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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 574-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
HUMAN RIGHTS ANNUAL REPORT 2005
Wednesday 16 November 2005 MS KATE ALLEN, MR TIM HANCOCK and MR STEVE CRAWSHAW Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 69
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday 16 November 2005 Members present Mike Gapes, in the Chair Mr Fabian Hamilton Mr Andrew Mackay Andrew Mackinlay Mr John Maples Sandra Osborne Mr Greg Pope Mr Ken Purchase Sir John Stanley Richard Younger-Ross ________________ Memoranda submitted by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Kate Allen, Director, and Mr Tim Hancock, Head of Policy, Amnesty International UK, and Mr Steve Crawshaw, London Director, Human Rights Watch, examined. Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Can I begin by apologising to our witnesses. We had a very large amount of business that we had to conclude, and, rather than call the Committee back at five o'clock, we decided to plough on for ten minutes. I am sorry for keeping you. Welcome to Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Perhaps I can begin by saying that we always greatly appreciate the memoranda, the submissions and the annual report we receive from Amnesty and, similarly, the information we get from Human Rights Watch which is always of great benefit to us as a committee and we are very glad you are here today to give us evidence in person. We have a huge number of areas that we want to cover. We will try, as far as possible, to have short questions, and I would be grateful if, as much as possible, we can have short answers and then we will get through it all, but I understand that these are very big areas. Can I begin by asking you whether you would like to comment on the decision of the United Nations General Assembly to establish a Human Rights Council, and do you think getting rid of the UN Commission on Human Rights and having the Human Rights Council will make any difference to the effectiveness of international human rights, and what can be done to make it more efficient and effective? Ms Allen: Thank you very much, Chairman. Can I thank you and thank the Committee, on behalf of Amnesty International, for inviting us to give evidence. Moving to the Human Rights Council, we at Amnesty International are hugely supportive of this move and we have great hopes that the Human Rights Council will become a part of the UN where human rights get greater attention, more focus and more prominence. We have very much supported this. We hope that the Human Rights Council becomes a principal organ of the UN. We hope that it is at same level as the Economic and Social Council and that it has that kind of authority within the UN. We think that there are some key elements that need to be part of that equation. We think that it needs to meet regularly, we think it needs to examine all countries; and we think it needs to have ability to deal with urgent situations. We hope it retains some of the very few strengths of the Commission, including NGO participation and the independent rapporteurs, and we also hope that there are some effective rules for electing the members of it, providing really effective membership of the council. We are also concerned that the budget is fully reflective of the role that the Human Rights Council will have, we think that it should at least be double the current budget and we hope very much that Security Council members will not exercise their veto when addressing situations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. If all of that could happen, if we could have a council set up with those kinds of features, then we think we have the ability to get away from the weaknesses of the Commission and that, by examining human rights of all countries on a rotational basis and, as I say, having a mechanism to deal with large scale abuses, we should be able to see a position where the Human Rights Council is something to which we can all look to protect and promote the situation of human rights and move us on from the inadequacies of the Commission. Mr Crawshaw: Can I echo Kate Allen's words of thanks to the Committee for inviting us here today, and that is much more than just a courtesy. As we know from past experience, the Committee's interest is enormously important and clearly has considerable impact. Taking note of your words earlier - and I promise not to repeat - I can also echo pretty much everything that Kate Allen has just said. Indeed, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch work together strongly. The importance of the Human Rights Council is very great. We have seen the problems with the Commission for Human Rights repeatedly in the past. I would pick a couple of elements out from what Kate has said just to particularly emphasise perhaps if only for the reason that they are ones which we are worried about at the moment that might slip away without attention to them. One is the idea of it being a standing body, in other words of it being able to meet constantly, and there are discussions going on. Understandably people are saying, "Well, yes, but it does involve resources", and so on and so forth. To be honest, if we end up with something that only meets say a couple of times a year, then in effect you have got some of the problems that were already there with the Commission. It needs to have the feel of constantly being there, and calling it back, especially, is perhaps also problematic because of lots of procedural stuff that that would involve. Again, as mentioned by Kate Allen in the sense of openness to NGOs again being discussed, and I suppose from their point of view they see it as slimmer or easier to work, or whatever, if it is not quite so open as the Commission was. If we were to exchange the rather problematic commission but which did at least have open access for NGOs for a body that did not allow the same access, then we would think that would be a step backwards. I would hope that will not just sound like specialty. I would hope that you on the Committee would also feel that the input of organisations like ours and others like them would be useful. It would be a pity for that to fall away. On the question of the composition of the body, it is very difficult to make up exact rules at this stage for further discussion, but we feel that some kind of a sense of a commitment to human rights in the broader sense and how that would be worked out would be for further discussion. Chairman: We will watch the progress closely. Can I ask Fabian Hamilton to come in with some questions about the International Criminal Court? Q2 Mr Hamilton: Thank you, Chairman. As you know, the UK has been a longstanding supporter of the International Criminal Court. We were one of the first to sign the treaty that set up the court. The annual report describes the first referral to the International Criminal Court by the UN Security Council in March 2005 on Darfur. It also points out the investigations into the abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo and, of course, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and mentions the total budget of £46.4 million for 2005 of which the UK pays 5.9 million, or 12.8 per cent. The question I wanted to ask you was around the essential membership of the United States. Not only is the US not a member of the ICC but, it seems, has tried to undermine it. Do you think the United Kingdom has done enough to persuade, cajole, argue that the United States should be brought into the process, and if we have not done enough, what more can we do? Mr Crawshaw: Given I think some of the themes about which we will be hearing later, you will be hearing lots of criticism. I am glad to say at least partially my response would be that the UK has played a positive role. Some members of the Committee may remember that in past years we were very worried, we were very unhappy, frankly, that the UK seemed to be, if you like, giving the US a soft ride on various of the underminings that the US wanted to introduce for the court and different kinds of impunity and the UK was not really standing up to that. It was our impression - I would say more than an impression - that that was happening at some stage when the campaign started for an ICC referral on Darfur, but there was a happy ending in two senses, that by the end of that process - in other words in the spring of this year - the UK did actually play an important role in persuading the United States that there really was not something that could logically be resisted - it did not make sense - this was the most appropriate thing, and, therefore, we had the following happy end; and not only the UK, but the UK did play, by the end if not at the beginning, a positive role in saying there is no alternative, to use an old political phrase, and we therefore had the United States withholding its veto and allowing that referral to take place, which, although it did not get an enormous amount of newspaper coverage, is absolutely a moment of history, it seems to us, because it makes it very much more difficult for the United States to attempt to sabotage and undermine in the future. To go to your question directly of the United States signing up for it, I would love the United States to sign up for it. I hope that one day it will do. Again, living in the real world which we are forced to, there are other things, which we will no doubt come to later, of the United States' behaviour. We regret that they are not part of the court, but there are some things that they could do right now which would make the world a safer place, and I would like to think that in due course they will understand the positive role the court can play and join, but I think what really needs to be confronted, which I hope we will discuss, is some of the behaviour of the country itself. Ms Allen: Also, Amnesty very much welcomed the Security Council referral of Sudan. I think was a very key moment for the future of the International Criminal Court. We also have continued our work on countries signing up to the court, and in October this year Mexico became the one hundredth state to ratify the Rome Statute, so the US is increasingly a different voice on this issue, and we will continue our work to get countries to sign up. Q3 Mr Hamilton: Mr Crawshaw mentioned Darfur. There are, of course, a number of cases pending. Do any of you think that the court is functioning effectively so far and that it was right to choose the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Lord's Resistance Army situation in Uganda as appropriate cases for the ICC, or are there more pressing cases? Mr Crawshaw: Darfur was very pressing and it was quite right that that happened. We felt those were appropriate cases, both the Congo, where, as you will remember, it was the government itself which referred, and it was true that in eastern Congo, in Ituri, the government's writ simply did not