Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MS KATE
ALLEN, MR
TIM HANCOCK
AND MR
STEVE CRAWSHAW
21 DECEMBER 2004
Q1 Chairman: On behalf of the Committee,
may I welcome what I can almost call the usual team: Ms Kate Allen,
director of Amnesty International, Mr Tim Hancock, head of policy
and government affairs, and Mr Steve Crawshaw, the London director
of Human Rights Watch. May I say how very valuable we believe
your contributions as a team have been over the lifetime of this
Parliament? You have both submitted to the Committee a valuable
memorandum. What we find of extreme help to us is the way in which
what you, as the key leaders of the non-governmental organisations,
give to us which provides us with a platform when we meet the
Minister. We shall be meeting Bill Rammell on 11 January. Our
agenda today will include not only general topics but obviously
individual countries on which Human Rights Watch and Amnesty have
particular concerns. First, the question of organisational changes
within the Foreign Office. I think it is in the Amnesty document
that you say you thought some of those changes within the FCO
might impact adversely on the ability of the FCO to pursue its
human rights agenda. Would you like to say a little more about
that?
Ms Allen: First of all, can I
thank you very much for that very kind introduction and can I
say how much, from Amnesty International, we welcome the publication
of the report? We think it is a very good report. It is very comprehensive
and invaluable to us in our human rights work over the year and
we are very pleased to have a good relationship with the FCO,
not always where we agree but where we always are having discussions.
Our concern has been about the organisation of the funding of
human rights work. We have highlighted the fact that we have been
unable in the report to quite tell whether the funding of £11
million on the human rights work is there. We have been able to
work out where £8 million is and we understand that the FCO
within the last few days has published a further report. We hope
that answers our questions on that. We have had some concerns
that human rights are being subsumed in the issue of sustainable
development and we hope that is not going to be the case. We hope
human rights will stand alone and have that kind of focus. Having
said that, we think some very good things have happened over the
course of the year as well.
Mr Crawshaw: Amnesty has looked
at this much more closely than we have. We have certainly had
a number of concerns. We are constantly given assurances that
this is not a down grading of human rights. It is a concern that
it may be and that it would be subsumed in other areas. We are
also worried. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.
Q2 Chairman: Next year is a significant
year for the United Kingdom with the G8 presidency for the year
as a whole and the EU presidency for the latter six months. If
you were writing UK policy priorities, what would you think of
as the key areas of concern?
Ms Allen: Could I mention three?
One of our major concerns is the issue of counter-terrorism. We
are concerned that some of the moves in terms of counter-terrorism
are working against the human rights of individuals. We echo the
FCO's concern about condemning Bali and Madrid and the outrages
that have taken place. Those responsible should be brought to
account, but we are concerned that counter-terrorism both at home
and abroad in pursuit of it is eroding human rights. We would
want human rights to have more of a profile and have a greater
leadership at this particular time. We are concerned about the
issues of UK anti-terrorism legislation, pleased by what we see
as the Law Lords strong decisions earlier last week and we are
also very concerned about what we consider to be the government's
rather slippery slope in terms of issues to do with torture; also,
with Guantanamo Bay and the issue of people being denied their
rights there. We see these as issues that need to be pursued very
strongly. We also hope that human rights will maintain a profile
and that it will be mainstreamed. We are concerned that human
rights get put to one side frequently and we hope that both through
the G8 and the EU issues around human rights in countries such
as China and Russia are pursued. Finally, we hope that the UK
government will take the opportunity to pursue the arms trade
treaty. We were delighted earlier in the year that the Foreign
Secretary supported the proposal for an arms trade treaty and
talked about working to get other governments to support that.
We would like to see the way in which the presidency of the EU
and the position in terms of the G8 are used to advance that particular
treaty.
Q3 Chairman: That is a valuable and very
full shopping bag. Mr Crawshaw, would you like to add to it?
Mr Crawshaw: It is a very similar
shopping bag. The theme of counter-terrorism is clearly enormously
important. One thing I would highlight is the worry not just of
powerful democracies ignoring some of the basic principles of
international law because they believe it to be necessary in the
so-called war on terror, which we would see as sending quite the
wrong message, but also this applies very much to the EU and the
G8 and a number of governments around the world who are seen as
being "allies" in the war on terror and a great reluctance
to address the very serious abuses those countries are carrying
out. That seems to us to be enormously damaging. The other theme
which is a constant of our work at Human Rights Watch and at Amnesty
as well is the idea of accountability and ending impunity. That
is going to be something which this year we are going to confront
very strongly with the International Criminal Court which is finally
just getting fully underway. In the next few months, very serious
questions will arise about a possible referral by the Security
Council to the Court. Major Security Council governments are going
to need to be absolutely up front on that.
