Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MS KATE
ALLEN, MR
TIM HANCOCK
AND MR
STEVE CRAWSHAW
21 DECEMBER 2004
Q40 Sir John Stanley: What are your views
as to what the international community should be doing in relation
to Uganda as of now, just briefly?
Ms Allen: Briefly I would say
paying attention to those issues that you have just raised. The
temptation to think that the Museveni Government is a secure government
is one that has, I think, led the international community not
to be too concerned with what is happening in that country and
I think that needs to change, but we will get back to you with
more detail on that.
Q41 Chairman: Before the 11th?
Ms Allen: Certainly.
Mr Crawshaw: The UN Security Council
as you know are on their way back from Nairobi and they were in
Uganda recently. They are preparing a mission report and we would
certainly hope that that would be very strong again on the issues
that you have just mentioned and the British Government can play
a role in that as well to make sure these issues are highlighted.
Q42 Sir John Stanley: And the DRC, again,
if you could give us a quick thumbnail view as to what you would
like to see the international community do in the DRC? It is a
vast country, hugely difficult, but again we have an appalling
human rights situation there.
Ms Allen: It is a deeply shocking
human rights situation with a very fragile peace process under
way. As I am sure you know, we have a situation where something
like four million civilians have died since 1998. Our priorities
there and the issues that we would raise for attention are the
integration of the military and police forces and the implementation
of the disarming and demobilisation in the integration programmes
that are taking place. We have some specific comments that we
would make in the way in which those are taking place, the lack
of funding for putting vetting systems in place. We have some
very specific recommendations that we would make there. We consider
that impunity is at the heart of much of what is happening in
the DRC and that the justice system has been starved of resources
and there is work that needs to be done there. We have just reported
on the situation of girls and women and the use of mass rape within
that country, literally tens of thousands of women have been raped
and the lack of health care that exists for those women and girls.
On the arms embargo to DRC, we agree with the Secretary-General
of the UN that there needs to be much greater surveillance of
that embargo. Again, we would like to see the UK Government exert
its pressure in terms of the Rwandan government. We think that
the Rwandan government in terms of its relationship with the Congo
is a difficulty and we would like to ensure that Rwanda, having
signed up to support the peace process in DRC, keeps its troops
its side of its border.
Mr Crawshaw: Justice seems to
us to be an absolutely key point and the British Government can
play a really important role in giving both material and training
support in making things work. We have a more general sense of
ending impunity but also specifically sexual violence which was
referred to in connection with rape which is occurring on an absolutely
horrific scale. There have been the beginnings there but not nearly
enough of ending that. Clearly that has all sorts of implications
which can help the stability of the country. Just as Uganda has
been involved with the rebel groups and has benefited richly from
that sometimes, the British Government and other international
governments have been enormously reluctant to confront the involvement
in this and the undoubted failure of the international community
back in 1994 to take any kind of timely action against the genocide.
It is entirely understandable that the Rwandans feel deeply bitter
about that, but that cannot possibly be a reason a decade later
for allowing the irresponsible reactions of the Rwandan Government.
We have concerns internally in terms of the expression of political
positions but also what they are doing to destabilise the region.
This cannot be framed as preventing another genocide. On the contrary,
it is helping to stoke new serious depths of killings, and the
British Government in particular, which does have a key role to
play, has been very reluctant to do so. The third issue is resources
in general terms. As we all know, the DRC is an enormously mineral
resource-rich country and, as we discussed earlier, UN panels
have made very clear that the guidelines which do already exist
on corporate behaviour, and we welcome the fact that they do,
are being flagrantly flouted again and again. It is very important
that international companies should understand their responsibility,
those involved in diamonds and gold and all of the other many
minerals that are there, that good behaviour by them could play
an important role in helping (not, of course, overnight by any
means) to provide the framework for greater stability rather than
helping to fuel conflict.
Q43 Sir John Stanley: Again, briefly
please, could you give us your views on what the international
community should be doing now in Sudan?
