Detained British Nationals Abroad
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Iain Duncan Smith(1 month ago)
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Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I could not agree more with the right hon. Lady, and I welcome her to the debate as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She is absolutely right, but the problem in this case is that dual nationality was used as an excuse for why the Government did not want to raise the matter, because China did not recognise that British citizenship. She is right that if someone is a British citizen, they are a British citizen, and the inside of the passport tells us why that is important. It seems to be ignored too often.
We know that sanctions are a vital tool for deterring and punishing state actors involved in arbitrary detention, yet that tool is often underutilised by UK Governments. I will touch on that later, because compared with the Americans, we fail to utilise it as a possible way to leverage changes to what is going on outside.
Another area of concern is the inconsistent application of Government policy regarding international legal standards. When the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box, will he confirm the Government’s official definition of arbitrary detention? How does it align with international legal standards, such as those established by the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention? I have never been able to get an answer out of any Foreign Minister yet, but I ask him, given his experience in the Department, to kindly find out the definition for us and let us know.
I said I would raise specific cases, so I will run through some of the list. Ryan Cornelius is a British citizen unjustly detained in Dubai for more than 16 years, originally in isolation. His case represents an egregious violation of human rights and, importantly, of due process. He was arrested in 2008 on false fraud allegations relating to a $500 million Dubai Islamic Bank loan, and his 10-year sentence was extended by 20 years in 2018 through retroactive application of a new law without proper legal proceedings. The bank seized assets worth $1.6 billion from Mr Cornelius, far exceeding the original loan amount. The UN working group on arbitrary detention has ruled categorically that Ryan’s detention is arbitrary and in violation of international law, calling for his immediate release and compensation. However, there still appears to be FCDO resistance.
Mohammed Ibrahim Al Shaibani became DIB chairman shortly before Mr Cornelius’s arrest. He appears to have orchestrated Mr Cornelius’s continued detention and the asset seizure. Mr Al Shaibani holds influential positions in Dubai’s Government, indicating an abuse of power. Mr Cornelius is now 70 and has suffered severe health issues in prison, including tuberculosis that went untreated for 18 months. Meanwhile, his seized property, originally claimed to be “worthless” by the bank, is now being redeveloped as a luxury project called The Acres, worth, strangely, $3 billion.
Under the last Government, I raised Mr Cornelius’s case finally with the former Prime Minister Lord Cameron while he was Foreign Secretary. Subsequently, he engaged personally in seeking clemency for Mr Cornelius. He met the family, raised the case with the UAE Foreign Minister and wrote personally to the ruler of Dubai. That was a first, because everybody else seemed to have shied away from this one, not wanting to upset the UAE, it appears.
To be fair to Lord Cameron, he got the issue and he started to tackle it, and that was important. The present Foreign Secretary, who replaced Lord Cameron in July, failed to raise Mr Cornelius’s case in his recent visit to the UAE in September, which perplexes me, given that it had already been raised. That just encourages a country like the UAE to carry on and to double down. I do not understand why.
In response to my written question to the Foreign Secretary, I received this answer:
“The Foreign Secretary raised the importance of consular issues, although not this specific case, during his visit to the UAE on 5 September and first meeting with Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed.”
I understand that on Sunday, the Prime Minister is expected to visit the UAE and, I think, Saudi Arabia. Will the Minister make it clear to the Prime Minister— I believe this is the view that will be expressed in this debate—that he must not only raise the case, which is important, but demand categorically that Ryan Cornelius is released into the hands of his family without delay? I hope that whatever is summarised from his meetings, that specific issue is there in black and white for this House to record.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) raised Mr Cornelius’s case several weeks ago in an Adjournment debate, when he was reassured by the Minister for Development, the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), that:
“the case will continue to be raised with the UAE authorities”,—[Official Report, 19 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 241.]
and yet it was not. If Ministers give assurances in this House, Madam Deputy Speaker, do you not agree that they should actually back up those assurances? I wonder if the Minister present will explain why that was the case.
Although individual cases are raised with international counterparts, often no concrete action follows. I hope the Minister agrees that once a case is raised, it will be followed up. In Mr Cornelius’s case, I believe the path could culminate in sanctions, so there is a process. It is clear that raising the case with the UAE authorities has yet to produce a result. What we want is a real record that the authorities are now being warned that should they fail to take action, individual sanctions under the Magnitsky rules will follow.
