Appendix 20: Further memorandum from the
Campaign Against Arms Trade and TAPOL
We are most grateful to you and your Committee
for questioning the Foreign Secretary about Indonesia during his
evidence session on 25 February; and in particular about the change
of "assurances" concerning the end use of British-supplied
military equipment in Aceh. We hope that our letter to you of
27 January on this matter was helpful.
We would just like to follow up a few points
in the evidence.
At one point Mr Straw's official, Mr Landsman,
stated that: "There is no evidence that Scorpion [sic] has
been used in Aceh in recent times". That is not correct.
As far as we know the Foreign Office has never previously questioned
the use of Scorpions in Aceh and has indeed admitted it in several
letters to us and others (For example: "The Indonesian Government
announced on 23 June that British-built Scorpion vehicles were
being deployed to Aceh to protect supply routes against attack",
letter from Mr Mike O'Brien to Carmel Budiardjo of TAPOL, 10 July
2003). We hope that you will be able to ask Mr Straw to correct
the evidence on this point.
We were interested to see that your committee
questioned Mr Straw at some length about end-use monitoring and
he assured you that he is not "turning a blind eye"
to the breach of end-use assurances. With that in mind, we wonder
if you might have the opportunity to question Mr Straw further
about a report in The Guardian on 20 January that "local
television has shown heavy machine guns mounted on Scorpions firing
at alleged separatist positions on several occasions since they
were deployed to [Aceh] in June". That would represent a
serious breach of the "assurance" that British equipment
will not be used for offensive purposes and we would have expected
the Foreign Office to investigate. It would be a simple matter
for the Jakarta Embassy to track down the TV footage in question,
but as far as we are aware they have not done so.
We wonder if you might also question Mr Straw
about why the "assurances" were relaxed at a time when
violence was increasing in Aceh (see our letter of 27 January)
and if you might press him to make a formal announcement to Parliament
concerning the relaxation.
March 2004
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