Ms Allen: The situation in Sudan
and Darfur is incredibly worrying and it almost feels like it
will be forgotten again. We hear today that Save the Children
are taking their staff out of Sudan and so humanitarian assistance
is being withdrawn and increasingly withdrawn. What concerns us
is that Amnesty were raising the issue of what is happening in
Darfur in January 2003. It is deeply disturbing that it has taken
so long for the international community to pay attention to this.
Having said that, I would like to thank the Foreign Secretary
and welcome his assistance in obtaining visas both for ourselves
as Amnesty and for Human Rights Watch to go to Sudan in October
this year. What the Government of Sudan is doing is stringing
this out and hoping that the international community will be distracted
elsewhere and I think that what there has to be is a sense of
urgency that ensures that the arms embargo is extended from non-governmental
organisations to the government. It is quite clear that the government
is working alongside Janjawid armed groups to supply them and
so the arms embargo really must be extended. Pressure on the Sudanese
government must really be maintained, including the referral to
the International Criminal Court. Finally, the other area is support
of the African Union. The fact that there are only 800 African
Union troops within a country the size of Sudan, in the eastern
part in Darfur, is not sufficient given the situation at the moment.
Mr Crawshaw: Again echoing much
of what we have heard, I said this in my submission but very briefly
on the visas it is absolutely right that it was a key moment,
the Foreign Secretary's intervention, and we got these in order
to do work there. You are asking for prescriptions now of where
we are. Crucially, support for a stronger mandate for the African
Union and more people there and being able to spread out. Save
the Children's withdrawal has merely emphasised what all of us
have said, that the humanitarian organisations have done enormously
courageous work in almost impossible circumstances, and are now
themselves being driven out with obviously not good effects. Our
fear and the fear of many on the ground is that although it seems
almost unthinkable at the moment, the worst may be yet to come.
In terms of simply the humanitarian disaster, which we must never
forget and some of British Government leaders unfortunately at
the beginning did seem to ignore that point, the humanitarian
catastrophe was always a human rights catastrophe from the start.
This was not something which came from the sky. This was absolutely
driven by politics and by human rights abuses. That was why people
were forced out of there. It was because they were being raped
and killed. That real hunger is looming now as a very serious
possibility. To quote a colleague from one of the humanitarian
agencies who was speaking at a committee session here, he was
saying "security, security, security" was fantastically
important and us having a key role to play in that, and beyond
that, of course, the rest of the international community, but
we need to give them a framework to be able to do it. Going back
to something which we have mentioned several times, I really find
it difficult to say how strongly the referral to the International
Criminal Court will be. It is an institution which is well known
in this room but the public at large have very little knowledge
of it. This is the most important signal for the next decade,
for years to come, on what happens here. The Commission inquiry,
as you are probably aware, which has been created and which we
welcome, will be reporting back at the end of January and will
almost certainly recommend some kind of prosecution and that is
the point at which the British Government can make sure the impunity
is there. The north-south peace process was in the spring of this
year, when, as Kate Allen mentioned, NGOs were highlighting the
problems very much and frankly were not being listened to very
much. One reason was because the Naivasha north-south peace process
was there and the phrase used then was "sequential",
in other words, "We must tie up one thing before thinking
about another problem elsewhere". The north-south peace process
is very close to a conclusion now. It would be a pity if that
pattern were to be repeated. Clearly one should not ignore north-south
because of Darfur; a holistic approach is all-important.
Q44 Mr Mackay: You mentioned the sad
truth this morning that Save the Children are pulling out, which
is a catastrophe. You might have heard the Director of Save the
Children on the Radio 4 Today programme complaining of
the lack of troops and the lack of support. You three painfully
know that this was going to happen and if I can just quote from
the UN High Commission report, in May some seven months ago they
identified massive human rights violations, many of which constitute
war crimes and/or crimes against humanity and went on to say that
there were frequent attacks on civilians by government, military
and militia forces, including killing, persecution and the destruction
of property, including water sources. That was seven months ago.
