Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses(Questions 1-19)

TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2003

MR STEVEN CRAWSHAW, MS KATE ALLEN AND MR TIM HANCOCK

Chairman

  1. On behalf of the Committee may I, in this our first meeting in the calender year 2003, welcome two representatives of Amnesty International UK, Ms Kate Allen, who is the Director, and Mr Tim Hancock, who is the Parliamentary Officer, and Mr Steven Crawshaw, who is the Director of the London office of Human Rights Watch. We are delighted to see both organisations. You personally both in your own right have assisted the committee on a number of occasions and we are indeed grateful for the memoranda which both of the organisations sent to us, which have a remarkable degree of similarity I notice. We also value this meeting as preparation for the meeting which the committee has with the relevant Foreign Office minister. We are indeed meeting Mr Bill Rammell on January 28, so much of what we learn today will be helpful for us in that preparation. If matters arise between now and that date on which you wish to comment we would again be most grateful. The year 2002 was perhaps not a good year for human rights because of the way in which the war against terrorism was used by governments. Let us hope that this new year will be rather better. First of all, on the basis on which we work this is a much more weighty document than we have had in the past and it has been the practice of the committee to comment on the contents and indeed on the form of this report, which is now getting in every way a much more weighty document. May I begin by asking you both what are your general reactions to this year's Annual Report. Perhaps I will begin with Ms Allen, do you believe this gives a reasonably fair picture of the role human rights plays in UK foreign policy? I notice, with respect, you were given a certain prominent role in a leadership conference this morning. Does this make you feel that you and human rights are at last being mainstreamed within the Foreign Office?

  (Ms Allen) Thank you for that welcome. I think in terms of the report we do think that it is a very comprehensive report, it is a very thorough report in terms of the coverage of human rights and the role of the government and the work that it has been doing over the year. We have no argument with the report, we think it is a very good report.

  2. And an improvement on previous reports?
  (Ms Allen) I think that it is becoming more and more comprehensive. I think the question that we would have is one that we raised in our written evidence to you, the report seems to be increasingly talked about and referred to by ministers as covering their concerns on different countries much more thoroughly than we think the report itself justifies. The coverage of different countries and their records is quite patchy and if ministers are going to rely upon it as covering human rights' situations in those different countries as opposed to providing snapshots backing up different themes then I think there may be some difficulties.

  3. Do you understand that for some reasons ministers believe in respect of certain countries it makes more sense to bring pressure informally?
  (Ms Allen) Certainly. The point I am trying to make is that in publicity and in interviews on the television and radio, ones that I have been involved in with ministers too, they referred to the report and to country accounts within the report as a systematic and comprehensive discussion of human rights. We would question that and whether that should be the case. I think there needs to be some clarity about the purpose of the report.

  4. Mr Crawshaw, your response to the report, is it an improvement on previous years?
  (Mr Crawshaw) Very similar to Kate Allen's. We agree it is comprehensive and thorough. One should not be dragged into the cynical view that sometimes comes that the whole thing is just a whitewash, we do not regard it as that.

  5. Do you reflect the views of the NGO community largely?
  (Mr Crawshaw) I certainly reflect the views of Human Rights Watch.
  (Ms Allen) Not generally but from conversations that I have had with other human rights' organisations I think that we do recognise the value of the report.

  6. Thank you.
  (Mr Crawshaw) Having said that, there are clearly bits, if you like, there are two concerns that we have, one is that there are some points where what is said in the report is right and proper but does not really seem to be matched by government action on a particular area, and we have highlighted some of those in the written submission and we will be happy to take more questions on that. The other is really one or two really gross omissions which are quite startling, and one finds it remarkable that a human rights report cannot highlight them. That may be something that you want to ask more questions about later. Saudi is a clear case. It is really very, very surprising that torture is not addressed directly within that section. One can make all sorts of speculation about why not but given the fact that the report itself highlights the fact that human rights and security are not alternatives but are mutually reinforcing I think it is a pity if one make omissions for whatever type of geopolitical reasons. That has been seen as a mistake in the past.

