury”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/4/16; col. 996.]

However, can the Minister tell us what progress the Government are making in gathering evidence, and when they intend to take that evidence to the Security Council so that the matter can be referred to the courts?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I shall address the last part of the noble Lord’s question first, because it covers something that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, properly raised—the Security Council, which was the nub of the resolution passed yesterday in another place. As I said earlier, we have tried to take this matter forward. We were very successful in achieving a resolution about investigations, but not further than that. Further discussions are taking place across the board. Clearly, all right-minded people are trying to find a resolution to this. The collection of information and evidence has to be robustly done. We are making some progress with that simply because of the bravery of organisations which we, alongside other members of the United Nations, help to fund. Yesterday in this House, I launched the Kurdish-language version of the international protocol on the collection and documentation of evidence, which already exists in Arabic. We are making progress, but only because of great risks taken by people who, having collected robust evidence, have to smuggle it out. They are brave indeed.