Following up Sir John's theme in reference to Uganda and the Congo,
why do you think so little has happened to protect these people?
Mr Hancock: Certainly with Sudan,
and this might relate to Uganda as well, there was quite rightly
a sense that the opportunity had been reached to have a peace
agreement between Khartoum and Sudan. What has happened is that
people have focused on that peace agreement and initially were
not really thinking about other parts of Sudan who then were ultimately
willingly ignoring it and hoping that it would not complicate
the north-south agreement. That is what has happened, that we
have just been focusing on one element of Sudan's problems. Tremendously
important though that peace agreement may be it must not be to
the detriment of what is happening elsewhere.
Mr Crawshaw: Which we saw partly
even in Rwanda. There was a peace process there. That was one
reason why people were not looking. There was an additional problem,
which was that the media for many of their own reasons did not
focus on it, which I understand, speaking as a former news editor.
To be honest, when others have not got it on the front page you
think you can afford not to run it on the front page. As you say,
the UN were talking about it, Amnesty was talking it, Human Rights
Watch was talking about it. The government did not seem to be
talking about it, to which I referred in my submission. The British
ambassador at that time was talking about Sudan being on the threshold
of a new era. If we accept that newspapers will not always be
reacting in a timely way, that is a very important lesson for
politicians and government leaders to realise that if you have
the information available it is not relevant whether it is on
the front page of a newspaper or on the main news. Later, in June,
July, August it was, of course, but in the early months of this
year, let alone last year, all of us sitting at this table but
many beyond that were trying very hard to highlight it and in
effect the message was, "We have got some other more pressing
business. We cannot quite think about that at the moment".
I think it would have been impossible if it had been on the front
pages of the newspapers, but life does not always change in that
way and journalists will sometimes be slow on the uptake. It happened
with Rwanda, it happened with Ethiopia, it will happen again,
but politicians have an ability to move beyond that and say, "We
have the facts. We know what is happening. We need to act".
Q45 Ms Stuart: It is all very well us
getting better at prosecuting people after genocide has happened
and time and time again sit here and say, "Why did nothing
happen?". Sudan is happening now. We watched Rwanda and we
watched the Balkans. There is a real policy question of how many
people have to die before we have the political will? That takes
you to the territory of where does it gain its strength if the
Americans call it genocide under the UN Charter? Is it because
we are in the post-colonial world? This has to be resolved by
the Africans themselves and therefore is it a strengthening of
the African troops or is it just that there are not enough troops
generally to resolve this or it is not a problem which can be
resolved by this means? Can you give a bit more of a sense of
what is going on here?
Ms Allen: Before you get to the
stage of saying that this is about intervention, about troops,
it is about those early warnings and about paying attention to
the information that you are hearing and to what organisations
like my own and Human Rights Watch are saying. In all of those
situations we, and some governments too, have been in the situation
of saying what is happening in a particular country, whether it
is Kosovo or Sudan, that the situation is one which is turning
from issues of discrimination through to potential genocide, that
gamut of the appalling human rights atrocities that can happen.
It is having an international community paying attention to that,
being aware of where these situations are developing and being
involved at an earlier stage. To start getting involved when the
genocide is happening is too late. That is what we have to change.
Q46 Ms Stuart: What do we do now? This
is happening now. Do we just watch it and say, "Oh, well,
next time we shall curb it"?
Mr Crawshaw: There are undoubtedly
pressures. I agree with Kate Allen that in a way your question
about a pre-emptive strike is legitimate but in a sense that jumps
us. We have a whole series of things, of merely the world waking
up, taking notice, putting many different pressures on. There
are all sorts of sanctions in terms of travel bans, arms embargoes.