run there and it became entirely appropriate to have the force and the power of an international body to come in and do work on that. On northern Uganda we also felt it was entirely appropriate, broadly, in the sense that justice brings long-term stability, which I can say is a thread of all of our work, and that simply putting things to one side is not seen to be helpful in the longer term. If there is a concern which we have had with northern Uganda - and I hope the lessons have been learnt - it is that the presentation of that referral was done at a press conference by the Ugandan president, and it almost appeared to be a government initiative all about the Lord's Resistance Army, whose crimes are, of course, well documented, but it is also true that there have been serious abuses by the Ugandan Army as well, and I think that it was very unfortunate for the prosecutor to be standing there publicly side by side with the president - it gave the wrong signal of independence - and, beyond, that there was a reluctance to engage with civil society, which I hope, again, the lessons have been learnt. There were a lot of misunderstandings in Uganda itself about what was happening, and I would hope that the lessons that have been learnt from the Hague Tribunal, for example, on Yugoslavia where that sense of outreach to the society affected is very important. As I say, I hope that is a lesson which has been learnt for the future. Q4 Chairman: You have mentioned the Hague Tribunal and the former Yugoslavia. There has been a rather strange timing of the statement by Carla del Ponte with regard to Croatia which seemed to be rather convenient in terms of the opening of the negotiations on Turkey's accession to the EU. It has been denied that there is any connection, but nevertheless the statements made on 4 October were rather helpful to getting a resolution of the impasse in the EU. Can I ask you whether you believe that that decision to reactivate Croatia's candidacy from the EU on the basis of reported progress with regard to the case of Ante Gotovina undermines the credibility of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia or do you think the two are not connected? Mr Crawshaw: As you say, there has been a lot of discussion on this issue. Let me put it this way. We would regret very deeply if political deals were done which meant that justice was put to one side. I think that you do have to stand up for justice, and you are not doing yourself any favours if political deals are done. I would leave it at that. Clearly we want to see him brought to justice, and, as you say, there was a fairly marked turn around in the statements that we had from the prosecutor on that issue. It is certainly very regrettable if politics has entered into that matter. Justice should not be influenced by politics, clearly. Q5 Chairman: Do you think that this sends unfortunate signals to other states in the region, like Serbia, who also have indictees to be dealt with at some point? Ms Allen: I think that the real emphasis now must be on Croatia to ensure that General Gotovina is produced for the tribunal. I think that that is Amnesty's concern now, that we do see that action by the Croatian government. Q6 Mr Pope: Could I ask you to say a word about Guantánamo and the nature of the human rights abuses at Guantánamo, and perhaps you could also say a word about the British response, because it seemed, certainly to me, that the British response seemed to be centered on British nationals who had been held there. Now that those British nationals are back in the UK - they not have been charged incidentally - the UK government seems to have been quite silent since the beginning of this year when the UK nationals came back. Can you say something about the nature of the abuses and the British response to it? Ms Allen: I think we are now about to see the fourth anniversary of Guantánamo Bay's existence and in fact there are over 500 men still held there from many different nationalities. I think Amnesty's concern and our comment on the FCO's Human Rights Report this year would be that I think we have moved from commenting in that report on Guantánamo to an attempt to offer an explanation as to why Guantánamo might be necessary. I think we at Amnesty view the UK's government's record on this as lamentable and not improving. We are obviously very pleased that the UK citizens have been returned to the UK. There are UK residents in Guantánamo and they are UK residents whose families are in many cases UK citizens and can only look to the UK government for support here; so we are very concerned that we are not getting the response that we would like to see from the United Kingdom government about taking up those cases of residence and the wider general point of the existence of Guantánamo and the damage it does. We are seriously concerned at the moment about the fact that 210, we understand, men in Guantánamo are on hunger strike. We understand that six of those are UK residents and we have reports that people are critically ill, and we are not getting the response from the UK government that we would like to see to taking an active interest and concern in the situation of those people. Therefore, we are incredibly concerned and disappointed by the UK government's current role in terms of Guantánamo. Q7 Mr Pope: What sort of practical things could the UK government do? Would we be best raising this diplomatically as part of the special relationship or should we take a more public stance in being critical? What is the most effective way forward? Ms Allen: I think four years into Guantánamo, if the diplomatic routes have been used and they are not working, I think there really ought to be a much more public voice by the UK government. We increasingly hear from people who have come back from Guantánamo stories of abuse, of cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment of people, we increasingly hear stories from people of the way in which they have been dehumanised in their time at Guantánamo and I think it is time the UK government used its influence with its major ally about the UK residents and the whole wider issue of Guantánamo. Q8 Mr Purchase: Continuing on the theme of America and camps of one kind or another, there have been a number of reports, I think, by Human Rights Watch on a possible string of camps across Europe and Asia set up by the Americans through the CIA where very similar matters are being pursued such as those at Guantánamo - people being tortured and so on and so forth. Is there any real evidence to support that claim that has appeared in the press as well as from Human Rights Watch? Mr Crawshaw: There is absolutely definitive evidence of the fact that people are being "disappeared", and I use that word carefully. We remember it from Latin America, and they are perhaps not being killed, but the fact is that people are being taken out of circulation. The United States has, indeed, admitted that they are taking people out of circulation. They are being held somewhere in secret prisons. It is an extraordinary underlying fact of the whole way that the US has conducted what it calls its war on terror that it seems not to believe that the rules apply. Many of the people who they have taken out of circulation in this way may indeed have committed terrible crimes - some on that list are known to be strong al-Qaeda suspects - but the idea that that means that therefore you should not say where they are being held and how they are being held is extraordinary. As regards the latest ones which you mention, which again is partly to do with the flight logs and where people have landed and the pattern, we have said - it has sometimes got down to a kind of shorthand - that there are strong indications from what we are seeing - in other words, the pattern of the logs, direct flights from Afghanistan to Romania, to Poland and the pattern of what we are seeing, strongly suggests that there are camps being held there - and, frankly, even if they are not there, there are others elsewhere, it is our strong feeling. The available evidence points only in that direction. Q9 Mr Purchase: Has anybody emerged to say, "I have been stuck in this camp" anywhere? Mr Crawshaw: No, all of those people are still there. Q10 Mr Purchase: It must be very difficult for organisations such as yourselves to get real, hard information. How unhelpful are the Americans? Do they completely clam up, do they give you a clue or any information at all? Ms Allen: Can I just quote for the Committee. You will remember the Taguba Report by Major General Taguba into the scandal at Abu Graib. His report was leaked and in it he referred to "ghost detainees" and he referred to these as detainees who were held in secret and moved around prisons to hide them from visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross. He described in his report, "This is deceptive, contrary to army doctrine and in violation of international law." We do have reports from the US's own internal inquiries, which, we would hold, are not adequate enough by any means, but even in those terms we have clear documentation that these are the practices that the US administration is using. Q11 Mr Purchase: Do you think the British intelligence services are in the loop on this one? Ms Allen: We have no evidence of that. Mr Crawshaw: Could I say as a postscript to that, I think merely to say, "Oh we did not know", is a most inappropriate response, which we are hearing to some extent from the British government. If they did not know, why are they not asking the questions? You have available the pattern of behaviour which, as Kate Allen has said, as I was laying out, we have done entire reports on the subject. The evidence there is available that there is a problem that exists, and it does it seem to us that the British government should absolutely be challenging that, including the intelligence services. Q12 Mr Purchase: You say there is evidence that it exists. I am perfectly prepared to believe you. On the other hand, with such a lack of hard information and evidence, it is difficult to make all this stick, is it not? Particularly I ask you: is Britain in the loop? You think not, but may be they are. Mr Crawshaw: To clarify, it is not a fact that we have a US government denying these things and therefore one is left slightly baffled, saying, "We do not say it is happening." Other people say, "Well, we think it is." You are then, I think you will probably accept, left slightly with a stalemate. The reality is that you have got a pattern which the US has never denied. As Kate Allen mentioned, there was one US official who gave the very clear rationale for the process of extraordinary renditions, as it called them. We do not kick the expletives out of them, we send them back to other countries so they can kick them out of them. Precisely what has been happening is, "Oh, we better not do it on US soil, but somewhere else it really does not matter." That has been a more or less public - we