Srebrenica Massacre Anniversary

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Martin Horwood

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) on securing the debate and on the content of her speech. She set out what happened, but also the lessons to be learned and, like the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), told us what we should be watching out for, especially bearing in mind what is happening across Europe.

Members might be aware that I am the chair of the all-party group on commemorating Srebrenica. I want to commemorate the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. My interest in Bosnia and Yugoslavia arises from having worked for the United Nations mission in Kosovo between 2000 and 2002, just after the NATO bombing of Serbia. While I was in Kosovo, I had the opportunity to speak to different people and heard about the genocide from some of the victims’ family members.

The background to the massacre is the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the ’90s, which, as we all know, led to the conflict. That war sparked numerous atrocities and attempts at ethnic cleansing, such as the mass rape of women, which the United Nations has said can be described as a war crime. Studies have shown that something in the region of 20,000 to 50,000 Bosniak Muslim women were raped by Serb forces and abused for many months.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North said earlier, many atrocities occurred. I think about 100,000 Muslims in total died in the whole Yugoslav conflict, but the reason why we are concentrating on Srebrenica is because of the way it happened—its deliberate manner and the fact that people were taken into this particular area, a UN safe haven. This was not a situation, such as that in Libya or Iraq, where one does not know what is happening on the ground and difficult decisions have to be made as to whether to go in without knowing what the consequences might be; here was a clear case of a group of 8,000-odd men and young boys deliberately being taken into a safe area. What makes it even more horrendous, and it reminds me a bit of what happened in Rwanda, was that there were—I stand to be corrected—Belgian, Canadian and Dutch troops there who were supposed to protect those people, but failed to do anything about it. That is what is truly shocking. It was not a case of, “Shall we intervene?”; they knew that people were being massacred, and they stood by and did nothing.

So far, we have not had an apology from those countries, saying, “This is what our armed forces failed to do.” There has been no apology from anyone. As has already been mentioned, everyone knew what was happening there. Years before the massacre, people knew what has happening, and everyone failed to protect the victims. One thing that is sometimes forgotten is that it was not just a case of 8,000 people being massacred in one go, but the failure of people who should have been there to protect them.

[Martin Horwood]

To be fair to the Dutch commander, Colonel Karremans, by the accounts I have read, I think he was committed to try to protect Srebrenica and the people there. It was the failure of the UN to deliver close air support, which he repeatedly requested, that effectively doomed his troops. His troops did engage with Serb forces at times. They had had hostages taken and were in a difficult position—almost impossible militarily. It was the failure of the overall UN command to deliver air support that doomed his mission.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

That may be one explanation given, but I think the hon. Gentleman would find that most people who were there would not agree with that version of events. The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) is a former colonel who was in Bosnia at the time. I happened to talk to him a couple of days ago. He was there just before the massacre. He said that he had asked for British troops to remain and said that they should not be taken away, but regrettably, they were removed. Apparently, he passed on his sentiments—as we have all come to know, he is clear in his views and would express them forcefully—that it was not right that those other forces should be there. He gave an example of the Belgian logistics team asking for British troops to protect them while they carried out a logistics operation. What were the Belgian troops doing to try to protect their own? They had to call the British Army in to protect them. I think it is quite well known internationally that some armies and forces are much braver and more willing to do things. [Interruption.] I know that I am verging on controversial territory, but some forces perhaps tend to take the path of least resistance. That is exactly what we saw in Rwanda.

North Africa and the Middle East

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Martin Horwood

Thursday 17th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

But that is not right, because if the test is whether a humanitarian disaster is taking place or whether human rights are being violated, we should not be cherry-picking which fights we want to have; we should be prepared to go for all of them or stay out of all of them.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I just want to deal with my next point.

I was not planning to talk about Palestine, but I shall do so because so many hon. Members have referred to it and it is an interesting case. The undisputed facts of the history of Palestine are that before the creation of the state of Israel 9% of the land belonged to the Jewish people and 91% belonged to the Palestinians; the Nakba resulted in 75% of Palestinians being forced out of their homeland; 4 million people have since been left displaced—they are living in Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere—and many thousands have died; and the massacres at Shatila and Sabra refugee camps killed more than 20,000 people.

The UN has passed a number of resolutions regarding the illegal settlements, but they have not been dismantled and continue to be built. As the Prime Minister said on Monday, if Israel carries on in this way there will be no land for a two-state solution. The people of Gaza have been collectively punished, with some 1.5 million people living on 3 km of land. That situation has been declared illegal by the UN, and when visiting Turkey our Prime Minister described Gaza as a “prison camp.” I went to Gaza last year and I was appalled by the conditions in which people are living there. If that is not an abuse of human rights, what is? The segregation wall has also been declared illegal. Again, land and livelihoods have been taken but nothing happens. We do not do military intervention there. I am not asking for military intervention there, but I am saying that we need to be careful when we start invading other countries.

We have heard about the concept of so-called “liberal interventions.” If we really want to undertake those, the United Nations should set up a special international army representing all the different nations. All the nations would make a contribution and it could then go to all the various hot spots of the world to sort the problems out. However, I know that that is unrealistic and it is not going to happen. We cherry-pick the disputes we want to have and decide that we do not want to bother with others, perhaps because the regime has been sympathetic to us in the past or perhaps because we have economic trade with the regime and we conveniently forget about whatever else it might have done. That has been the problem for our international policy, because perhaps we have not been an honest broker in a lot of these world disputes—perhaps it is about time we became one. This is not a party political point, because successive Governments have been carrying on with these policies. However, in some respects there has been no genuine honest brokering of the peace.

I recall hearing the speech that Robin Cook made in this Chamber setting out in a very analytical way the reasons not to go into Iraq. He mentioned a number of things, including the lack of information, the fact that the need for the war might have been pumped up and the fact that drumbeating for the war had risen sharply. He urged caution and said that we should not go into the war. Many people did not accept or heed what he said and now, with the benefit of hindsight, most people say, “Oh yes, what Robin Cook said was right.” We now hear that we had the wrong information.

On Libya, the situation is bad and I do not condone the death of anyone. I was sad to hear about the Fogel family in Israel. I do not believe in killing people and do not think that it can be justified. On those grounds, I am one of those people who do not believe that we should go into a sovereign nation and invade it. If we want to do that, we should invade all other nations where there have been even bigger problems. For example, in Sudan, 100,000 people have died—Libya is nothing in comparison.