Even the Sudanese government has slightly backed off on some very
small issues but not nearly enough. Early warning is also very
important but early warning implies having an intellectual grasp
of "What might happen next year if . . . ?", and those
are difficult things to do. They are important and human rights
organisations do try to watch for the early warnings that other
organisations do and one hopes governments do, but the fact is
that in this case it is really difficult to overstate how depressing
it was in the spring of this year, at the very time when people
were writing a great number of op-ed pieces saying why was it
that we did not look at what was happening in Rwanda ten years
ago, at the anniversary in April, at the very same time, Darfur
was already happening? I think it really is fairly simple that
governments need to understand that just because it is not in
the media, and one needs to accept that it will not necessarily
be, it is still just as huge. It is almost that the media issue
is a separate one. You cannot simply compartmentalise. I think
that is perhaps the single biggest lesson, the danger of compartmentalising
different human rights problems. It cannot be done that way. If
the British Government, if the Prime Minister or indeed the Foreign
Secretary had stood up in public and said, "I am appalled
by what is happening. There are reports on my desk and my officials'
desks coming back from the field on what is happening in Darfur,
it is appalling and I am most dismayed that the world stands silent
while this is happening", that would have been a news story.
It would have gone on to the very top of the TV news, even for
those people who have not heard of Sudan. Politicians are in a
position to lead and that, understandably, not being driven by
what is in that morning's paper, is what we need to react to,
that if you have got the knowledge you are able to speak out and
if he, let alone Gerhard Schröder and Chirac, and indeed
President Bush and others, had spoken and Obasanjo of Nigeria,
all of these things could have been there and they were not. It
does not require anything except willpower and understanding of
the depths of the failures that we have seen. I hope that Rwanda
plus now Darfur put together may lead to some lessons, and again,
if there is anything the Committee can do in terms of changing
the mindsets of that, we would certainly welcome it.
Q47 Chairman: We should not pass from
that without mentioning Zimbabwe. As you know, the United Nations
High Commission evaluated this itself by passing this "no"
vote resolution in respect of Zimbabwe. Are there any views you
have on something that the British Government could do which it
is as yet failing to do?
Mr Hancock: I struggle with this
in terms of what else the British Government could be doing other
than making sure that it continues with its relationships with
African governments to try and do as much as it can to put pressure
on African governments to step up their game on Zimbabwe. That
is certainly what Amnesty International have been doing in trying
to get out to Zimbabwe; that is all we can do at this moment.
Q48 Chairman: Mr Crawshaw, it appears
that the situation is becoming even worse. Is that your judgment?
Mr Crawshaw: It is becoming very
bad, certainly on what we have documented so far. We have a forthcoming
report. My colleagues are just back now and feel pretty dismayed
by their findings for a report that will be coming out in the
new year. It is very bleak. The British Government, to be fair,
has spoken out. It should not be seen as something which has terribly
simple solutions. There is the danger in the way that Mugabe almost
benefits when he can then portray it as being merely "those
colonial governments who are getting back at us". I think
that is something which the British Government is mindful of and
again is perhaps more of a media problem but sometimes a political
problem of seeing the main victims as being simply the white farmers.
Actually, of course, it is the population of Zimbabwe which is
suffering the most. It is a problem sometimes if it is framed
in terms of a very small minority and their undoubted sufferings.
It is difficult. I think the African Union will need to confront
it more and it is something which needs to continue to be watched
very closely.
Q49 Mr Maples: The Committee is particularly
interested in two countries, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In the FCO's
report they said that there has been no significant improvement
in human rights in Saudi Arabia over the last 12 months. You both
seem to agree with that in your notes to us, in the Human Rights
Watch ones more specifically than Amnesty, though you both say
that there is a process of so-called conservation going on within
Saudi Arabia. Do you think that in spite of the initiatives that
have been launched by the United States to improve government,
if I can put it like that, in the Middle East in trying to establish
the rule of law, and some sort of tentative steps now towards
democracy, human rights for women, there has been very little
or no improvement at all even though some of them have been conducted
in a relatively low key way? Do you think they are not having
any effect, that they are just talking to a blank wall?