have not heard it quite from the mouth of the president, but it has not seriously been denied that is what is happening. Given that it has not been denied, indeed could not be denied given the extraordinary pattern of clear evidence of what has happening, it is surprising - I would put it at its very mildest - that the British government does not raise the issues. Just as a postscript to what Kate Allen was saying on Guantánamo, there again it is extraordinary that it is treated as British - you know, the focus on the Brits - as though somehow if we deal with our citizens, which is perfectly logical for diplomats to do in a narrower context - you focus on your own people - but not to see the message that is being sent by the trampling of international law in the broadest sense I think is really remarkable. Q13 Mr Purchase: On the question of finding hard evidence, does Human Rights Watch or, indeed, Amnesty International have resources that you could devote to discovering at least a tiny little the gap anywhere? Ms Allen: We do have hard evidence. In our report "The USA Torture and Secret Detention Testimony of the Disappeared in the War on Terror" we have documented the cases of people. We have the cases of two men, Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah Salim Ali, who were from Yemen, who were arrested, detained and tortured for seven days in Jordan, they were held incommunicado for more than a year. They were transported between detention facilities, held, and interrogated by guards that they say came from the US and they were subsequently detained without charge in Yemen where we visited them in June this year. We do have documented cases of people who have told us about being moved. Q14 Mr Purchase: You have presented this to the British government? Ms Allen: This is a public report which has certainly been presented to the British government this year. Q15 Mr Maples: I just want to take you back to Guantánamo along the same lines really. I forget the exact words you used, but in your written statement you talked about evidence of torture and widespread cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and this was in relation to Guantánamo. I am interested in a similar question, what hard evidence there is of that, because, interestingly, when the second batch of British detainees came back they did not actually seem me to make any serious allegations, and they certainly were not taken up by any sections of the British press where you might have expected them to be taken up. I wonder what hard evidence there is particularly of torture. I suppose they are all the same thing: cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment probably amount to torture. Ms Allen: I think we have very strong accounts, particularly from young men from Tipton, who documented on their return to the UK what had happened to them, of being kept awake, of loud music, of threats being made to them, of being held and interrogated endlessly day after day. We had a lot of accounts from.... Q16 Mr Maples: Would you call that torture? Ms Allen: I think that amounts to torture. Q17 Mr Maples: We are talking about people who have been responsible for killing 3,000 American citizens. Where does the distinction between a tough interrogation technique and torture begin? That sounds to me like a tough interrogation technique. Ms Allen: We are talking about young men who were selling electrical goods in Tipton at the time of September 11. Q18 Mr Maples: They were arrested in Afghanistan? Ms Allen: They were not people that were responsible. They have never been charged. They are back in this country. Q19 Mr Maples: No, but it is the torture aspect. If the Americans are torturing people at Guantánamo I think we would all be very worried about that. Ms Allen: I think if you hold people incommunicado and you interrogate them endlessly day upon day, that you have extremes of temperature that are used, that you do not allow them any contact with their families, that you have loud noise playing continuously, that you threaten people in terms of their lives and their well-being, I think that adds up to torture. Q20 Mr Maples: Have you got this written down anywhere you can send to us? Ms Allen: We have documentation about those cases. Q21 Mr Maples: Could you send it to us? Ms Allen: Yes. Q22 Mr Maples: Human Rights Watch: what is your view? Mr Crawshaw: Echoing what Kate Allen has just said, we have one report which was just called "Techniques used at Guantánamo". I think it is important to remember that torture is not just applying electrodes to the testicles - you know, the obvious things that we know about, those kinds of brutal things - but that is part of what the US administration has used, but only when it goes to the furthest extreme, though even those ones have been used, to put it this way, a number of the techniques that have been used have led to both self-incriminating evidence which was completely false - in other words the pressures were great enough that they confessed to things which they had not done and provably had not done - you know, having been together with Osama bin Laden at a particular time when demonstrably, and as, indeed, the British authorities later confirmed, they had actually been somewhere else. Those kinds of pressures are banned for the same reasons. Some of the Committee may have seen there was a Channel Four programme called "Guantánamo Guidebook" which did a kind of reconstruction, which was interesting in the way that it was done, showing that even though what might seem not very strong, only over a period of 48 hours people were actually backing out. People who defined themselves as hard guys who would not give in at all were backing out. Q23 Mr Maples: Have you got anything in any report which you could send to us? Mr Crawshaw: Absolutely, yes, on the techniques, but broadly also I would urge the Committee to consider the extent of the denial which is going on when we have entirely credible accounts of what has happened. Just to pick up a point you made a little bit earlier, not everybody has been tortured at Guantánamo. That is not the suggestion. Some people have got off relatively lightly and others have not. I think what we are seeing a pattern of is the belief somehow, which does seem to me a quite extraordinary belief to have reached in the twenty-first century, that at some points the ends justify the means. I would leave with the Committee the phrase that you may well be familiar with, but Cofer Black, who was the senior CIA official after 9/11 said, "After 9/11 the gloves came off." That was said as a colloquial phrase, but actually it is a very vivid phrase. The gloves are about the Queensbury Rules and obeying the rules, and after 9/11 it was felt the rules no longer mattered, and I deeply regret that we have heard from the Prime Minister what may appear to be a similar kind of suggestion, that rules of the game have changed. The gloves should not come off. If we want a safer world, you do not do it by saying, "Let the gloves come off and let them have what is coming to them." Q24 Mr Maples: I think it would be very helpful to us if both your organisations could let us have further evidence which you have in writing. Mr Crawshaw: We would be happy to do so. Q25 Sandra Osborne: Could I ask you about the US practice of extraordinary rendition and the UK's role in that, because media reports recently have suggested that aircraft involved in operations have flown into the UK, at least 210 since 9/11, which is an average of one flight per week. It is suggested there is a 26 strong fleet which has used 19 British airports, the favourites being the two Glasgow airports, Glasgow Prestwick and Glasgow Airport, where flights have flown in and out more than 75 times and 74 times respectively. However, the Foreign Secretary told this Committee that the policy is not to deport or extradite any person to another state where there are substantial grounds to believe that the person would be subject to torture. The British government is not aware of the use of its territory or airspace for the purposes of extraordinary rendition. The government's denial of the use of UK airspace therefore appears to fly in the face of media reports and growing evidence that it is not in actual fact the case that UK airspace has been quite extensively used. What role do you think the UK are playing in the process of extraordinary rendition? Mr Crawshaw: I think as regards the use of the airspace, as you say, the evidence is there and it is suggestive. I would not feel able confidently to say who was in those planes or what, but I think, if we are going put it bluntly, the public deserves answers. I think Britain deserves answers to explain if not that, what were these flights about, because the evidence is suggestive there. If I may I will also pick up on what you said about the Foreign Secretary saying that people would not be sent back from Britain to a place where they would be at risk of torture. It may be that the Committee wants to address this in a separate section, but certainly that is simply an untrue statement as we have it at the moment. It is simply inaccurate to suggest that the British government is not going in that direction. They have been pressing for these diplomatic assurances. The version that they have constantly asserted is that these diplomatic assurances received from governments where somebody might be deported to are so constructed to ensure that torture will not take place. In reality all the evidence that we will be seeing has shown that these things absolutely do not work, and, indeed, really that they cannot work. I am happy to explain it at great length if you would like, but I think it is a non-starter. You were asking people to talk of an illegal practice which they are already committing and should not be committing but on this particular occasion with this particular person they would not carry out that illegal practice - in other words the torture - and that it will be possible to check on those because you will go into the person's prison cell and say, "Have you been tortured recently?" and expect to get an accurate answer from that person. There will be no interest from either the receiving country's side let alone the sending country's side (in this case the UK) in getting to the bottom of the facts. If you send them to places where torture is widespread, then that is what will happen. We have already had a couple of notorious examples, one from Sweden to Egypt, another one was a Canadian Syrian being sent back, being picked up en route back home to Canada and being the deported to Syria on what John Ashcroft called the "appropriate assurances that had been received", this from the place that had already been described by the US government as the "axis of evil", but they decided to believe Syria on this occasion on torture. So the idea of, "Oh, we are not doing that. We would not dream of sending someone back to somewhere where they might be tortured", is