Will the Minister therefore now look to imposing targeted Magnitsky sanctions on those responsible for Mr Cornelius’s arbitrary detention and asset seizures? There are a number of them: His Excellency Mohammed Al Shaibani, who was the chairman of the DIB; Yahya Saeed Ahmad Nasser Lootah, the vice chairman of the board of directors; Hamad Abdulla Rashed Obaid Al Shamsi, who was a board member; Ahmad Mohammad Saeed Bin Humaidan, a board member; Abdul Aziz Ahmed Rahma Mohamed Al Muhairi, a board member; Dr Hamad Buamim, a board member; Javier Marin Romano, a board member; Bader Saeed Abdulla Hareb Al Mheiri, a board member; and Dr Cigdem Kogar, a board member. All were involved in this case; all are eligible for Magnitsky sanctions. Mr Cornelius should now be released immediately, or sanctions, I believe, should follow.
I will deal reasonably quickly with the case of Jimmy Lai, and then I will give way to others in the debate. Jimmy Lai is a renowned pro-democracy campaigner, journalist and media owner. I wear the badge to free him with pride. This man has been treated abominably—he is a hero, and we should recognise that. He is 77 and a proud British citizen. He is also a Catholic, and has been denied the normal communion that he would expect as a believer in Catholicism; it has been shut off from him for a long time, which matters a great deal to him. He is a prisoner of conscience. He could have fled Hong Kong after the Sino-British agreement was trashed, but he chose to stay. Why? He wanted to set an example for the many who could not flee and who were going to be arrested—that he was not going to run away just because he had money. This is a brave man.
Mr Lai is currently on trial in Hong Kong for alleged offences against national security and alleged sedition, said to arise out of his work as a newspaper publisher and his pro-democracy activism. His case is emblematic of the crackdown on the media in Hong Kong, civil society and the rule of law. On 15 November 2024, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published its opinion that Jimmy Lai is being unlawfully and arbitrarily detained and called for his immediate release. The working group found multiple violations of Mr Lai’s rights and freedoms, expressed alarm at his prolonged detention in solitary confinement and stressed that he should not be on trial at all.
This case, I say to the Minister, is very urgent. Mr Lai has been arbitrarily detained in prolonged solitary confinement for nearly four years, often in insufferable heat during the summer months. Securing Jimmy Lai’s release requires effective action across the Government to bring him home and reunite him with his family in London. At the moment, he is bravely giving evidence in his trial—at which, by the way, a number of Members present have been named. I have been apparently named. I am already sanctioned by the Chinese, but I have also been named as being party to the case being brought against him. I have to say publicly that I have, sadly, never met Jimmy Lai or corresponded with him. I wish that I had. I wish that I could tell him what a brave man he really is. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Will the Minister outline today what urgent steps the Foreign Office is taking to secure Jimmy Lai’s release?
I remind the Minister and others that what we see in front of us now is a rise in hostage taking by nation states. The biggest abuser of this process is, of course, Iran. I worry about this abuse growing more and more in Iran. In January 2023—we must not forget about this—Iran executed British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari, who was arrested, charged and executed on spying charges, which he denied and which were totally untrue. It was the first execution of a dual national since the 1980s. Only four months later, the Iranian authorities executed a second dual national, Swedish-Iranian Habib Chaab. In October 2024, it executed a third dual national, German-Iranian Jamshid Sharmahd. At least one more dual national, Swedish-Iranian Ahmad Reza Djalia, has been sentenced to death since 2023.
I conclude on the simple basis, as I raised at the beginning, that we can no longer go along with the idea that we somehow lose influence if we raise these cases publicly. We can no longer go on with this idea that we can manage a generalist approach to this in the Foreign Office. As has already been raised, we need a much more professional, deliberate and permanent status in the Department to deal with this matter.