Mr Crawshaw: Like it or not, there
is a drift within Saudi Arabia towards pressure for more change
within society. I was part of a human rights delegation which
went to Saudi Arabia in January last year and we were very struck
by the fact that although there were clearly a number of people
we were speaking to, including some of the ministers, who frankly
did not want anything to change and were very comfortable with
the absolute lack of rule of law at a whole range of levels that
exist at the moment with very serious abuses, there was a strong
sense within society of thinking that things do need to change,
that this is not a matter of western/not western but that basic
rights are being trampled on. There have, as you will be aware,
been tiny little signals being sent out in the municipal elections
that are coming up. We need to treat these with considerable caution
but nonetheless also welcome the fact that the direction in which
it is going seems to me frankly not just a tribute to the government,
it is not really, but a sense that there is a pressure for change.
As regards the American pressures, as you say, they have been
less heavy-handed than one has sometimes found elsewhere. I think
the brutal truth is that there needs to be more concerted understanding.
The American administration is still split, frankly,—and
actually the Al Qaeda problem is very serious in Saudi Arabia
as we know—on the fact that there is still a willingness
if you like to go soft on a government and seeing again that you
are confronting the same problems and the same issue applies to
Egypt. I think that consistent pressure is needed. Certainly we
were pleased that from the British Government side there seems
to have been a greater understanding of that in the past couple
of years. Frankly, I do not know where Saudi comes. I should say
just as a postscript, and it seems to me a small signal, that
our visit in January 2003 was fundamentally a diplomatic visit
with ministerial meetings and a bunch of meetings which were explicitly
as the prelude to a research mission going out there, and almost
two years on we still have not received the visas and are constantly
told that there is a reason why. I think that that is one signal.
They talk a little bit but frankly they are not walking very much
of the walk at all.
Ms Allen: As the Committee will
remember, we in Amnesty were very critical of the Foreign Office
report two years ago in terms of the lack of attention to the
situation in Saudi, so we very much welcome the profile and the
level of detail in the Saudi report. We, unlike Human Rights Watch,
have not yet had access, despite many requests. Just to add to
what Steve Crawshaw has said, Saudi Arabia has signed and ratified
a procedure for those forthcoming elections but do not allow the
women to vote so there is that signing up but then the implementation
being sadly lacking.
Q50 Mr Maples: We all recognise that
it is quite difficult to lecture other countries when they come
from a completely different historical background but that is
no excuse for the absence of human rights. It seems to me that
there are opportunities for us to take a more robust stance where
the victims of the absence of human rights are British citizens
and there have been several cases and I think we have to be quite
careful about not talking about anything specific at the moment
where cases are in front of the courts, but in general there have
been quite a few cases in Egypt as well as in Saudi Arabia of
British citizens being seriously mistreated by the authorities,
tortured and jailed for very long periods of time with no hope
of trial and with no access to lawyers and so on, things that
here would be taken for granted would not happen. Do you think
that these specific cases provide a better opportunity for our
own government to be really tough with the governments of countries
like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where we are talking about what is
happening to our citizens? I know it sounds slightly selfish but
it does seem to me that one has a locus there as the government
which represents those citizens to be rather tougher and hopefully
then there will be some spin-off and everybody will get treated
a bit better. Do you think that one is on to something with that
thought or do you think that we have got to consider it as a whole?
Ms Allen: I think it is always
a good starting point and in relation to Egypt, for example, with
the three British nationals who, alongside 23 Egyptians, are serving
long prison sentences—and this is Maajid Nawaz, Malcolm
Nesbitt and Reza Pankhurst—Amnesty consider them and the
23 Egyptians to be prisoners of conscience and we wrote to the
Foreign Secretary raising these cases back in April asking the
UK Government to make an immediate appeal for clemency on behalf
of those men to the President of Egypt. We had a reply in May
from the Foreign Office confirming that it was doing all that
it could to obtain a copy of the trial judge's verdict before
deciding what to do next. Keeping the pressure on the UK Government
to be raising these issues in relation to its own citizens but
also to the Egyptian nationals who are in the same predicament
is a useful way forward.