simply inaccurate. Put differently, I think they feel that the British public perhaps does not mind so much because they assume that those people deserve to have whatever happens to them happening to them, and that is a quite different argument which I would like to hear rather more bluntly put by the British government. If that is what they are thinking, then they should say that and not pretend that the torture will not in fact take place. Ms Allen: On the use of airspace, I have nothing to add to that except to thank the Committee for asking those questions of the Foreign Secretary and pursuing these issues. I do not know whether, Chairman, it would be appropriate to comment on diplomatic assurances at this stage. Q26 Chairman: You can do that now, yes. Ms Allen: I think that in any previous year that we have been in front of the Committee we would have been congratulating the UK government on its programme of work to eradicate torture around the world, and, unfortunately, and quite shockingly, we cannot be in that position this year because of the practice of diplomatic assurances. Those assurances have already been signed with Jordan and Libya and we understand they are to be pursued next with Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. As Steve Crawshaw has said, we consider these assurances not to be worth the paper that they are written on. Just to let you know in terms of our concerns about Libya, we are dealing at the moment with the case of Mahmoud Mohamed Boushima, who left this country to return to Libya. He had been here since 1981 following his opposition to the Libyan regime. On 10 July he went back to Libya with assurances from the Libyan government that he would be safe. He has been detained by agents of the Internal Security Agency. He has been held incommunicado. His family do not know where he is and have had no contact with him. He has no access to lawyers. He has been in that situation for four months. That is the Libyan government that our government is signing diplomatic assurances with and intending to return people to. In Jordan we have evidence of torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, especially of political offenders, and I think that anybody who would be returned from this country would certainly fall into those categories. We find the approach of the UK government to diplomatic assurances on the issue of torture to be an absolute coach and horses through any attempt to eradicate torture and in fact to give succour to those regimes that do practice torture; so we are deeply shocked by this turn of events in terms of the foreign policy of this country. Q27 Chairman: It has been reported that the UN Commission on Human Rights is inquiring into the British government's role in extraordinary rendition. Do you have any evidence that that is happening? Mr Hancock: I believe it is the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Terrorism which was created by the Commission on Human Rights, and, yes, I do understand that they are doing a general inquiry into counter-terrorist measures and how they comply with human rights and that as part of that he is looking into extraordinary rendition and indeed the UK. Q28 Chairman: Do you have any indication of when they are going to produce a report? Mr Hancock: No, I would think there will need to be a report back to the Commission next year, but I do not have any more information on timing. Mr Crawshaw: As the Committee will perhaps be aware, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Novak, has been absolutely clear-cut. The man, if you like, with the international authority on the issue of torture has been very, very clear-cut on how unacceptable the diplomatic assurances are, and it was dismaying, and it was the first time I have seen a British government minister being so publicly contemptuous of a senior UN official. We have sadly seen in other countries that one has had that response, but it was a determination not to hear what Manfred Novak was saying on this which was very, very clear-cut. I would be very pleased to be able to say something on the torture issue about the UK silence on US abuses, but you may be coming to it. If not, can I say my two seconds worth? Q29 Chairman: Yes, say it now. Mr Crawshaw: I have written it, but I think it is so important. I never expected to be so shocked by what I read in this Human Rights Report, which has so much to be welcomed within it, as the inaccurate characterisation of the US inquiries into the abuses and torture, not just at Abu Graib but also elsewhere, suggesting that these have been "substantial inquiries" which have "prosecuted and punished those responsible" is utterly inaccurate, and we have now seen recently that the US, with the latest wave of revelations, which Human Rights Watch partly helped to bring to the public arena after the person who tried privately to do so was knocked back by his superiors - the UK government not only fails to comment, which was the problem we had with Guantánamo, but actually characterises the problem as though it has been addressed, and it simply has not. I find it extraordinary. Chairman: Thank you; that is a useful introduction to Richard Younger-Ross who is going to ask some question about Iraq. Q30 Richard Younger-Ross: In Iraq there are still a number of detainees held by the US and others. My understanding is that the holding of these is illegal under the Geneva Convention, which only applies if detention without charge occurs in the case of international armed conflict or occupation. Can you outline what your view on that is and, in particular, how you believe those who are still being held are being treated? Has the abuse of them occurred earlier? Has that abuse ended? Mr Hancock: I would think that the US and, indeed, UK governments would point to the fact that the power to detain security detainees was part of an exchange of letters between the governments of Iraq and the government of the US and the multinational forces there at the time of the UK resolution that authorised the handover from occupation to the interim governments. At the time Amnesty International had a range of concerns about this, including who has responsibility for treatment of these detainees, who has oversight of them? There is a range of questions there. I will look at how live those concerns still are, whether we have been reassured, and let you have further information on that. We are still concerned about the way in which detainees are being treated. We do not think, as Steve touched on just now, that all the inquiries and all of the learning about Abu Graib has been done, particularly by the US government, and so in no way would we say we are comfortable with the US in particular continuing to hold detainees. Q31 Richard Younger-Ross: You say that you are not comfortable. Do you have any evidence, or any hard evidence, that abuses are still taking place? Mr Hancock: It is difficult to come by, because we are unable to get into Iraq; but certainly people who do come out talk about ill-treatment. Mr Crawshaw: What we do of course have evidence of, and some of that came out yesterday, is that in Iraqi custody there are some very, very serious abuses going on. More of that came out yesterday. We had done a report on that in January, which both the British authorities and indeed the Iraqis were saying they were taking very seriously, but the problem is still absolutely endemic in Iraq itself. Q32 Richard Younger-Ross: They said they were taking it seriously. Do you believe that the British Government is doing enough? Mr Crawshaw: On the Iraqi custody problem? Q33 Richard Younger-Ross: Yes. Mr Crawshaw: On the Iraqi custody, I think that the British Government did play a positive role. There is of course a problem, not specifically now with the British but certainly again with the Americans. The American abuses that they have themselves carried out make it extraordinarily difficult for the Americans then to play a leading role, as they might have been able to do in the past, of saying, "This is not the way a modern civilized society should be behaving", and it has become almost part of the pattern, if you like. But on the narrow point, we were - I have put it in my written submission but I am happy publicly to flag it here again - pleased that the British Government took very seriously the revelations in our report and were seeking to address them. There is no question that not enough has been done. Q34 Richard Younger-Ross: Moving on to Saddam's trial, I understand that the trial has now been suspended because of fears over safety which followed the abduction and murder of Saadan Sughaiyer al-Janabi, who was a lawyer representing one of the ousted Iraq president's co‑defendants. Do you feel that the trial should have been suspended? How do you think that trial should now progress? Ms Allen: We, from Amnesty, had observers at the first day of the trial on 20 October, and were very encouraged by that first day of the trial and the reception amongst the Iraqi population about Saddam being brought to account. The trial was then adjourned so that the defence would have further time with the evidence, and we were very pleased that that had happened. I think that the murder of some of the lawyers involved is deeply to be regretted, and I think that the court needs to consider what protection it needs to be able to restart this process; because it is absolutely important that Saddam Hussein is brought to account. We would also, in terms of that particular trial, very clearly say that we would hope that the UK Government would exert its influence to the utmost to ensure that the death sentence is not delivered to Saddam Hussein. Q35 Richard Younger-Ross: A number of human rights organisations and political parties believe that there should be an extraction process for the troops out of Iraq. However, others fear that if there is an extraction process there will be less stability and greater human rights abuses during that process. Have you looked at that, and what is your view in terms of what is likely to happen to human rights in Iraq, if and when the troops start to withdraw? Mr Crawshaw: From Human Rights Watch's point of view it is a political question. It is clearly a very important political question. Both the coalition forces and the Iraqis themselves need to understand that one of the bases for any kind of security has to be an observance of the rule of law. We saw an extraordinary US failure on this in the period immediately after the fall of Saddam, and somehow believing that short cuts could be taken there. We see it now with the Iraqi authorities, with the kind of torture and so on that we have seen. I think that it would not be for us to judge when is the right moment for an international force to be there or not to be there; but whoever is there and responsible needs to understand that if you have a situation of enormous insecurity, which clearly is the case in Iraq at the moment, the way past that is not