Syria

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Alison McGovern

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend, and, through her, all those in the Syrian community in Manchester and in the UK beyond for the assistance they have given me in working on Syria.

We know that we cannot continue to allow the erosion of international laws that prohibit the use of chemical weapons. I explained earlier our country’s historical role in containing the use of chemical weapons—and we ought not to forget our own experience. But I do not wish to constrain our discussion today merely to chemical weapons, because, vile though they are, they are not the only means of savage killing that has taken place.

Let me remind the House that the conflict in Syria began when Assad’s forces opened fire on protesters demanding the release of political prisoners. They were not violent anarchists or subversives with questionable ties to foreign Governments, but a 13-year-old boy, his cousin and a dozen of their friends who had sprayed graffiti on a wall calling for Assad to step down. With the Syrian civil war now in its eighth year, the lack of a strategy from our Government beyond hoping that things will improve is leading only to more suffering. More than half a million Syrians have died, 6 million are internally displaced, and 5 million are refugees.

Today I call, as my colleague Jo Cox called, for a comprehensive strategy to protect civilian life. The Assad Government continue to commit violations of international humanitarian law on an almost daily basis. Let us take, for example, his barrel bombs: the brute force of dirty explosives booted off the back of a helicopter, heedless of who might be beneath. The deliberate targeting of civilians is illegal in any case, but what makes this worse is Assad’s continual terrorising of the civilian population without consequence.

That is not all. Siege warfare has returned in Syria. That is also illegal, but despite the best efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Red Crescent and other humanitarians, Assad simply will not comply with the right to food, the right to medical care, or the right not just to live but to exist in any normal understanding of the word.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the Assad regime’s continued aerial bombardment against civilian populations in Syria. Does she agree that one of the Government’s critical objectives must be to ensure that they pursue the objective of an internationally policed no-fly zone, as well as a no-bombing zone, over Syria so that we can eliminate that activity? There is a stark contrast between the situation in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Assad’s untrammelled power to bomb his civilians.

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend will know that a no-bombing zone was precisely one of the policies that Jo campaigned for when she was in this House.

This is why I will use my time today discussing what I feel we need to consider in beginning a new road map for Syria here in the UK. We need to start from a simple question: what can be done to save human life not on the basis of our simple short-term interests, but on the basis of the humanitarian principle? I know that some in the House will be sceptical. They will say, “We’ve seen this all before.” They will say that my humanitarian principle is just words. Well, in some ways they are right, because we should always be judged by our actions and not just our words.