Q51 Mr Maples: Do you think that perhaps
the British Government is adequately robust in these circumstances
or do you think that they wish the problem would go away, that
they are saying, "We are doing all we can" without actually
doing anything specific?
Ms Allen: I think the judgment
of the British Government is one where it uses diplomacy and where
it becomes more public then I think there are times when probably
Amnesty would be arguing for a more public approach to some of
these issues at a stage earlier than the UK Government might be
comfortable with. That is their decision.
Q52 Mr Maples: Is that quiet diplomacy
effective?
Ms Allen: At some stage the decision
has to be made that it is not working and other methods have to
be tried. I think that is the decision for the UK Government to
make and not to leave that quiet diplomacy for too long if there
are no results.
Mr Crawshaw: I would echo that.
You were certainly right when you said, "Or do they wish
the problem would go away?" That of course actually briefly
describes the feeling of wishing the problem would go away. I
am pleased that there has been, for example, in the human rights
review to some extent and other political statements greater criticism
than there was. Frankly, the problems in the Saudi regime are
just as bad as they were. On your question about pressing the
British citizens' case, I certainly think that is worth using
as a tool in the toolbox, to use the phrase, but in addition one
can also appeal to a kind of self-interest. I would like to think
that the Saudi rulers should understand that their country, which
is already a deeply unstable country in a way that they would
have denied five or ten years ago but are now forced by the very
nature of events to partially admit, will get more dangerous,
more unstable still if it continues to trample on rights in the
way that it does at the moment with endemic torture and people
being locked up without charge for very long periods of time or
indefinitely again and again. These are the kinds of things which
create burning resentments which in itself is fertile soil for
more violence. The Saudi rulers have only just begun to grasp
that nettle and I think they need to be confronted with that.
Q53 Mr Maples: Of course, as you said,
there is a countervailing argument that one might be causing more
trouble for these people. It is sometimes difficult, and now I
am thinking about the Saudi government, to take a longer-term
view and say, "What you need to do is stop this and we will
give you support". Let me ask you one final thing. In relation
to the Foreign Office reply to our report last time, specifically
in relation to Saudi Arabia, but it is a slightly more general
point, they said that the welfare of UK nationals abroad is of
paramount concern and they take all allegations of torture or
ill-treatment seriously and raise their concerns with the relevant
authorities. They go on to say that they may also request that
prompt impartial investigation be carried out into the allegations.
Are you aware of any cases where they have requested a prompt
impartial investigation into the allegations?
Mr Crawshaw: No, I am not, but
that does not mean it has not happened.
Q54 Mr Maples: I think if they had requested
it they would tell us about it and we would know.
Mr Crawshaw: Yes, quite.
Q55 Mr Maples: It just reinforces my
impression that, particularly in relation to these two countries,
we are very reluctant to press the rights of our citizens at the
expense of some broader relationship with them, or at least that
is how it seems with the Foreign Office, and therefore even behind
the scenes the diplomatic representations are not as tough as
they could be. I quite understand that they might want to do it
quietly and behind the scenes, but we have been doing it behind
the scenes for a long time.
Mr Crawshaw: The Saudis were very
good at playing poker. They would just hold that. They would refuse
to give and eventually the British would back off from things.
On the British businessmen, they were not even getting the consular
visits they were supposed to get. This is absolutely basic to
every single international rule, including ones that the Saudis
have signed up for. They did not get the visits they were supposed
to and there was a great reluctance to confront that as on so
many other issues.
Mr Hancock: When it is UK citizens
there is obviously a wake-up call and the problem that Steve has
just mentioned about consular visits. What is unique in this case
is that it is a significant problem.
Q56 Mr Maples: What, that British nationals
do not get proper consular visits?