to short-cut and think that you can use violent methods or a lack of due process. To pick up also on your question on Saddam - again it is a pity to flag things afterwards but, frankly, these were things that we were flagging in advance - it does emphasise how important are the issues of security, both for lawyers but also for witnesses. Thank God, we have not yet had problems of the lethal kind with witnesses; but that is something which we flag very strongly: that this matters enormously. It is not just what happens in the courtroom; outside the courtroom becomes just as important for that trial to continue. It does seem to us that beyond welcoming, as Amnesty does, the trial itself, we have had concerns about some of the standards of proof required; but broadly we welcome the fact that a trial is happening. Certainly, if people are going to be killed for giving testimony or for defending some of the defendants, that does not help anybody forward at all. Ms Allen: On the FCO report and the entry in terms of Iraq, from Amnesty we would question the broadly positive tone of that entry. We consider, as Human Rights Watch does, that the security situation in the country is dire; there have been no reductions in terrorist attacks, and we have reported recently on the activities of armed groups. Like Human Rights Watch, I think that it is a judgment which it is impossible for us to be making; but what we would want to ensure is that the concerns about the human rights of Iraqi citizens are at the centre of those decisions and the way in which they are made, and that they are demonstrably at the centre of those decisions and the way in which they are made. Q36 Richard Younger-Ross: Finally on Saddam's trial, do you feel that other charges should have been brought? Do you have any fears about the charges that have been brought? Ms Allen: No, we see some very clear charges being brought of alleged murders, and we are very happy to see those brought before the court. If there are future charges, then those should take their place too. Q37 Chairman: Switching focus, the Human Rights Annual Report of the FCO talks about the revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Do you have any concerns that, although the process of democratic change there has been very welcome, there are outstanding human rights problems? I know Human Rights Watch has commented on this. I would be interested to have a perception from you as to how you see the process going on now. Mr Crawshaw: Clearly there are lots of problems but again, as a human rights organisation, one does grasp at the times when you can say that the glass is at least half-full and not pretty much on empty. Broadly, the fact that those changes have taken place is to be welcomed. In other words, Georgia has moved forward from where it was before. There were huge problems there. Ukraine ditto. Kyrgyzstan is in a much more ambiguous position. In effect, we have two governments in Kyrgyzstan at the moment, fighting with each other for the battle of the soul, as it were. Are there problems still? Yes, absolutely. Georgia would be a case in point. We had widespread torture continuing after their peaceful revolution, and so things need to be addressed. One thing that we at Human Rights Watch certainly notice - since we take our victories where we can, as it were - is that the response to our concerns is very, very different in tone from what it was before. That may be different from reacting in deeds, but there is a willingness to engage with the issues: a broad understanding that human rights matter, in a way that some of the other central Asian states, which still have their old Soviet leaders running them - and in some ways more brutal even than during the Soviet era - do not. Those have not yet had change and clearly are a source of instability themselves. The very fact of that repression is a source of instability, undoubtedly. Q38 Chairman: I want to switch focus to a number of other countries. Can we ask you about your assessment of human rights in Turkey? Clearly they have improved enough, and quite significantly, for the EU to open accession talks. What would you regard as the priority areas? Do you think that if the EU goes cold on Turkey's membership, under the Austrian presidency or later, this will act as a disincentive to improvements in Turkey? Ms Allen: What I would say from Amnesty International is that we have welcomed the Turkish Government's commitment to bring their laws and their practices into line with human rights. We very much welcomed the ending of the death penalty and some real progress that has been made over the last couple of years in Turkey, as that country in particular has sought to meet the Copenhagen principles. What we feel at the moment is that there has perhaps been a slowing of the reform process. What we think the priorities should be are the creation of effective human rights institutions. We would like to see an independent police complaints commission that could investigate torture and ill-treatment, particularly perpetrated by the police forces. We welcome the Turkish penal code but, again, we have seen the very high profile case recently of the writer Orhan Pamuk for "insulting Turkishness". We have also welcomed the Turkish signature to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. Chairman: There is a division. We hope that we have only one, but we are not certain about that. We will break for 15 minutes. If there are two divisions, it will be longer. The Committee suspended from 3.37 pm to 4.01 pm for a division in the House. Q39 Chairman: I think, Ms Allen, you were in the middle of answering on Turkey. Ms Allen: Yes. We have very much welcomed some of the progress in Turkey. We are concerned that it might be slowing down. I outlined our particular concerns, and would just add that we are very concerned about the situation of women and ensuring that there is protection for women, particularly from violence in the family. Those are our main issues. You asked whether the accession should proceed and what would happen if it did not. What we are concerned to ensure is that Turkey continues its progress towards meeting the criteria, and certainly that those criteria are not reduced in any way. We very much hope that that progress will enable Turkey to continue its wish to join the EU. Q40 Andrew Mackinlay: Human Rights Watch, in their note to us in respect of Iran, said that it does appear that sometimes the criticism - presumably that is of Her Majesty's Government - "has not gone beyond mere rhetoric". I would like to come back to that in a moment and invite Human Rights Watch and Amnesty to amplify upon that. Before doing so, however, can I say to Mr Crawshaw that certainly Human Rights Watch is highly regarded both in this country and internationally and, rightly, it shapes the opinion of legislators and governments. I was therefore personally very surprised and disappointed by the report published earlier this year on the MKO, or what we know as the People's Mojahedin of Iran. I was surprised by its contents, which I do not want to debate here now but, inasmuch as it influences our opinion, can I say that I wrote to the Human Rights Watch director in New York, talking about the methodology of the document. Frankly, it did not coincide with my own personal views. A similar letter, I understand, went from Labour peers Lord Corbett, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, Lord Russell-Johnston, Lord Avebury, and David Amess and Lord of Appeal, Lord Slynn. So far as I am aware, nobody has received a reply from the director of Human Rights Watch, which I think reflects very badly on the organisation - particularly as we had challenged the methodology of this. The report itself - and this is the only reference I want to make, Chairman - says, "Human Rights Watch interviewed by telephone 12 former members of MKO". It seems that, on telephone conversations, this report, which many of us see as tendentious, was publicised. It does have an effect on rights because, as you know, there is a battle on as to whether or not the MKO should be on the list of terrorist organisations. I think that it is legitimate for me to raise this. As I say, I respect Human Rights Watch. I hold it in high regard and value it, as other people do. But here was, on the face of it, a tendentious report, reasonably challenged by the people I have referred to and by people in other countries as well, and we do not even have the courtesy of a reply. I wonder if you could deal with that. Mr Crawshaw: I am sorry about that. As you say, it would take too long to talk about the details of the report. I would only say that Human Rights Watch does absolutely stand by what it said in that report, which was - you will remember from knowing it - not to do with terrorist organisation or not. It had to do with abuses within the camps; in other words, very serious abuses within that. I am sorry if you feel that there has not been an answer and---- Q41 Andrew Mackinlay: Well, there has not been. Mr Crawshaw: I know. I am sorry if you feel there has been a rudeness in the lack of the answer. There were threats of legal action being taken, which clearly we as Human Rights Watch feel quite inappropriate, and we stand by our stuff absolutely. I think there may have been a caution until some of that had progressed further; but that does not really---- Q42 Andrew Mackinlay: No, it does not. I am sorry to labour the point, but this report, having read it and read it again, was based upon telephone conversations. Mr Crawshaw: In the narrow sense, that was---- Q43 Andrew Mackinlay: The impression some of us got, right across the political spectrum here in the United Kingdom, right across other European legislatures, was that in fact the organisation, on this matter, had been infiltrated - which is presumably something which is possible. Mr Crawshaw: Which we, of course, believe absolutely not to be the case. I know that we do need to move on. Those particular interviews were done by telephone; however, there is a wider background to it. I am sorry, and I am very happy to---- Andrew Mackinlay: You will see that I get a reply. Q44 Chairman: Can I suggest that Mr Mackinlay will get a reply, but also it might be helpful if Human Rights Watch were to write to the Committee, explaining the report, sending us a copy of it, referring to your response as well, so that we have it on the record. Mr Crawshaw: I am happy to do that and also, given the amount of internal discussion, if that is a letter which partly is waiting for a fuller letter---- Chairman: Thank you very much. Q45 Andrew Mackinlay: Let us go to the substance, which I actually have some empathy for: that HMG has been a bit soft. We have seen, since the report was published, a change of government in Iran and so on. So, over to you, Mr Crawshaw and Ms Allen - because this might be an area on which we have some agreement - I would like you to amplify upon your concerns on where we are in Iran