Q4 Chairman: Increasingly, we are concerned
about our dealings with the Islamic world. Colleagues will deal
with individual countries but there is concern about dealing with
minorities in the Islamic world and the fate of those who convert
from Islam. It is a matter which the Foreign Office is dealing
with in public diplomacy with the British Council and the World
Service. Is this a serious concern for both your organisations?
Ms Allen: It has been a serious
concern in several countries where it is very difficult when people
do convert. It has come up in relation to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan
and other countries. These issues do concern us.
Mr Crawshaw: The pressures are
there in a number of countries but we have not looked at the detail.
Q5 Mr Pope: You mentioned Guantanamo
Bay. Could you say a few words about your view of the British
government's response to this? Some of us have been quite dismayed
by it, to be honest, because the UK government has talked about
Guantanamo almost entirely in terms of how it has affected British
nationals. When British nationals have been released, they have
not been charged when they have been returned to the UK which
is a concern in itself but there is also the wider concern that
the British government has failed to articulate about Guantanamo
human rights abuses. Would you make a few comments about that?
Ms Allen: Guantanamo Bay has been
a concern for Amnesty International for the last three years.
The fact that we have seen 580-plus men still being held there
three years later with no charges, no trials, very limited access
to lawyers, no access to families, is of deep concern to us at
Amnesty. We are aware that the Government has been involved in
quiet diplomacy about Guantanamo Bay in relation to British nationals
but not, as far as we are aware, to British residents and the
others held there. We would like to see a much stronger representation
by the UK government to the American authorities about Guantanamo
Bay. We do consider it to be a shocking outrage that people have
been held for this long in the way that they have and we have
deep concerns about that so we would welcome a much stronger line
from the UK government. We would also welcome the Commission on
Human Rights paying some attention to Guantanamo Bay.
Mr Crawshaw: I would echo everything
that has just been said. We find it quite extraordinary that although
there are criticisms which get media play on some of the issues
at Guantanamo, it is very much framed in terms of the British
prisoners. It implied that if the British prisoners were brought
back home all the problems of Guantanamo would be solved. This
seems to us to be an absolutely fundamental misunderstanding.
I absolutely appreciate that British politicians should be very
concerned about the fate of British citizens, but not to understand
the greater international importance of what is happening at Guantanamo
is enormously worrying.
Q6 Mr Illsley: There are concerns about
the length of time these people have been held without a trial.
Are there any concerns about the way these people have been treated
while they are detained?
Ms Allen: Yes. We have all heard
the accounts from the men who have returned, particularly the
young men from Tipton. We have also seen the recent letters from
Mosam Begg to his father and we have heard other accounts of abuse
within Guantanamo Bay. We have serious concerns. The International
Committee of the Red Cross considers that the allegations of torture
and causing inhuman and degrading treatment in Guantanamo Bay
are extremely serious and have submitted their findings to the
US government. There are many reasons to be concerned about the
treatment of the individuals. We are also aware that at the beginning
of 2004 something like 33 suicide attempts have been made at Guantanamo.
We have serious concerns for people's mental health as well as
about the treatment people are receiving while they are there.
Q7 Mr Pope: Is there an end in sight?
A British government minister, Bill Rammell, compared the situation
to people being detained in World War Two. Is there an end in
sight to Guantanamo, do you think?
Ms Allen: Donald Rumsfeld, within
the last year, talked about needing Guantanamo Bay for the next
20 years. When senior politicians within the American administration
use language like that, it causes deep concern.
Q8 Mr Pope: On Abu Ghraib, do you think
the lessons have been learned by the Americans that they will
not repeat that kind of outrage again?
Mr Crawshaw: I am sad to say no,
I do not think that. I do not have the wording in front of me
but the report criticises in similar terms to those President
Bush used, saying these were terrible things that happened. There
is an absolute failure to confront the pattern of this. The kind
of abuses we saw at Abu Ghraib were clearly not just bad apples.
It was absolutely part of a pattern of wishing to push boundaries,
of thinking of torture as being a useful tool to apply in the
war on terror. We have documented some more cases in recent days,
which caused some reaction from the Pentagon, of yet more deaths
in Afghanistan. In other words, what happened at Abu Ghraib can
in no way be seen in isolation. There seems to be very little
willingness by the US administration and an extreme unwillingness
by the British government to confront that fact as up front as
one might hope and expect.
Q9 Mr Olner: The alleged abuses at Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are well documented. Both of those areas
are as a result of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Are the
abuses well documented that were being carried out by the regimes
in those two countries before Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were
established? I would like to get a balance between these things.