Mr Hancock: It might be less usual
for Saudi authorities to deny consular access to somebody from
the UK or the US but when you are looking at people from the Philippines
who find themselves caught up in the situation in Saudi Arabia
they are not given that consular access at all. When there are
countries where we know torture has been endemic and when we know
that there are courts with manifestly unfair trials, we have to
pay attention all the time because these cases show that British
citizens can wind up in front of them.
Mr Maples: I was not suggesting in the
more global look at morality that these citizens should be treated
differently. I just think that it gives us a status when looking
after our own citizens which we do not have in helping people
to run their affairs for somewhat extraneous reason but that these
people have a right to demand that they are treated well. It is
an entry into trying to make things better.
Q57 Mr Mackay: As we range across the
Middle East it would be remiss not to raise issues in Iraq, not
least because, Ms Allen, Amnesty has been very critical of the
Foreign Office's human rights report in this respect, notwithstanding
therefore that you think it is a very good report. Just flicking
through what you have said, you noted that instances of violence
against women have increased dramatically. You say, probably with
justification, that the Iraqi people have little faith in the
Iraq Police Service and you voice very real concerns about American
operations in Falluja and elsewhere. As far as we are concerned
as British Members of Parliament you say you do not feel that
investigation into the deaths of Iraqi civilians at the hands
of British Army have been transparently investigated. That is
all very serious stuff indeed. We have elections in Iraq coming
up in January. Do you think anything will change after those elections
or will your concerns increase or decrease? What are you looking
for from the American Government and, in addition to transparency,
obviously, from the British Government in these respects?
Ms Allen: We anticipate that Iraq
will be one of the areas that the Committee would want to cover
and thought that Amnesty would cover the UK side of the question
and Human Rights Watch the US side, so perhaps I could ask my
colleague to lead off on the UK side and then Human Rights Watch
on the US aspects.
Mr Hancock: The first thing is
that security in Iraq is the major problem; that is what Iraq
is most concerned about. We have not managed to put any of our
delegates into Iraq for some months now so it is difficult to
know just in terms of mood on the ground what may happen when
the elections come and what happens after that. Certainly the
signs are with the recent car bombs that security is going to
persist as a problem. In terms of what we are looking for, we
have to acknowledge that there is an incredibly complex situation
that the Iraqi government is facing, that the multinational forces
are facing, that the Iraqi security forces are facing. In some
circumstances they are engaged in combat operations where the
rules of war apply; at other points they are policing peaceful
demonstrations or demonstrations where there is violence but they
need to respond in a way that policing forces would. It is important
for the multinational forces and the Iraq security forces to distinguish
between those two different things. I am not saying that is easy.
The first thing is to make sure that force is proportionate. The
second thing is to make sure that we are observing the highest
standards rather than applying the lowest. I was quite struck
that when we were talking about detention and wrote to the then
administrator Paul Bremer. We were reminding him about a number
of the different UN standards as well as treaties which would
apply to the detention of Iraqis, and his reply to us was to basically
say that the Fourth Geneva Convention was the only thing that
was applicable in these circumstances, which is not the case and
indicates to us that there are low standards, not pursuing what
could have been the best human rights protection in Iraq. That
is something that we would like to see changed.
Mr Crawshaw: With regard to our
focus and Amnesty's focus on UK issues, we particularly focused
on some American abuses which have been particularly severe. The
security situation is generally acknowledged as appalling. One
tiny example of that is that one of my Human Rights Watch colleagues,
who I think has been entirely fearless, of British and Middle
Eastern origin, in other words somebody who is a native speaker
and is able to fit in, who is not exposed as a foreigner, was
determined not to leave but she finally quite recently has left
because she is no longer able to live in Baghdad and has moved
not out of the region but out of the country. An important thing
to realise is that this again did not need to be that way. Abu
Ghraib you may wish to ask more about. Clearly all of those issues
are terrible and again this was discussed earlier. A report that
we did before the Abu Ghraib story broke; it was called Hearts
and Minds, and in a way the title of it already tells us what
we need to do. This was at the back end of last year and was on
the killing of Iraqi civilians with impunity again and again and
again. In some of those cases it may have been understandable
what happened. We looked at cases where we thought that the prima
facie evidence suggested the absolute abuse of the person
in that people had been needlessly killed and this was at road
blocks and shooting their way into apartments and so on. Many
people were needlessly killed. Leave aside the judgment of whether
or not those people were needlessly killed, although it was our
strong judgment by looking at all the available evidence that
they had been, almost none of those cases has been investigated.
