Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
80-90)
KATE ALLEN
AND TOM
PORTEOUS
10 JUNE 2009
Q80 Chairman: Can you clarify?
You refer to camps. Are those camps where people are being moved
to and not allowed to leave?
Tom Porteous: That is right. They
are surrounded by barbed wire. Freedom of movement is extremely
restricted. Access to the camps for UN and other agencies is also
restricted, although the UN is allowed to operate in some of them.
The internment camps are a source of real concern. The international
actors—including the UK—who are concerned about the
situation in Sri Lanka should be putting pressure on the Sri Lankan
Government. There is also an opportunity here, with the end of
the war, for the Sri Lankan Government, supported by their international
partners, to consolidate peace and stability in the country by
addressing the route cause of the conflict, which is the historical
and continuing discrimination against the Tamil minority.
Q81 Chairman: I know that the
UN Secretary General, John Holmes, and Navi Pillay, the High Commissioner
for Human Rights, have made statements about the situation, as
have our Government. When the UN Human Rights Council then rejects
any criticism of—in fact endorses—the position of
the Sri Lankan Government, is it not rather difficult to see how
the international community is going to do anything effective
here?
Tom Porteous: We had this discussion
at the beginning. You are right, there is a real problem about
the leverage of countries such as the UK, other European Union
member states and even the US. That is why we were particularly
disappointed by the rather weak statements that the Secretary-General
made during his trip to Sri Lanka because with the political authority
that his office bestows, we felt that he could have come out more
strongly than he did on the concerns that we and many others have
on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka.
Kate Allen: The public figure
that the UN estimate is 6,500 civilians dead. But The Times
recently reported on a confidential UN figure suggesting more
than 20,000 were killed. Amnesty has called on the UN to release
the figures, because it is absolutely essential that we understand
what the civilian casualties have been. Just to add to Human Rights
Watch, the UN working group on disappearances is investigating
5,516 cases of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka
is also one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be
a journalist. There is such repression of information and people
who speak out are targeted. Despite the Human Rights Council's
failings, I think that it is absolutely essential that we get
an understanding of the figures—clear figures about the
casualties—and that the British Government do what they
can to take forward these issues.
Tom Porteous: There undoubtedly
needs to be an international investigation, but as you said, the
obstacles to that are formidable.
Q82 Chairman: Clearly, it is an
issue we will come back to in our report. What can the UK Government
and other countries do to support Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the
democracy movement in Burma?
Tom Porteous: Again, this is another
of those countries where leverage of the UK is rather limited.
We, Amnesty and the UK Government are all extremely concerned
about the situation, particularly in the run-up to the so-called
elections, which the Burmese authorities are holding as a result
of their sham political reform process. We have called on Burma's
neighbours to put pressure on Burma's military rulers to free
Aung San Suu Kyi immediately, but there is a problem, which is
that the neighbours of Burma have been more reluctant to criticise.
They have got quite considerable economic interests in Burma.
Those obviously play a role.
Q83 Chairman: You mean principally
China and India?
Tom Porteous: China, India and
Thailand. That undercuts any international leverage that might
be exerted through the Security Council and so on. The UK has
played an exemplary role in its policy towards Burma, but I am
afraid it just does not have the leverage to have much impact,
although I would say that the UK ambassador has been extremely
outspoken in giving interviews and so forth, and that has been
quite useful.
Q84 Chairman: May I ask you about
Pakistan? We were in Pakistan a few weeks ago. How is the current
crisis—the recent events in Pakistan—impacting on
human rights, particularly on women?
Kate Allen: It is impacting massively.
There is a massive displacement crisis taking place in the North
West Frontier provinces and the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas. We have seen armed groups, many of them explicitly pro-Taliban,
committing appalling human rights atrocities. We have seen the
Pakistan Government vacillate between responding to insurgents
by indiscriminate and often disproportionate military action and,
on the other hand, simply vacating and leaving power vacuums to
be filled. We know that women in particular are suffering. Women
always suffer in these situations. We know that the Pakistan Government,
much as we described in Afghanistan, have from time to time been
tempted to sign away women's rights in the attempt to negotiate
peace deals with insurgent groups, and we see exactly that same
tendency that we talked about a little while ago in Afghanistan.
There is a real role for the British Government to ensure that
they do what they can in terms of women's rights during this particular
time because they are massively under threat.
Tom Porteous: May I urge you,
when you have your session with the Foreign Secretary, to emphasise
that the bad war fighting, by which I mean fighting that involves
violations of international humanitarian law, will not help resolve
this conflict and will make it more entrenched and more difficult?
Our immediate concerns include the fact that the Pakistani military
needs to avoid using curfews, which are leading to a lot of the
humanitarian suffering that we are seeing at the moment, as well
as to a public backlash against the Government. Also, our people
who are there on the ground at the moment are worried about the
tendency of the army to declare a particular area a conflict area
and then give the residents only two or three hours, in some cases,
to clear out before firing into the area. This is also playing
very badly with the population. In the fog of war, it may be that
people will not realise what is going on, but eventually, because
Pakistan has rather a free media at the moment, this stuff is
going to end up on television and it is going to play into the
hands of the Taliban. It is important that the UK should be making
those points to the Pakistan Government and particularly to the
Pakistan military, because those are the ones who are actually
doing it. We are also concerned about signals that we are getting
that disappearances are beginning to rise.