Finally, we have in our hands the Magnitsky sanctions legislation. With the case of Ryan Cornelius and others, it is high time that those who were party to the arrest and incarceration of innocent British citizens find themselves facing Magnitsky sanctions, unless they recant and that individual is released. That at least gives us a tool. I ask the Government to get to the Dispatch Box, when the time comes, and commit to that process.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Taiwan: International Status
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Iain Duncan Smith(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, I will see what I can do to speak on your behalf—even though you have no opinion on this matter.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
We will see if we can ascertain one in passing. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) on securing the debate. That is not easy, as he knows, and it is really good to see so many hon. Members in attendance. As you pointed out, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am one of nine political sanctionees, and it is always worth reminding ourselves that there are two others outside Parliament who are also sanctioned. They spoke to me the other day and said, “We’re often forgotten in this matter, but we can’t do business. It’s very difficult.” I wish to remember them, while we are at it; they were unnecessarily sanctioned.
Everything that the hon. Gentleman said is absolutely correct. The problem is that we are dealing with a power that is growing in potency and totalitarianism while it also grows in other ways. Let me add something on the size of the growth in its military capability. He mentioned China’s naval capacity; right now, China has 230 times the capacity for naval shipbuilding of the United States. Any one shipyard in China outbuilds the whole of the United States in naval shipbuilding. Someone please tell me that that is for a peaceful purpose. I have no conception of why it would need that many naval ships if its purpose was peaceful. The answer is that it is not.
This whole business of Taiwan has been obscured constantly by refusals from Administrations from both sides of the House. I say to the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), who will respond to this debate, that I am not having a go at this Government; I have been having a go at every Government for a long time. It seems that whoever is elected, I am in opposition. She should not take personally the point I am about to make gently to her. Politicians are elected to take decisions based on the principles that we govern by. Our principles are simple: we believe in free speech, base freedom, the rule of law and human rights. We may debate the elements and range of that, but we believe in the fundamental right to decent treatment.
I was sanctioned, along with you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and others, for raising the then undiscovered genocide that was going on in Xinjiang, which has now become public knowledge. This Parliament—Members on both sides—voted to agree that the genocide was taking place, although the Government said that they could not vote to agree with that, or do anything about it, because that action would need to be taken at the UN, through the International Court of Justice. That is never going to happen, because it gets vetoed, straight off. The Labour party, in opposition, agreed that genocide was taking place, and agreed on many occasions with those of us who had real problems with China’s treatment of people and of human rights; the Labour party was constantly in support of our position. I simply say that as a base reminder, because this is really about what we believe.
From one Government to the next, we have genuinely, deliberately obscured the question of Taiwan’s status. People have argued with me that the question was settled by resolution 2758, which is often misquoted. They say that it somehow settled the status of Taiwan. They have argued that it was clear from that resolution, now that the PRC was responsible for China at the UN, that Taiwan was a part of China. It said no such thing, as the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire said. In fact, it was deliberately obscure about that idea; it was not settled.
Under the whole reign of the Communist party in China, Taiwan has never been a part of a Chinese Administration or a Chinese Government. Taiwan right now is a democracy and an upholder of human rights. It has an agreement, as we do, that the freedom of individuals to speak out without let or hindrance, and without fear of arrest—we see such arrests in Hong Kong—remains important. The Government should speak out in Taiwan’s defence and argue that China has no right to extinguish that, unless there is a deliberate indication that Taiwan wishes to be part of China. Taiwan has never wished that, and the last election demonstrates that is still not the case. Taiwan does not wish to join China, as it has never been part of China.
This military build-up is not for a general purpose. It is ultimately to try to displace the US’s position in the Pacific, so that it will be unable to act, should China decide at some point to blockade or invade. The incursions that are taking place would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world. There are huge numbers of planes overflying Taiwan. Ships are threatening it by coming right up close, past the border of Taiwan. They are deliberately provoking, in the hope that action will take place that allows the Chinese to take action themselves.
If we move our gaze slightly further south, we come to the South China sea. China has occupied it and declared it to be a historical part of China. The UN has said that that is not the case, and has told China categorically that it has no right to occupy or build military fortifications in the South China sea. What has China’s reaction been to that? Nothing. It said that the UN has no right to interfere, and now it is trying to blockade. In fact, US navy ships still sail through there, but every other ship, including recently the Philippines coastguard, has been hounded out of the area. Ships have been rammed and threatened, and military naval vessels from China now occupy that space.