Mr Crawshaw: The abuses committed
by the Saddam Hussein regime and the Taliban regime were quite
horrific and they were internationally known to be quite horrific.
The British, American and other governments around the world,
not to mention human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch,
condemned those absolutely wholeheartedly. I always find it dismaying
when sometimes there is an attempt to put the abuses being carried
out by US forces "into context" by saying it is not
as bad as what happened before. I am sure you were not suggesting
that but clearly anything that Saddam Hussein did was undoubtedly
worse than what is happening in Baghdad now. The key issue is
not just the nature of what is happening which is serious enough
in itself but the message being sent out.
Q10 Chairman: And indeed our responsibility.
Mr Crawshaw: A very direct responsibility.
I cannot say it often enough and I hope that members of the Committee
will share this concern. It is really quite remarkable that the
democratic British government feels unable to speak clearly about
something which, if it were an abusive, authoritarian government,
it would have no hesitation in speaking out about the horror of
these things. The reluctance is difficult to understand.
Q11 Ms Stuart: I want to ask about the
use of torture and the evidence which is gathered as a result
of torture. The Foreign Office in its report says that torture
is abhorrent and illegal and the UK is opposed to the use of torture
under all circumstances. Now we have the Court of Appeal ruling
which does not state this so clearly. I wondered if you accepted
the assessment that the UK is now in breach of its international
obligations in relation to the use of torture and material evidence.
Ms Allen: That certainly is our
view at Amnesty. We deeply regret the current debate in terms
of torture and the fact that we are having this discussion within
the UK. The Foreign Office has done some brilliant work over the
years to counter the use of torture and it is risking that work
being undone at the moment. That is of great concern to us. We
do not consider that torture is ever justifiable and we would
hope that that situation in the UK is soon remedied.
Q12 Ms Stuart: We tend to only look at
how the United States and the United Kingdom behave but I wonder
whether Mr Crawshaw would like to make an observation. I know
you take a keen interest in Germany and I read in the newspaper
cuttings today that there was a case in Germany where police officers
were accused of using torture to get evidence and they came out
with a very dubious judgment which appears to be sending out some
very mixed messages by courts. Is that happening across Europe
in the sense that as we engage in the war on terrorism governments
are changing their attitudes to something that used to be disapproved
of?
Mr Crawshaw: I feel on the one
hand dismayed as a Briton but on the other hand I would like to
think that it is not a pattern. There is a very important case
in Germany which raises in sharp focus a lot of the very difficult
ethical problems. Broadly, it was a non-political issue, a kidnapping,
where a life might have been saved by the threat of torture and
a lot of very difficult ethical issues had come up there. It was
very much a one-off in policing terms and I think it is a very
interesting and difficult case. The key difference between that
German policing and kidnapping case and what we are seeing in
Britain is that Britain appears to be taking the view which is
US policy-like in this context. US policy is saying that we wish
to push the boundaries of torture ourselves and there has been
a flurry of memos which members of the Committee will have seen
in that direction. Britain continues to say that it would not
dream of using torture but it is more permissive of other people
using torture elsewhere. The important and unique quality of what
Britain is doing is thinking that, because of the dangers of terrorism,
therefore we ought to just bend the rules a little bit while still
one hears from governments that their abhorrence of torture is
absolute. They continue to make that statement and put it into
reports and yet, as has already been acknowledged, one of the
reasons for suggesting that the use of torture evidence in British
courts was okay was that Article 15 of the UN Convention against
Torture "is not part of domestic law." In other words,
it is accepted that we are in contravention of international law
which is somehow regarded as being less important than British
law. There is a bigger principle here which undoubtedly paves
the way and sends out a very dangerous message. It can often be
framed as saying, "Would you not use a little bit of that
information if it might have been gained under torture, if it
was going to save lives?" If that question is asked as an
individual question, the natural instinct is to think that one
should use that information. The practical effect of doing that
is to encourage the torturers to give you the next piece of information
and the next and the next after that. You then build up a relationship
with the torturers' regime and that is something which the British
government seems unwilling to confront.
Q13 Ms Stuart: We are the only government
within the EU which has said that the UN Charter is not part of
our domestic law?
Mr Crawshaw: As far as I am aware.
Q14 Chairman: If you take the absolutely
purist argument that in no circumstances would we act upon information
which may have been obtained by torture, not commissioned by us,
if for example someone told an Uzbek authority that sarin was
going to be used in the London Underground, would you not act
upon that?