on human rights. Ms Allen: Can I say from Amnesty that we think that the entry this year is a bit more critical in tone than last year's report, and we agree that the situation in Iran is difficult and worsening. Our concerns include recent curtailing of freedom of expression; the arrest of 25 internet journalists who have received prison sentences; students who have been imprisoned following demonstrations. We have heard allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and of course the deaths following demonstrations in Khuzestan, where 31 people died, and in Kordestan, where 20 demonstrators were killed. Our other major concern with the situation in Iran is the extensive and appalling use of the death penalty. We have seen at least 159 people executed in 2004, including juveniles and minors. We are also very aware that torture continues to be routine in many prisons. The use of the death penalty and the use of it on minors is deeply shocking. We have intervened in many cases, as Amnesty: some successfully, some not. Those are the major concerns that we have at the moment about the human rights in Iran. Q46 Andrew Mackinlay: What about the United Kingdom Government's response to those abuses, which I concur with your assessment of? Are we banging on the door with a wet sponge, basically? Mr Hancock: In response to the individual death penalty cases, it is worth putting on record our appreciation for the fact that the Government has been willing to intervene on those, and that has had an effect as well - alongside some other European countries. I would really like to be clear in stating that we appreciate that. I would just echo the point that this report does indicate some of the thinking which goes on at the Foreign Office, and it is important that they have become more critical this year. Importantly, it referred to discrimination in Iran and the people it is obviously aware of is the Baha'i community. I think it would be worthwhile mentioning that is not the only religious belief system that is discriminated against. So there is perhaps a little more detail that the Foreign Office should be seeking to add in terms of other affected groups. Q47 Mr Pope: You mentioned concerns earlier about conditions in some of the former Soviet states in central Asia. I want to raise the specific issue of Uzbekistan, because earlier this year there were the terrible events in Andijan where around 500 people were shot dead by Uzbek troops; widespread arrests followed, and there were allegations that many of those people had been tortured. Since then, the EU has suspended its Partnership and Co-operation Agreement with Uzbekistan. Do you think that is enough? Has the British response been robust enough? There are pages on Uzbekistan in the Foreign Office Annual Report, but my view is that it seemed a little weak on conclusions. It was detailed on analysis but weak on conclusions, and I wondered if you could give us your view. Mr Crawshaw: I would certainly echo that, especially at the time that this report went to press - which was after the Andijan massacre which you have mentioned. It was really on the scale of Tiananmen Square, in the sense that, as you say, it was at least 500 and it may well have been much more than that. We do not know exactly. Human Rights Watch and others have produced a report called Bullets Were Falling Like Rain - which as, you will recall, is a quote from one of the demonstrators - and a subsequent report, Burying the Truth, which is the torture people were suffering in order to come up with the government's version - quite fictional version - of events which claimed that basically this was a bunch of terrorists that they were confronting. It was regrettable, especially with the UK holding the EU presidency from July of this year, that there was not really a momentum to confront what had happened. You mentioned the suspension of the Partnership and Co-operation Agreement, which sounds a little bit over-detailed, if you like, but it is actually the first time that it had ever happened - so it was quite a significant moment. This had not happened before. There were other sanctions, first in October but which now have been strengthened, both with a visa ban and with an arms embargo. So you have the sense that some pressures are there. What would be very important - and I have to say that I do still worry about it - is that there is not the sense that, "We have now taken action that was needed and now we can move on and forget about this". There is the visa ban for senior members of the regime - they have finally put some names to that and there is a list of names - but I think that it is very important for it not to stop there, because Karimov still believes that he is sitting pretty, and he does need to be under pressure. Q48 Mr Pope: I got the impression certainly that Uzbekistan was a useful ally in the war on terror with its air bases and that there has been a certain amount of soft-pedalling. Mr Crawshaw: That was of course absolutely, 150 per cent the case before, when Britain, let alone the United States, refused to confront what was happening there. Q49 Mr Pope: There is one area about Uzbekistan that has been a real concern to me, and I think also to the Committee. That is the allegations that have been made that people have been tortured in Uzbekistan and then the information which has been garnered by the use of torture has been shared with the Americans but, much more pertinently, with our security forces. I have tabled a number of Parliamentary Questions on this very topic and answers came there back none. I wondered if either of your organisations had any evidence about this. We have had a letter from our former ambassador to Tashkent, Craig Murray, which has made a number of allegations along these lines. If you have any evidence, I am sure that the Committee would be very pleased if you could share it with us, either today or in writing. Mr Crawshaw: The hard evidence of what was shared back - of course the former ambassador is in the best position, unless we think that he has invented it. He has documented clearly what happened, and the British Government has not denied it really. Therefore one has the philosophical question, if you like, that the Government seems to believe that, "If this might save us all from being blown up, then we shouldn't ask too many questions". I referred to it in our submission, I think, that Eliza Manningham-Buller in one of her submissions basically said as much as that: "We're not going to ask, because that would make things difficult". I really think that is a most extraordinary way to behave, in terms of keeping us safe - thinking, "We don't actually want to know if this person was tortured". First because of the phrase being used, "selling our souls for dross" - that was the memorable phrase; the inaccuracy of stuff gained under torture; but, beyond that, the message being sent. So it is not really "Has it happened?"; it has happened and it is partly being defended. It is "Should it be?", and we would say absolutely not. Ms Allen: We would support that and say that we of course see the case in front of the House of Lords, as to whether evidence extracted under torture elsewhere in the world should be used in British courts, along with diplomatic assurances, as the other part of our major concerns about where the British Government is going on this issue of torture, and the absolute undermining of the prohibition on torture. As with Human Rights Watch, we are shocked by these ways of introducing torture into the way in which cases were taken here in the UK, and we very much look forward to the conclusion of the House of Lords' decisions on this. Mr Crawshaw: The British Government has said, and it is quite right to say, it has played such a leading role in the past in confronting the issue of torture. It has already played a very important role. It is deeply depressing to see what we have now, which is exactly what Kate has just said - really a fourfold betrayal. On the one hand you have what you are addressing - the use of material for intelligence use; you have the House of Lords case, of being able to use it in British courts; you have diplomatic assurances if you were being sent back to the risk of torture; and then what I flagged earlier - this extraordinary, worse than a silence - you have a denial of your closest ally, the US Government, having what we have called "leadership failure" in documenting it. So on all of those things the British Government has simply backed away. Mr Pope: The worst aspect of this is that if it is happening, it is happening in secret. They are not even being up-front about it. Q50 Mr Purchase: Before we condemn completely, are there any circumstances, do you think, in which the long-term bilateral relationships between nations are sometimes best served by not overtly recognising abuses in either one of those nations? Ms Allen: The issue of torture is such an extraordinary human rights abuse, and it is one that is internationally condemned and legislated against, that I do not think that we can turn a blind eye to any instance of torture. I think that it is incumbent upon the British Government to adhere to that. That is the concern at the moment: that by abandoning that, it is sending such an appalling message around the world, and the message that is being heard by those who use torture as a green light. So this is something that really does have ramifications well beyond this country. Those are the concerns that we have. There has never been a country that has used torture in one situation. Torture is always used again and then again, until it becomes routine. There is no line that you can draw about torture, except that it should not take place. Q51 Mr Purchase: Even if it was a judgment, a reflective judgment, which says that to draw attention or to campaign, or to do whatever, may well damage long-term prospects for the end of torture in a particular country? Philosophical, I know, and hopefully hypothetical, but I ask you the question. Ms Allen: I do not think that you can end torture by turning a blind eye to torture happening, or condone torture happening. I think that it is one of those issues that absolutely, categorically, we have to stand against. The impact of torture is appalling in terms of the individuals where it is used, but it also has its impact upon those that use it and the countries that authorise it. I just do not think that that is a way that we would come to any long-term ending of torture. Mr Crawshaw: I would echo it absolutely as regards the turning of a blind eye, but I would emphasise that here we have more than turning a blind eye; we have an active statement that the problem has been addressed, when it clearly has not. Q52 Mr Hamilton: We know that since the publication of the Annual Human Rights Report the Mugabe regime has launched what they so charmingly call "Operation Murambatsvina", which means "Operation Clear the Filth". We saw it on our TV screens, especially