Sir John Stanley

  7. If, like the new Archbishop of Canterbury on Desert Island Discs, you want to pause for a moment so you can give a considered answer to this question the Committee will understand. The question I want to put to you—we have a lot of detailed and specific questions to put to you later—is, if you were in a position to have a free hand as far as the Government's human rights policy is concerned, what for each of your organisations would be the two or three issues or country areas which you and your organisation would like to see greater government weight and greater government attention given to in the human rights area? What would be your top two or three priorities for more action?
  (Ms Allen) I think between us we would both have the same first issue that we would both raise, which would be the International Criminal Court. That has been an issue of concern to both organisations and the UK Government's response to the US's onslaught has caused us quite some concern.
  (Mr Crawshaw) It is something which the report talks very strongly about, the British support and the importance of the British role in setting up the Court, which is absolutely right, because it did indeed play an important role. During the past six months since the official creation in July 2002 there have, on a number of occasions, been signs that Britain is willing to make conciliatory moves towards the Americans, who would basically like to see the Court dead in the water. Both of our organisations, and I would like to think anyone who cares about human rights in the world, feels that for this Court to be weakened and chipped away, chipped away, chipped away is very dangerous. The British Government would insist that they are defending it to the hilt. I think that it needs to be understood that sometimes making compromises will weaken in the long term. The Hague Tribunal was not terribly powerful when it started but it gained power over the years. That is one issue where we do think it is very, very important that Britain should stand strong for greater international security for all to stick by the ICC. That is one very important issue.

  8. Do you want to follow anything on the ICC? I would also like to ask you about your second and third top priorities.
  (Ms Allen) Moving on to the second and the third, one of the issues we are very concerned about is the protection of human rights as states increasingly enact counter-terrorism measures. We have produced a report "Rights At Risk" on this issue and are updating that at the moment where we have expressed our concerns in numerous countries round the world where the security of counter-terrorism legislation has, we think, undermined human rights, including within our own country where we think the fact that there are 11 foreign nationals being held without charge or trial now for coming up to a year—something that the Master of the Rolls recently described as a legal black hole[11]—is something that causes us great concern. That gives quite a picture to other countries about the way in which they can tackle counter terrorism and the way they can use that to abuse human rights within their countries. That would be our second choice. You gave me three, the third would be to ask the British Government to speak up more clearly about the human rights' records of some countries that it does find quite difficult to confront.

  9. Which specific ones?
  (Ms Allen) Saudi Arabia is clearly one. The three paragraphs in the report are completely inaccurate. It does feel that at the moment the Government are saying less about what their concerns are about Saudi Arabia than it was a year or two years ago. We are moving in the wrong direction on those issues. Those would be the three Amnesty issues.

  10. Mr Crawshaw, your second and third?
  (Mr Crawshaw) We are happy to subscribe to those, however we would like some additional as well. Picking up really on the fact of sometimes speaking not quite loudly enough where we feel that it would be necessary, Chechnya would be a obvious case in point. We are not looking for some major showdown with Moscow at every moment but clearly dialogue is terribly important. In the long term it must be understood that turning a blind eye to the disappearances and brutality that is happening the whole time and taking government assurances from Moscow, which constantly come, about the rule of law being okay is simply not sufficient. Those assurances, as our own research on the ground has shown very clearly—we have a forthcoming report talking about people being forced out of refugee camps there and disappearances continue—are certainly ones that are very serious.

Mr Pope

  11. I want to ask a couple of questions about Iraq and the document which the Foreign Office published in November of last year. First of all the Foreign Office concluded that a cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering remains the hallmark of the Iraqi regime, and it goes on to list a variety of forms of torture that are commonplace in Iraq. Is it your assessment that this dossier is a fair and accurate account of the human rights' records of Iraq?
  (Ms Allen) Yes, it is. Amnesty International has produced reports on the human rights situation in Iraq every year and sometimes more than once a year since 1975. A lot of our reports have been used in that document.

  12. Is it your estimation that Iraq is by some measure the worst offender against human rights in that region or is it just comparable to any of its neighbouring countries?
  (Ms Allen) At Amnesty we try not to get into comparing the human rights' records of different countries, it is a task that would become quite invidious for us. What we try to do is tackle each country, each government on its merits. The Iraqi regime is by any measure pretty horrendous in terms of its human rights record.

  13. Do you have some reservations about the motives of the Government in publishing the dossier?
  (Ms Allen) Our concern that we voiced when that dossier was published, given that a lot of the evidence within it was evidence that Amnesty and other human rights' organisations had produced over many years, was our concern that the aim of publishing the document was to strengthen support for possible military action, and we simply raised that as a concern.

  14. I accept that point and no doubt that will be widely accepted round this Committee. There is also another view which one could hold simultaneously, which is it is helpful to produce a document like this if the Government thinks human right are a priority. It is the function of the Foreign Office to raise human rights and it is therefore a helpful contribution to the wider debate to be able to publish a dossier like this.
  (Ms Allen) Yes. It would be very interesting to see them on other countries too, perhaps some of the ones we mentioned earlier.