Q85 Mr. Illsley: Last year, in
its report, the Committee was quite critical of Saudi Arabia.
I think it described the human rights situation there as one of
the worst in the world. The Government, in their response, disagreed
and said that they have seen signs of gradual progress in Saudi
Arabia. But I think you were critical of that, especially, in
Human Rights Watch and said that the Government were concentrating
too much on the idea of the legal system in Saudi Arabia and sharia
law and so on. What is your current assessment of that? Do you
agree with the Government that there are signs of progress or
do you think that that view is misplaced and that more needs to
be done by our Government to try to persuade Saudi Arabia to improve?
Tom Porteous: There is a little
progress. One sign of progress is that Human Rights Watch is actually
admitted to Saudi Arabia on official visits, which is no mean
thing, considering the mentality that Saudi Arabia had towards
human rights organisations in the past. But there are still really
serious problems. The rights of women are systematically and legally
discriminated against, as are those of minorities, including foreign
workers. There are also unfair trials, arbitrary detention, severe
curtailment of freedom of expression and association and all the
problems that you are familiar with. The UK hides behind the argument
that Saudi Arabia needs to progress slowly at the pace of the
most conservative elements in society, namely the mullahs. We
disagree with that, because many of the systematic violations
of human rights that you see in Saudi Arabia are also violations
of Islamic law, as we have pointed out in our reports, as well
as of international laws. Many of the violations of political
rights, which are justified both by the Saudi authorities and
their international allies as being part of Saudi Arabia's tradition,
and so forth, are about maintaining power rather than about tradition.
The UK Government need to take that on board and push for a rather
faster pace of change.
Mr. Illsley: Not ready for democracy,
either.
Tom Porteous: Failure to do that
will breed radicalism and extremism in the middle east, because
Saudi Arabia has played its role in that in the past.
Q86 Mr. Purchase: The business
community in Saudi Arabia is quite progressive and would very
much want to move at a faster pace, but it recognises that there
is a hugely conservative majority in the ruling factions of Saudi.
Despite wishing to make real and serious progress, the business
community finds that caution is a necessary condition. Do you
dispute that?
Tom Porteous: I would say two
things. First, the pace of reform in other Gulf countries that
have the same traditions has been much faster: Kuwait is a good
example. Secondly, no one knows what the majority thinks because
there has never been a proper election in Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Purchase: I said that it was among
the ruling classes—the ruling faction.
Kate Allen: May I add one small
point on women in Saudi Arabia? We honestly found the section
on women in the Foreign Office's report difficult reading. It
was apologist in tone, and seemed to imply exactly that—that
men and women in Saudi Arabia were pretty happy with the institutionalised
nature of the discrimination that takes place against women. It
talked about the ability of richer women to reclaim their rights
by leaving Saudi Arabia, which does not really feel like progress
in terms of women's rights. We at Amnesty continue to document
women being treated as second-rate citizens, subordinate to men
under family law, denied equal opportunities, not allowed to drive.
Mr. Purchase: All of this, Kate, all
of these.
Kate Allen: And the latest case,
this year, of an eight-year-old being offered to a 60-year-old
man in marriage—only this year. This is still happening
and this is still how women's rights are being treated. We do
not think that the Foreign Office's report treats that with the
degree of seriousness that it should.
Q87 Chairman: We have just two
other countries to touch on quickly. Briefly, we are doing an
inquiry on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories—I
don't want to go into that whole issue but, simply, do you find
how the international community and our Government have responded
to the allegations of human rights violations during the recent
conflict satisfactory? I note that the Human Rights Council's
wording only related to an allegations inquiry about what happened
in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but did not talk about
anything such as, for example, firing rockets against civilians
from Gaza. Similarly, the Human Rights Council, although it set
up an inquiry on Israel, did not do so on Sri Lanka, as we have
commented. Is there not a problem—to which you referred
earlier—with the politicisation of international human rights
inquiries? Having said that, do you have any view on how the UN
inquiry under Richard Goldstone at the moment is being conducted,
and on the position that the British Government are taking?
Kate Allen: The main problem that
we have with the inquiry being led by Richard Goldstone is the
failure of the Israeli authorities to co-operate with it. We have
seen an Israeli investigation on Gaza, which was neither independent
nor impartial and talked about a very small number of mistakes.
Chairman: That is the Israel Defence
Forces' investigation.