when our colleague Kate Hoey went over there secretly to film the evictions, and there have been many more pictures of the houses being burnt down and people living on the streets in fear and poverty. Conditions in Zimbabwe are deteriorating every day. They continue to do so. Human rights abuses continue to be prevalent and multiplying. I wondered what your comments would be about how we, as the United Kingdom, can help improve human rights in Zimbabwe - especially given that we are seen as the great enemy, the great colonial imperialist power. They will not allow us in; they will not allow our diplomats to do anything; they will not allow journalists from the BBC in. What can we do? Ms Allen: We very much agree with the sentiments that you are putting forward. What we are seeing at Amnesty is fewer cases of torture but a clearer and a different change of strategy, which has moved towards the manipulation of food, which only goes to those who support the Mugabe regime; and, as you say, the removal now of 700,000 people in Operation Restore Order. We do see a humanitarian disaster unfolding in Zimbabwe. I think that the British Government has used its pressure very extensively. What we would think is necessary is for the UK and the EU to use their pressure through dialogue with African states. As you have said, the pressure from the UK is portrayed as colonial by Mugabe; that is the way in which it is seen and talked about. I think the more that the UK Government and the EU can do to encourage African states, and in particular South Africa who have been such a disappointment on this issue, to raise their concerns, so that it is seen as something that is led from within Africa, the better. Those would be the ways that we would want to see the UK Government use its influence. Q53 Sandra Osborne: Could I ask you about Colombia? The FCO report describes Colombia as a country of concern, particularly in relation to human rights, while having a fairly positive attitude towards President Uribe, saying that there is no evidence that it is government policy that the military collude with the paramilitary in Colombia - although it is widely believed by NGOs that that remains to be proven. Do you have any knowledge of how the UK Government ensures that the military aid to Colombia is not misused and abused? What mechanisms do you feel could be put into place to monitor the situation? Ms Allen: We very much share those concerns. We think that the UK should cease to provide military aid until the Colombian Government has implemented the recommendations from the UN around human rights. We are very much concerned that the military support given by the UK Government could be misused by the army. It does have close links to the paramilitaries. Those links have not been cut. Those are the recommendations that the UN is pursuing. So we would like to see that. On the arms issue generally, out of 19 of the 20 countries which are of concern to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the Human Rights Report, there are arms exports to those countries. What we would like to see in this Human Rights Report for the future is an explanation of why that is, so that we can have a conversation about that with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The only country of concern that is not receiving arms exports from the UK is North Korea. We would like to see the reasoning why those exports have been agreed. Having said that, we are very pleased by the Foreign Secretary's support for an arms trade treaty. I think that the support of the UK Government is absolutely brilliant and very essential to see the potential for that treaty, and we would very much want to congratulate the Foreign Secretary and the British Government on that support. Q54 Chairman: In two weeks' time, this Committee is visiting the Middle East, Israel and the Occupied Territories, and we will also go to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Very briefly - because we will obviously be getting lots of other evidence on those areas - what do you think the UK can do to improve human rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories? Mr Crawshaw: One thing I would flag above all others - there are obviously a number of concerns, including after the pull-out - something which is still insufficiently addressed is this question of impunity, which underlies so much else in terms of the message that is being sent. The language of the Human Rights Report, as I remember it, was quite soft. It praised the fact that there was some kind of justice in connection with the Britons who had been killed. Those are such extraordinary, exceptional examples that it is really most inappropriate to use those as though they were an indication that things are getting substantially better. They are not. Again, we would be very happy to send to members of the Committee a report which we did recently called Promoting Impunity. If Committee members have not seen it, it does contain quite shocking material in the sense of that pattern - the absolute refusal to confront. I think that Britain could play an important role in saying, "This is what needs to be done". There is of course a pattern of different abuses that are to be seen there, but I think that is one thing which needs to be heard loud and clear. Q55 Chairman: What about on the Palestinian side? Mr Crawshaw: On the one hand you have the continuance of suicide bombers, which are a crime against humanity obviously; taking strong action against those - which is something which needs to happen; and a number of abuses, including physical abuse. That is the important message to send. I think that one which can and should be heard is certainly that one too - the Israeli Government and impunity. Q56 Chairman: What about Saudi Arabia? Do you think that we are providing sufficient support to deal with human rights abuses there? Also, the UK nationals who allege that they were ill-treated in Saudi Arabia - do you have any view on that? Ms Allen: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office says in this year's report that there have been "small but significant improvements" in the reform process in Saudi Arabia. As the Committee knows, we have been very critical over the last few years of the UK Government's approach to the Saudi Government. We would recognise that there have been small steps. We are not yet sure whether those are significant or not. The human rights situation in Saudi Arabia is still absolutely dire in very many ways that we have documented, including appalling use of the death penalty and the use of torture. In terms of the British nationals, very recently I met Dr Bill Sampson and Les Walker, two of the British nationals who were tortured by the Saudis within the last couple of years. They talk about the most appalling forms of torture that they both suffered, including sexual abuse and threats to Mr Walker's wife as well. So appalling accounts of torture, and I think the UK Government needs to make sure that it gives full support to those men as they try to get redress from the Saudi Government. Q57 Sir John Stanley: Can I turn to Afghanistan? Whatever the shortcomings - and there certainly are plenty at the moment - would you agree that, in human rights terms, the Afghanistan President Karzai is a significant improvement on the Afghanistan of the Taliban? Mr Crawshaw: Yes. That is not a difficult question to answer. The follow-up to that is not to say, "Let's not look at the seriousness of the problem". What I thought you were going to say - which I would also be happy to send to you from Human Rights Watch's point of view - was has the British Government played an important role, which it has done, in terms of confronting the power of the warlords? Again, the United States, with enormous short‑sightedness - and I perhaps use this word repeatedly, but I do think it is extraordinary that they believed in Washington that somehow supporting people who had well-known track records for brutality, continued to be brutal in their rule, were "allies in the war on..." - in this case not just terror but on the Taliban - could be useful allies. That is not the way you get a stable country and it did President Karzai no favours to bolster those warlords - including arming them, which has contributed greatly to the continued climate of instability in Afghanistan at this time. We would have wished Britain in the past to take a stronger role, but broadly I think Britain has understood that much better than its close ally in Washington. Clearly the need to support the international force there is strong. Q58 Sir John Stanley: Do you think that we are holding on to the gains, in particular women's rights, in Afghanistan or is the situation now going back into reverse, as is being reported in some quarters? Ms Allen: I think that when you are in a situation as in Afghanistan at the moment, where security is such an issue and it is absolutely the overwhelming issue, particularly outside of Kabul, the situation for women does become quite bad. It is very much our experience that the levels of violence, discrimination and humiliation of women remain high within the country; that for safety's sake women are retreating back into the home; that it is very difficult for women and young girls, particularly in rural areas; and that we do need to see support to women in Afghanistan, to some very brilliant women's organisations and some very courageous women who have stood in the recent elections. That really does need, in this situation, to be the kind of support that needs to take place over many years. That has to be there over the next decades, not just in the next year or so, to ensure that there is significant change which is seen through, to see that women's position in Afghanistan really does improve. Q59 Sir John Stanley: Can I turn to China? The overall view - and it is very difficult to escape from - is that we are making virtually no progress at all as far as human rights in China are concerned. We have a country with an absolutely massive use of capital punishment; a country which is continuing, totally ruthlessly and systematically, to suppress all forms of what would be regarded by the regime as contentious political expression; the suppression of free trade unionism; the suppression of a lot which we would regard as perfectly normal religious expression. Would you take the view that we are making no progress whatever on human rights in China, or do you hold out any areas in which we are making progress? Ms Allen: We do not see any areas where progress is being made. You talk of the death penalty. We heard a Chinese national legislator announce last year that 10,000 people are executed each year, many of those after very summary trials and after the use of torture. What we have seen is the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue in June this year, which is now in its 13th round. Our view at Amnesty is that we would like to hear from the British Government about