  15. I very much welcomed this dossier, I thought it was helpful. I am proud that the government I support is able to do this kind of stuff and I would be even more proud if it were able produce one on a country which is notionally an ally of ours, Saudi Arabia, where torture is widespread. It is time that the government might be even-handed about it. I hope you would agree with that.
  (Mr Crawshaw) Can I say I think one of the lessons that ought to be contained within the dossier is precisely reminding us how not addressing enormous and brutal human rights abuses at the time when they are occurring or at the time when they are known to the world has very, very bad knock-on effects down the line and I think that reminds us very forcefully of that.

Mr Maples

  16. As a committee we have been very interested in the circumstance that have given rise to the Islamic terrorism we have seen since September 11, Al-Qaeda and the groups associated with it. It has been suggested to us in evidence, and we are inclined to give some weight to this, that there are several factors and at least one of them is the absence of human rights, democracy, and rule of law in many Arab countries, and Saudi Arabia has already come up in conversation. I would be interested in your view in general on the state of human rights in the Arab parts of those regions. We have heard a bit about some progress, there were some elections in Kuwait and Bahrain and Morocco, do those amount to anything? Do you think there is real progress? We are particularly interested in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which seem to be the economic and political leaders in the Arab world. I would like your opinion and whether you think there is any progress at all?
  (Mr Crawshaw) As you say, there is not a lot to be hopeful about. There are many countries in the region.
  (Mr Hancock) Certainly post September 11 we saw an increased use of repressive legislation to clamp down on the freedom of expression in Egypt, if anything it has got worse since 11 September. The overall trend has not been terribly encouraging. I think that has probably been mirrored throughout the region. There are some elements of positive news. I think Bahrain is one country where we have been fairly encouraged by some recent reforms there. The two countries that you cited, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, no, I do not think we can say there has been progress, in fact probably the opposite.

  17. I suppose if we made these points to the Egyptian or Saudi governments they would say, "you mean now with what is going on you are asking us to do something about it and you are also asking us to liberalise our freedom of expression, you must be crazy". What would your reaction to that be? Do you think that the absence of democracy and law on human rights is a factor in producing terrorism?
  (Mr Crawshaw) They ought to understand and the British Government also ought to be making clear that these are absolutely complementary. The idea that by torturing people, by locking people up, freedom of expression, the idea that you are creating security for yourself is so patently not the case. Again, perhaps, Saudi is the absolute clearest example of that. You are creating instability by locking people up, by torturing the whole time, that is what is the instability for the future.

  18. Do you see a pattern in countries where basic human rights are suppressed of political activity being diverted into other areas? Are governments, not necessarily just Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but China amongst others, are they successful or does it end up being channelled in a different direction and going underground? Is there a pattern to this?
  (Mr Hancock) It depends on the country and the nature of the opposition of each of the dissenters. In some circumstances you have an opposition that sees violence as the best way or the only way of expressing itself. In another country, Burma for example, we have a very repressive government and the main opposition clearly felt that using democratic procedures is perhaps the best way of garnering international support. I think it depends on the opposition and the country.

  19. If we were trying to the press the Government of Saudi Arabia and Egypt as two examples and urge them to make progress, where would you start? I would imagine trying to get a free election of political parties is probably the last step in this process, perhaps the establishment of a genuine rule of law where people feel they have rights, where do you think we should be urging the government to start with those two countries, Saudi Arabia and Egypt?
  (Ms Allen) Some of the extreme examples are the fact that in Saudi Arabia torture is endemic, the fact that the death penalty is used in very wide sets of circumstances, so starting with those sorts of issues and gradually moving in those directions. That is what is regrettable about the report, it is not even starting to challenge the issue round torture in this particular year's coverage of Saudi. That would be the starting point.
  (Mr Crawshaw) I would subscribe to that. Exactly the rule of law you mentioned, and torture is where that begins. Torture is a licence to do whatever you like by the state. That again contributes to instability enormously. There are a number of other places, there are a number of central Asian states who may seem to be useful at a particular moment for geopolitical reasons and think they have a free hand to carry out torture. That is a very basic thing. That can be stopped more or less overnight. It cannot be stopped exactly overnight, but the sense that this is a culture that will not be tolerated, that a policeman or an army officer who tortures can be held accountable for that, that sense of accountability is enormously important and many, many other things can flow from that.


11   Note by witness: This comment is out of context and actually a reference to Guantanamo Bay. Back


 
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