We know what China thinks of these things. We know what it plans to do, because it has already done it. We wonder: if we do not say very much, will that obscurity allow China to back away? The Chinese have no intention whatsoever of backing off. That is part of their absolute creed now. In fact, it is clear even from China’s constitution that it sees Taiwan as part of China. I do not know how many more indications the Foreign Office needs of China’s direction of travel.
What do the Government plan to do about this? To what degree will the Government challenge the misinterpretation of resolution 2758 publicly, and recognise that Taiwan has a right to self-determination, as we and all other democratic nations do? Will the Minister take the opportunity to state Government policy clearly from the Dispatch Box? Will she agree to make a public statement to the House about what is going on in Taiwan? The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire asked for that, and I back him up. We would love clarity from the Government on the fact that what is taking place in and around Taiwan is utterly unacceptable; we should even think about moving to a sanction at the Security Council. China will veto that, we know, but it is important for the world to understand China’s position.
To return to covid, we remember when all that happened as a result of a failure in China, but we were unable to get any figures about what Taiwan was doing—and that was rather important, because it had advanced methods of dealing with covid that we could have learned a lot from. We were not allowed to get those figures; they all had to come through China. China refused to let us know what was going on as it embarrassed China, because it had taken very little action early on, and the result was millions dying around the world. My point is that when we acquiesce and give way, as we did at the World Health Organisation, where we no longer insist on these things, that weakness is seen as a success for China. The Chinese take that and move on. How do we know that? Because back in the 1930s, every time we acquiesced to a new demand by Hitler’s Germany, it took that and moved on.
We do not appease communist or fascist dictators by saying, “Well, if we are reasonable, in due course they will be reasonable.” By definition, a dictatorship is not reasonable. Fascist Germany told us what it was going to do, and China tells us categorically all the time what it will do. We in the west do not want to believe that. We think that if we are reasonable, the Chinese will be reasonable. They are not reasonable. They intend to take Taiwan back one way or the other.
Today and going forward, the question for us and for the Foreign Office, the unelected body that sits across the road, is: why do not we get serious about this, understand it, and say all this? If we do not tell the Chinese that there are limits, they assume that we do not believe that there are any, and they go ahead. The financial chaos that would ensue from merely a blockade—not even an invasion of Taiwan—would be devastating to our economies.
I had an argument the other day with one of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless—[Interruption.] There we go; he is not in the Chamber. That individual said to me that Taiwan has nothing to do with us; it is a long way from us, and we have no arrangements with it. When I made the point to him that the whack to our economy would be enormous, I added one other figure, which is that 72% of everything made in the world is made in the area around the South China sea, including China. I said to my colleague that it is not far away; it is our neighbour. Without Taiwan—if anything happens to Taiwan—we go down, too.
The real point of this important debate is to try to persuade the Government to be much bolder about this matter and to recognise the threat, to recognise the need for a British Government to say enough is enough, and to recognise that what happens to Taiwan is not just a matter of interest to us, but a matter of vital importance. Many Members were at the conference in Taipei recently, where we heard about all the terrible problems that Taiwan now faces as a result of China’s actions. One only has to be there to realise just how devastating this situation is to many Taiwanese people, whose lives are genuinely threatened by it.
With this huge build-up, the clear threat that China poses, the brutality it has already demonstrated in the South China sea and the illegality of its actions, and its complete failure to take any actions other than those it wishes to take, it is important for us to demonstrate stage by stage, at every moment and at every opportunity, that we regard China’s behaviour as unacceptable and that we will oppose it. One way this Government could start doing that would be to go back and look again at the risk register that we started under the previous Government. We should now move China on to the higher tier of that risk register. That would send a very strong signal to the Chinese Government that we are serious about our behaviour.
I will end simply by saying the following to the Minister. I know the Government want to increase and improve trade with China, and I understand why they want to do that. My concern, at the end of it all, is that we cannot detach our desire for commercial engagement from the real engagement, which is about the way a state treats the people who live there and the way it behaves to its neighbours. We did so in the past, and look what happened: 60 million people died because we ignored what was going to happen. They told us what was going to happen, but we wanted to do business with them. This time we have to learn that appeasement does not work. There is no chance it will work this time. We need to be clear to China, as America is and as others are, and say that this shall not stand, that we in the UK will stand for the freedom of those people whose self-determination is always a matter of high concern to us, and that we will defend it at whatever cost.