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It is therefore especially interesting to revisit that part of the world today, as I have done, to discover what fundamental material changes have taken place during that time and to meet again Laszlo Tokes, who is now a bishop of his Church. I quote from a newspaper article published last year.
The article adds that Edith Tokes, his wife,
The article describes many specific things that have occurred against that exceptional family.
In the context of the Bill, we are including that country in a so-called list of safe countries--the designated list. Those are events since Ceausescu. That family say that the position for them is actually worse from a human rights point of view than before.
That is not an isolated case. Last year, Amnesty International published
Anyone who has followed events in Romania will be well aware of the plight of the Roma minority and of the plight of homosexuals, which I mentioned in Committee. The 1995 report of Amnesty International says:
its earlier report on human rights abuses
Christians have also suffered persecution for the stand that they have taken. I draw the attention of the House to the plight of the Greek Catholic minority--a substantial minority in Romania. Many of their buildings were seized during the Ceausescu years, and few have been returned.
I met one woman, Doina Cornea, who should be awarded the Nobel peace price. That extraordinarily brave, stunning woman of great courage has stood against unspeakable intimidation and pressure for many years. Even while I sat in her front room, telephones rang and people made threats to her, including death threats, so that is not a figment of the imagination. I have seen her and some of her co-religionists standing in sub-zero temperatures in fields and open spaces because they are not allowed access to their own buildings by the so-called democratic regime that we are placing on the designated list.
The message that is conveyed to dictators, despots and those who use the masquerade of democracy when the British Parliament includes them on a designated list is a message that we should not send them. That is why I want the House to reconsider seriously the mechanisms that we have devised.
On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) drew attention to the case of Mircea Ilin, who fled Romania for reasons of torture, racism and intimidation. When he arrived in this country, in 1991, he applied for political asylum. He told the Home Office in detail about his treatment in Romania, where he is a supporter of the Peasants National party, which bitterly opposes the present regime and is composed of people who believe in a mixed economy and democratic systems of government.
In 1985, Mr. Ilin was detained without trial for 18 months after attending a protest demonstration in Bucharest. He was detained again in 1987 after refusing to give police information about PNP members and he was required to attend various police stations and regularly beaten up. Post Ceausescu, in 1990, he was arrested at another demonstration, beaten with truncheons and detained without trial in Jilava prison.
In 1991, Mr. Ilin escaped to Britain. In 1994, his asylum application was rejected. He appealed. In 1995, he married an English woman. His lawyer, Ghayur Butt, extracted a promise from the Home Office that it would allow his Member of Parliament to make representations and would listen to them. After that assurance was given, before there was any chance for those representations to be made to the Home Office, officials surrounded his home and sought to arrest him.
The man eventually took to the window ledge, threatened suicide and, after six and a half hours there, went into hiding. If that case does not make the grade, what chance do others have? They will be on the fast track; they will be deported back to those countries. We
discussed those matters earlier when we considered new clause 5. What does it say about Romania, now to be given that golden seal of Home Office approval?
Those are all reasons why we should reconsider the way in which the Bill is drawn and the need for a black list. If the principle is accepted of a designated list of countries that are so-called "relatively safe in general"--the phrase that is usually used--why is there not another annexe to the Bill, on the face of the Bill if the Minister wishes or not if not, using the procedures that the Government advocate for the system of designated lists? I would be perfectly happy if that system were to be used for the designation of other countries whose human rights records are deplorable.
I know that the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East especially wants to discuss the position in Pakistan, but I shall set the scene by describing the general position in the Islamic world.
The position for Christians varies from relative openness in the Lebanon and Jordan to absolute restrictions in Saudi Arabia and genocide in the Sudan. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states prohibit any open practice of Christianity. In Arab countries where Christianity is allowed, traditional churches are controlled by Governments and church buildings and businesses are frequently destroyed. Christians suffer discrimination in employment and education. They are restricted in travel, pay additional taxes and have inferior status in the courts.
In Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Sudan, the law specifies the death penalty for anyone who converts from Islam. In Egypt, which I have helped draw attention to in a report that I published last year with the Jubilee Campaign, new Christian converts from Islam are imprisoned and often tortured. Throughout the region, Christians can be forcibly divorced and their children taken to be raised by Islamic relatives. Many Christians remain under death threats by militant Islamists.