what progress it thinks is being made in these dialogues. From our perspective as Amnesty, it would be extremely helpful to have some clarity about what the British Government is setting out to achieve. We have no criticism of quiet diplomacy, if it is having an effect; but, after the 13th round, we do question that and we would like to know what the British Government sees as the progress to be made there. It is clear that the Chinese Government is very much wanting to be involved in that dialogue. It would be ironic though if what the dialogue itself achieves is simply the UK being quiet publicly and in various international fora about the appalling record of the Chinese regime, which you have outlined so clearly. Q60 Sir John Stanley: Does Amnesty have a view on this? Are you saying to us that the dialogue is a convenient receptacle for the Chinese Government, basically, to buy off the British Government in making only very modest adverse criticism of China on human rights? Ms Allen: I think that it is time for the British Government to be absolutely, publicly clear about what it sees as the advantages of the dialogue, what progress it wants to see, and to pursue that in a public arena. We were quite disappointed, during the recent visit of Premier Hu, that those opportunities were not sought and that the debate - the public debate at any rate - was simply one about trade, important though that is. Mr Crawshaw: Clearly the list of concerns is long and it is clear to all of us here. You are asking are there any signs of hope. One sign of potential hope is that civil society is there and wants to go in one direction. It is not that, "Oh, in China they do things differently"; it could go in one direction, of people being suppressed in many ways. In those circumstances it is particularly disappointing when a British Prime Minister, for example - as flagged in our written submission - is asked by a Chinese journalist about issues and the words "human rights" are not even mentioned. To me, given that list of concerns, it is a very odd sense of politeness not even to flag that up - because trade is so important. It does not seem to take us forward. Q61 Sir John Stanley: I turn specifically to the situation in Tibet. Is that a situation in human rights terms which you consider to be stable, or is it one which is deteriorating? Conceivably you may think it is improving. Please tell us. Ms Allen: We do not think that it is improving. We continue to document abuses taking place in Tibet, particularly of monks and nuns and of other religious minorities. So we have nothing to say about improvement in Tibet. It is one of our major concerns in terms of the Chinese regime. Q62 Sir John Stanley: What do you consider to be the objectives of the Chinese regime in terms of Tibetan culture and Tibetan identity? Ms Allen: There are very clearly moves by the Chinese Government in terms of trade - its economic power - that involve moving people into Tibet. Those issues do cause us great concern about Tibetan culture and its survival. Mr Crawshaw: I echo of all what you have just heard. Clearly the attempt to suppress the identity is visible at every level. Q63 Chairman: Can I ask you about the position in Indonesia? Do you think our government is doing enough to support human rights there? There is also the West Papua question. Would you like to comment on that? Mr Crawshaw: What we at Human Rights Watch have done a lot of work on has been on Aceh, and sometimes one could have wished for a stronger voice on that from the UK Government; but broadly it has, at least to some extent, been addressed by the UK Government in the meantime. On West Papua, it is problematic that we are being blocked from going there. We hope that we will nonetheless, but there is the great reluctance on behalf of the government to allow the kind of scrutiny and the kind of openness which will allow, frankly, the abuses which we know to be going on to be fully documented and therefore to be addressed. I think that a strong voice on that from the UK Government would undoubtedly be helpful. Too often there is the belief that if a government is broadly better than it was, therefore very serious remaining problems should not be addressed. I think that the opposite is in fact the case. Q64 Chairman: Can I take you on to Nepal, where clearly we have much closer historic relationships than we do with Indonesia and close military relationships. We continue to provide military support to the King's government and army, despite the current political situation there. Do you think that that military aid should be suspended until there are elections? Mr Crawshaw: Amnesty may have different information on this, but it is something which I have been discussing recently with colleagues in our Asian division looking at this. Our understanding has been that that military aid had been suspended earlier - unless you had information to the contrary. That was our clear understanding, and of course we welcome that because it would be most inappropriate. Ms Allen: Absolutely, and that is our understanding too. Q65 Chairman: And you would hope that that would be maintained until such a point as there is a restoration of a democratically elected government? Ms Allen: Absolutely. We see a situation of 200,000 people displaced. We know of 400 people, named people, who have disappeared. There is an absolute climate of fear. It would be intolerable to think that the UK Government would be exporting arms. Q66 Chairman: Can I try to pick up a couple of other questions that I have jumped across? What is your assessment of the position in Russia? The Annual Report does talk about it, but clearly the British Government is keen to have good relations with Russia. There are a number of concerns that a number of organisations raise there. How do you feel about our position with regard to Russia? Mr Crawshaw: I certainly think, and Human Rights Watch believe, that the situation is extremely serious there, and is getting worse as the years go on. It has been deeply regrettable, and again I find it, to use a polite word, puzzling that the British Government, most particularly the Prime Minister - we have seen some very accurate criticisms within the Human Rights Report - repeatedly fails to confront this. I assume that he feels that it would be impolite somehow to address it. I think I have flagged it in our submission that, when a Parliamentary Question asked whether he had raised the question of disappearances - as we all know, a synonym for murder in effect, and those people being taken from their beds in the middle of the night and never seen again - a very serious problem in Chechnya today - it was not addressed, even in those private conversations it seems. We also have very strong pressure on NGOs which is growing, including stuff which might even theoretically make it impossible for international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, which has a Moscow office, to continue to work there. These things need to be addressed absolutely head-on. There is no politeness in the world which can believe that, somehow, because trade is now doing well, because of a range of other things, these things ought not to be addressed. These are crimes against humanity. The United Nations recently agreed a new convention on disappearances; a new treaty against disappearances has been agreed. It is already a crime against humanity. So I think that the British Government, beyond the absolutely accurate criticism in this report, needs to confront that head-on and not believe that Putin is some friend in - and again, it comes back to the same story - the war on terror. There are undoubtedly terrorist attacks in Russia. We have seen that. There have been horrific attacks in Beslan and elsewhere. But the way to move forward from those is not to soft-pedal on the crimes being committed by the state. Ms Allen: This Committee last year was critical of the report concentrating on Chechnya, to the detriment of reporting on other areas within Russia. I think that the report has put that right this year; that it does cover human rights across the country, in particular in Chechnya and the concerns that we share there. Again, we would want to see, like Human Rights Watch, some clear statements by the British Government of what improvements it would want to see and the way in which it would raise those with the Russian Government. Q67 Chairman: Finally, we have had the Africa Commission report this year, which talks amongst other things about governance and human rights in Africa, yet one of the key members of that commission is Mr Zenawi from Ethiopia. We have seen recent tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Do you think the FCO Annual Report refers sufficiently to human rights abuses in both those countries? How do you feel we should take forward concerns about human rights in some African countries? Ms Allen: We do have concerns on human rights in both Eritrea and in Ethiopia that are not covered fully in the FCO's report. We have concerns in Eritrea about religious minorities; over 1,000 members of one minority church in prison; again, the use of torture. In Ethiopia our concerns are around some of the recent demonstrations that have taken place in Addis Ababa and the security forces shooting and killing many civilians. We are also deeply concerned by the tensions on the border. We saw all too appallingly in 1998 to 2000 the impact of that border dispute then. So I think that we would welcome greater attention from the UK Government on those issues. Q68 Chairman: There is one other country in Africa where Britain at least, through some of our oil companies, has major interests and that is Angola. There are clearly outstanding issues from the civil war there. Do you think that the Annual Report gives sufficient coverage to Angola? Ms Allen: There is very little mention in the report of Angola. We do, from Amnesty, have some very clear concerns. There are, and there continue to be, clashes between the MPLA and UNITA. We see a country where one million civilians were estimated to hold firearms illegally, with all the effect of that. We are aware of some improvement in police behaviour, but there are still very many reports of the police committing human rights abuses. We again have seen literally thousands of families evicted from informal urban settlements in Rwanda. So we have some very serious concerns about human rights and, as you say, Chairman, they are not covered in the FCO's report. Q69 Chairman: We have covered an enormous area of territory - probably most member states of the UN in one way and another! I would like to thank all three of you - Mr Crawshaw, Ms Allen and Mr Hancock - for coming along. We are very grateful. No doubt you can follow up, if you feel that there is anything that you want to send us. We will be very pleased to receive it. Thank you for your time. Ms Allen: Thank you for giving us the opportunity.
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