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1.42 pm
Mr. Paul Stinchcombe (Wellingborough): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) on securing this debate, and thank him and the Minister for allowing me to make a modest contribution in the short time available. I also thank
my hon. Friend for referring in the House to Jomo Kenyatta and Tom Mboya, two heroes of African post-colonial politics.
I, too, am a long-standing friend, both of the people of Kenya and of their country. That friendship goes back 18 years, to when, as a teenager, I was a volunteer teacher in two Harambee schools. My hon. Friend mentioned the Mzungu community. I was a white teacher in that community--"Mimi mwalimu mzungu".
Since then, I have visited the country several times. I went back with my wife on our honeymoon, and returned shortly afterwards to take her to one of the schools at which I taught. Over the intervening decade, the school had changed from a single block in a mud-hut village with just a salt-water well to a multiple block in a village that had tap water--supplied through the international community.
From my very first time in Kenya, I was concerned about the lack of democracy. The first time that I was there, Oginga Odinga, the former Vice-President, was effectively in domestic exile. Shortly afterwards, leading literary figures, such as Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, were forced into real exile. On our honeymoon, we flew into a curfew in Nairobi, such was the political pressure for democracy and the resistance to it. More recently, I too have seen on television from these shores the savagery with which the pro-democracy demonstrators have been treated.
Those experiences lie behind a number of written questions that I have tabled in order to test exactly the Government's attitude in foreign policy to what we see in Kenya. Are we providing military or other assistance to the existing regime? What measures are we taking in our ethical foreign policy to ensure that pressure is brought to bear to bring democracy to true fruition?
I must say that I am slightly concerned by some of the answers that I have received, which do not reveal exactly what military assistance we have been giving, but do reveal that, notwithstanding what appear to be human rights abuses, we are still treating the country as eligible to receive military training at the very least.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tony Lloyd):
I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) and for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) on introducing this very important debate. It could not be more timely, given the impending presidential and parliamentary elections in Kenya.
I congratulate my hon. Friends on expressing the great affection--it is important that the House expresses such affection--in which Kenya and the Kenyan people are
held by hon. Members and British people generally. It is important that that message is given, because it is important that we do not send a mixed signal about our ambitions and intent.
Our relations with Kenya are obviously long-standing. It is a measure of the importance that we as a country--and certainly the Government--attach to Kenya that, on my first official visit to Africa in June, not long after our general election, I decided to visit Kenya.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington gave a graphic account of the criticisms made of the Kenyan Government's human rights abuses. Indeed, earlier in the year and again in September, Amnesty International launched a document in which it went into considerable detail about its concerns. My hon. Friend has already cited some examples, such as the questions of arbitrary detention, killings by the police, detention without trial and numerous other grave and serious charges to which the Kenyan Government have to respond.
I raised such issues when I visited Kenya. I specifically raised Amnesty International's manifesto with the Attorney-General, Mr. Wako, and President Moi himself. The key points in the manifesto were the need for legal reform, the end to indefinite detention without trial, the need for reform of the press and media and the judicial system, an end to torture and ill-treatment of prisoners--an argument that my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington made forcefully--and action on police killings. There is a legitimate demand that lethal force be countenanced only when unavoidable in order to protect lives.
At that time, and since that time, the Government have pressed all concerned on those issues and, more generally, on the need to avoid confrontation and to resolve differences--there are real differences in Kenyan society--through dialogue and not by resorting to violence.
We have called consistently for free and fair elections. We knew that the electoral cycle in Kenya meant that elections would have to take place this year, or possibly early next year. We have said specifically that free and fair elections are ones in which all those who want to vote can exercise that choice freely, all those who want to stand have the opportunity to do so, the electorate have access to the candidates through the media to help them to make their choice, and people can come together freely in support of the candidates of their choice.
The donor community--the Europeans, the United States and the Japanese--have made it clear that such conditions are necessary for proper elections. We have been consistent in our demand that that process take place.