Mr Crawshaw: I can see the obvious
difficulty in relation to that. If that question is framed narrowly,
the natural, instinctive answer is to say one would have to if
you know that sarin is going to be used next Tuesday. What I would
strongly emphasise is that one does hear versions of that question
very often. We would absolutely recognise the danger of terrorism
in this country is undoubtedly very real but hidden within that
question about what do you do about a single piece of information
is a request for permissiveness to go on keeping the door open.
Once you have sent the message that you are keeping the door open,
you have a relationship with the torturers' regime and that is
more widely known. That is immoral, illegal and destabilising.
One needs to step on from that because what has already happened
in the past is neither here nor there. The signal has been sent
saying, "Yes, please. Give us anything that you have and
we do not particularly care how that information is reached."
That undoubtedly makes us less, not more, safe.
Q15 Mr Mackay: Staying with the hypothetical
aspect of the question the Chairman put, would you agree with
me that perhaps information obtained under torture is not always
reliable and that too much weight can be put on such information
so, in addition to the obvious human rights issue which you have
raised, there is the practical issue that, if you were looking
at intelligence information, you would have a very big health
warning on information that had come under duress?
Mr Crawshaw: That is right. The
British Ambassador to Uzbekistan very succinctly put it: we are
selling our souls for dross. He was speaking from a position in
Tashkent where he knew that this was the wrong information and
the same pattern has been seen again and again. We saw it in Guantanamo,
where the torture may not have been as horrendous as some of these
other regimes but people were ready to tell complete untruths,
incriminating themselves, when they were completely uninvolved
and worked in an electrical shop in Birmingham. That gives us
a sense of how inaccurate information can be gained.
Q16 Mr Olner: Can I turn to the United
Nations? The United Nations has come under fire recently from
several directions particularly about refugees in the Democratic
Republic of Congo having accused UN staff of sexually abusing
girls and women. There is the Oil For Food Programme and Saddam
Hussein skimming billions off that programme for his own use.
How badly has the UN been damaged by these allegations?
Mr Crawshaw: Those particular
allegations are clearly damaging. It is a very serious issue.
As members of the Committee will know, in general terms, we have
a horrendous problem of sexual violence and rape used as a weapon
of war, for example, in the Congo and elsewhere. We have also
had allegations in previous cases of UN peace keepers doing this
and it is undoubtedly a very serious problem. We talk about the
criticisms of the UN. I was about to stand up staunchly on behalf
of the UN and say that clearly the Secretary-General in particular
and the UN more generally have taken a lot of flak from Washington
recently.
Q17 Mr Olner: You think the USA are wrong?
Mr Crawshaw: I think the USA in
general terms are quite wrong to suggest that the United Nations
are the problem rather than the potential solution. We have many
occasions where we are unhappy with often the failure to act or
to go in the right direction but I would be extremely mistrustful
of the attempt to suggest that the Secretary-General and his team
are more the problem than the solution. Turning away from the
United Nations would be an absolutely disastrous step, which is
what seems partly to be happening at the moment.
Ms Allen: In terms of the sexual
abuse of women in the Congo or, as we reported a year or so ago,
the abuse of women within Kosovo and the trafficking of women,
the UN is part of the difficulty there but it can also be part
of resolving that. The fact that we are moving towards a UN Convention
around trafficking of people and there are moves within Europe
around those issues is extremely important so that there is a
systematic approach to resolve those issues, bringing the UN into
that. Going back to the Chairman's question at the start of the
meeting about the EU presidency, I would hope that the UK government
would take a lead in terms of some of the issues of trafficking
within Europe and would use the EU presidency during its time
to pursue that agenda.
Q18 Mr Olner: You think that the UN integrity
is absolutely safeguarded and there is not a problem with it?
Ms Allen: Where there are those
questions, they need to be thoroughly and openly investigated.
The difficulties that they show up need to be resolved. There
need to be solutions but the UN is a hugely important institution
in terms of security, peace and human rights.
Q19 Mr Olner: You probably know of the
recent report of the high level panel. Do you consider that to
be a positive development to solving potential conflicts in the
future?
Ms Allen: We have seen very recently
the UN panel's report and, from Amnesty, we very much agree with
the support it gives for the UN Secretary-General and the High
Commissioner for Human Rights in wanting to bring in front of
the Security Council the recommendations that the UN Commission
looks at each year in terms of human rights and to give that kind
of focus. We think human rights should get that Security Council
attention too. We are very pleased with those elements of the
panel's report and the highlighting of the inadequate funding
for the Human Rights Commission there. We are looking forward
to engaging in discussion about the panel's report and hearing
the UK government's response to it as well.
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