Many devoutly believing Muslims in this country and the middle east deplore those practices as much as I do and seek the type of pluralism and democratic structures that we in the House so deeply cherish. The issue is how we assist them best in that process.
The United Nations defines genocide as attempting to destroy a group by killing its members, causing serious bodily harm, subjecting it to conditions that will cause its physical destruction, preventing births and forcibly transferring children. Certainly, that is a description of what is happening in southern Sudan, where the National Islamic Front Government wage civil war with the predominantly Christian population of the south.
In Sudan, Christian men and women are forcibly separated. Children are seized to be raised as Muslims or sold in slave markets. Tens of thousands of refugees are dumped in the open desert and systematically denied food, water and medicine. Members of the House were done a service by the all-party group on Sudan, which enable them to attend a meeting last year at which some appalling atrocities were highlighted. They include documentation of repeated massacres and of the literal crucifixion of some Christians in southern Sudan. That is an appalling situation which warrants the establishment of some sort of list to show which countries do not have our seal of
approval. We would certainly not contemplate adding such countries to the safe or designated list of countries whose human rights records are generally good.
My hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Miss Nicholson) referred to the way in which we regard Iraq now and how we regarded it previously. Times have changed. That is why it is incumbent upon us not only to be concerned with speeding up asylum procedures, but to look at the root causes of why people become refugees in the first place. We will staunch the flow and end the haemorrhaging of refugees by putting downward pressure on brutal and repressive regimes. That is the best way of stopping the exodus from those countries. We should be exerting pressure on countries such as Sudan. An appendix of the sort that I have advocated would enable that to occur, and that is why I commend the amendments to the House.
Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East):
I sympathise with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) in his remarks about the situation in Romania. He may be aware that it is nearly three years since Romania became a full member of the Council of Europe, which is the European democratic community, and full member states are regarded as having reached our civilised standards of human rights and democracy.
I was the chairman of the Committee for Relations with European Non-member Countries, which scrutinised the progress that Romania was making towards reaching our standards. I accept that we made quite a large political compromise in Romania's case, believing that it would be more likely to achieve our standards if it were a full member of the Council of Europe rather than if it were kept out in the cold.
In the three years since it became a full member of the Council of Europe, Romania has made very little progress towards achieving our standards. It has not yet applied the European convention on human rights and it has not made a petition to the European Court in response to claims of denials of human rights, examples of which the hon. Gentleman referred to in his contribution.
The only comfort that I can offer the hon. Gentleman is that we have now introduced strengthened procedures for monitoring new member states as to their honouring of the commitments that they entered into upon joining the Council. There is always a long list of commitments, particularly in Romania's case. I shall bring the hon. Gentleman's contribution today to the attention of the rapporteurs who are responsible for monitoring those commitments. They will take account of what he has said in the report that they will make in due course to the Assembly of the Council of Europe. We must decide whether it is appropriate to take action against Romania in order to encourage it to honour the commitments that it entered into upon becoming a full member. For example, the Council of Europe could withdraw the voting rights of the Romanian parliamentary delegation. That is just one sanction that we could apply.
"Today, in a Romania with a democratically elected government and parliament, Tokes, his wife and children live in constant fear of assassination. He is threatened with eviction from the few rooms in the crumbling violet building in Oradea that his bishopric managed to claim back from the State. The Securitate officers who were tried for mass murder are now free. Last November, the Romanian media reported that Tokes had been sentenced to death by anonymous 'people's courts' and $150,000 (£85,000) offered to his assassins."
"feels that life is worse for her family now. 'Before the revolution, we always knew who was against us--the Securitate and the Interior Ministry, but now, with the campaign in the media, anyone could attack us."
"a report, 'Romania: Broken commitments to human rights' . . . presenting cases of continued violations of human rights, including the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience, the torture and ill-treatment of detainees, death in detention in suspicious circumstances and a nationwide pattern of police failure to protect the Roma minority from racist violence."
21 Feb 1996 : Column 434
"Since the publication of"
"further cases of imprisonment of homosexuals who were considered prisoners of conscience, ill-treatment and a death in suspicious circumstances have been brought to the attention of the organisation. These cases, as well as updates to cases from the earlier paper, are presented in this report."
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