About three out of about 90 have been investigated. One would
be very foolish not to understand, and these are merely the ones
we have documented, never mind the ones across the country, that
once you know that your neighbour, your friend, your family has
suffered, and everybody knows somebody who has suffered what they
would regard as unjust treatment and what we should also regard
as absolutely unjust treatment at the hands of the coalition forces,
that creates a more unstable country and it is very worrying that
not only have the American forces seemed absolutely not to confront
this point but again we do not see it in this report at all. There
is no dot or comma in this FCO report which suggests that the
American forces have not behaved with the care they should have
done. Abu Ghraib I say merely comes as the appalling postscript,
if you like, to what they were doing behind bars to people, but
what they were doing out on the streets was already quite bad,
I think.
Q58 Mr Mackay: If I can ask one question,
this goes back to the next part of the election. Clearly the situation
could well get worse in terms of violence after an Iraq government
is elected and quite probably the human rights situation could
get worse. Are you almost saying it is worthwhile it getting a
little worse in the short term to create more powerful internal
structures which are respected and that the less the Americans
are doing there the better and the more the Iraqis are taking
over the better even though there will be additional problems
in the short term? It is a moral dilemma.
Mr Crawshaw: It is, yes. I am
not sure that Human Rights Watch would take a view. Colleagues
have often told me that one thing you hear from the Iraqis often
is that the worst thing possible is the Americans being there
but even worse is them going. I think in many ways the security
will come when they are gone. I do not think it is up to Human
Rights Watch to have a direct view on this process. I think the
behaviour of those forces is very important and unfortunately
to a large extent that is a battle that has already been lost.
Just to bring up Abu Ghraib again, because it affects many other
things we have discussed, this is about how in difficult circumstances
one needs to use extreme measures; one sometimes hears that phrase
and it is often implied that torture is used. It is so clear that
what happened at Abu Ghraib and those pictures that went around
the world have made all of us sitting in this room less safe,
let alone British or other forces in Iraq and across the region.
It is claimed to be helping to "win the war on terror".
In fact, what happened at Abu Ghraib has played a very important
role in making everything more dangerous. The trampling of international
law makes life more dangerous.
Q59 Andrew Mackinlay: I have three questions
on three countries. The first relates to Iran. We have reports
from various pressure groups about cases which I am sure took
place under the Thatcher regime of, for instance, 16-year old
girls being executed for immorality and so on. One, it is unacceptable,
but to what extent is this done with the cognisance of central
government? Heaven forbid, I am not justifying the regime but
are these remote parts where there is local devolution? It does
not make it any more acceptable but is it being done with the
full knowledge and consent of the government? How endemic is it?
Therefore, it relates to whether or not the United Kingdom acquiesced
in it by a pretty mute response. What is your objective understanding
of how these terrible acts seem to take place on an extensive
scale?
Ms Allen: We have recently reported
on some of those cases that you have referred to of young women,
16-year olds, one of whom was hung in public on the street and
others that are at risk at the moment. These are issues that are
known about by central government. We have raised these cases
time and time again. There is no way in which the Iranian government
is not aware of what is happening within its own territory.
Mr Hancock: There is a woman who
is due to be executed by stoning today. The death sentence was
upheld by the Supreme Court so the Iranian Government must know
about this.
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