The elections that have been announced are a great opportunity for the Kenyan people to take control of the destiny of their country. The election takes place against a backdrop of laws that have made the electoral process a subject of concern. The elections held in 1992 were widely seen not to have come up to the standards that we demand. The saving grace is that they were the first multi-party elections after a long period of one-party rule. We must insist that the elections this time are fought and won on a more acceptable basis than those of five years ago.
During the summer, there was considerable violence, much of it no doubt related to the anticipation of elections. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington
referred to several specific incidents, including that in the Anglican cathedral and another in which Paul Muite and Nengi Muigai, both of whom I know personally, were subjected to violent attack. We have made it clear to the Kenyan Government that we abhor violence from Opposition figures, state institutions or the Government's supporters. It has no place in Kenyan society.
I spoke at length with Church leaders when I was in Kenya, urging them to continue to play a constructive role, as they seek to do. Their initiative brought the different sides together to form the inter-parties parliamentary group. That has had positive results.
On 7 November, Parliament and the President approved three important reform Bills. One removed the principal legal instrument that has been used to harass Opposition politicians--the Public Order Act. When I was Opposition spokesman, I had direct experience of the operation of that Act, when a meeting that I was supposed to address was cancelled arbitrarily and at short notice. That did not ultimately prevent the meeting, but the intention was certainly to disrupt and reduce the audience.
I welcome the abandonment of that Act, which means that political meetings no longer require a licence. That takes them outside the immediate control of those with a political incentive. There is now simply a requirement to notify the police of public rallies.
The Preservation of Public Security Act has also been amended, removing the provisions for detention without trial, as has the penal code, with the replacement of the sedition laws, which had been used to prevent freedom of expression and to intimidate Opposition politicians. Importantly for the coming election, the constitutional provision preventing coalition government has now been changed.
We note the commitment of the Kenyan Government to allowing equitable access to publicly funded media. All parties must have access to the radio, in particular, to ensure free and fair elections. When the election was announced, we issued a statement calling for a peaceful election and insisting that all parties and candidates of national status should have access to the media on a fair basis, particularly to the radio.
We also note that a law has been passed to establish a constitutional review commission, which will draw from diverse sections of Kenyan society, with a two-year timetable to draw up fundamental reforms to present to Parliament.
We are not sanguine about the process. We do not think that it goes far enough. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington referred to the unacceptable continued refusal to register Safina as a political party. There can be no place in a democratic system for parties being arbitrarily forbidden to contest elections.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary raised that with the Kenyan Foreign Minister as recently as the Edinburgh Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in October. I am writing once again to the Kenyan Government, asking them to allow an urgent appeal against that refusal. I do not know whether that will be possible in time for the forthcoming election, but, if not, that will be a severe blot on the credibility of the election.
We shall follow the election campaign closely. The Department for International Development, together with the Swedes, the Danes and the Dutch, is jointly financing a $1.5 million project to help independent Kenyan non-governmental organisations to observe the elections. Those bodies include the National Council for Churches, the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission and the Institute for Education in Democracy. We have also seconded staff to the international secretariat in Nairobi, which will co-ordinate the monitoring of the electoral process from start to finish. The election is important. The world has an interest in ensuring that it is fought on a free and fair basis.
We shall continue to be critical of all human rights abuses. We know about the problem of persistent police brutality. We recognise the evidence of tortures and deaths of prisoners and detainees and of excessive violence in crowd control, arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial killings. I have raised those issues with the Kenyan Attorney-General on at least two occasions. We shall continue to criticise excessive police violence, particularly incidents such as those of 7 July and 15 October. I wrote to the President about our concerns at that time, and the Foreign Secretary has raised the issues with the Kenyan Foreign Ministry.
Against that background, the Department for International Development is considering funding training courses for the Kenyan police. I want to disabuse my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough of his concerns. There are 4,000 British troops in Kenya on their own training exercises. We are simply using the training facilities offered by the Kenyans.
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