Kate Allen: Exactly. It simply
did not recognise the scale of what happened: 300 Palestinian
children dead, and hundreds of other civilians. We are really
disappointed with the UK Government's failure to make a public
statement of support for the Goldstone mission and to put pressure
on the Israeli Government to co-operate. We hope that that inquiry
could have that kind of support. Also, as Amnesty, we have asked
for there to be those inquiries into the abuses committed by the
Palestinian majority and the de facto Hamas Administration. We,
as Amnesty International, have been in Gaza—we were in Gaza
before the ceasefire was called. Our missions into Gaza have found
hundreds of white phosphorus-impregnated felt wedges in residential
areas, still burning in many cases. There is, absolutely, evidence
of war crimes. An independent investigation is essential. It is
deplorable that Richard Goldstone's inquiry is not meeting with
the co-operation of the Israeli Government.
Tom Porteous: May I come in on
that? Just quickly, because I think it is important. Human Rights
Watch criticised the initial Human Rights Council resolution setting
up a fact-finding mission for Gaza, because it was so one-sided.
We have been pushing from the beginning for a full UN Security
Council-mandated commission of inquiry—set up either by
the UN Security Council, or by the Secretary-General and supported
by the Security Council. That, we think, is the way to go in the
long run. However, I would say that since then there has been
a lot of activity at the Human Rights Council and it is clear
that the fact-finding mission that Justice Goldstone is now leading—I
believe they have just completed a trip to Gaza—is going
to be comprehensive. That is to say they are not just looking
at Israeli violations of the laws of war, but also looking at
Palestinian violations. Therefore, that needs to be supported
by the international community, including by the UK, and its recommendations
need to be taken extremely seriously. Like Amnesty we have extremely
serious, credible evidence of serious violations of the laws of
war on both sides, and I will also just quickly add that the board
of inquiry which the UN set up to look at attacks at its own UN
installations in Gaza—a very limited mandate—
Chairman: That was by Ian Martin, the
former Secretary-General of Amnesty.
Tom Porteous: Yes. That came out
with a very strong recommendation for a broader, international,
independent inquiry along the lines that Amnesty and Human Rights
Watch have been calling for. That should be followed. It is very
disappointing that the Secretary-General again, with regard to
his own report, did not come out supporting that particular recommendation.
Chairman: Thank you very much. That is
helpful and will be useful in our other report that we are working
on.
Q88 Sandra Osborne: Can I ask
you about Colombia? I have just recently returned. I was there
at the invitation of Justice for Colombia and heard testimony
from families of people who had been murdered by the army, dressed
in the clothes of guerrillas, and had been accused of being guerrillas.
The Government do not tolerate legitimate opposition, they stigmatise
Opposition politicians and arbitrarily launch investigations into
them, where they are also accused of being guerrillas. They murder
trade unionists and human rights defenders, and accuse civil rights
lawyers of being guerrillas as well. There are large numbers of
political prisoners, which the UK Government do not appear to
recognise, and there are also millions of displaced people, who
live in squalor. Can I ask you for your assessment of the UK Government's
position, which is that Colombia is now much safer than previously?
Tom Porteous: The key issue here
is the UK military assistance to Colombia. There is no doubt that
Colombia is by far the most dangerous place in Latin America at
the moment. I would not want to make a comparison about whether
it is more dangerous now than it was a year ago. It is very, very
dangerous, particularly for journalists, trade unionists and human
rights defenders. The problem is that we really have no idea how
much UK aid is going to Colombia. We don't know what kind of aid
it is; we don't know which military units it is going to; we don't
know what the impact of that aid is in terms of human rights;
because the whole thing is totally lacking in accountability and
transparency. We do know, as you have eloquently pointed out,
that the situation in Colombia is extremely serious, that the
human rights situation is extremely bad and that the military
themselves are involved in extra-judicial killings and various
different kinds of human rights abuses; there are, as well, pro-Government
militias, which are in some ways related to the military, and,
of course, the anti-Government rebels, who are also involved in
serious human rights abuses. I would not want to underestimate
that for one minute. At the same time, the courts in Colombia
have made some progress towards achieving some sort of accountability
for these human rights abuses, but the current Administration
in Colombia have actually sabotaged some of that progress that
has been made by the courts. I think that the UK Government need
to take a much more clear-eyed look at the human rights situation
in Colombia, and particularly at the relationship between human
rights abuses and the Colombian Government forces. They need to
seriously reconsider, or at least make more transparent, their
military aid to Colombia. There all sorts of interests that the
UK has in Colombia. They have commercial interests and a very
important interest in addressing the narco-trafficking problem.
It seems to us that the main reason why the British Government
are providing this military aid to Colombia is that they are simply
following the dictates of the strategic alliance with Washington.
Colombia has been a good ally of the United States, particularly
under the Bush Administration. But here is the interesting thing:
since the Democrats gained control of the US Congress a couple
of years ago, US military aid to Colombia has become much more
transparent: we know where it's going. The Democrats have managed
to hold up some of that aid. In the UK, it is still an accountability-free
zone. We would like to see much more transparency over UK military
aid to Colombia. That applies to some other parts of the world.
In particular, counter-terrorism aid to some parts of Africa and
the Middle East is done under a semi-secret MOD counter-terrorism
programme called Operation Monogram, which we uncovered had been
providing counter-terrorism training to a unit of the Kenyan army
that was subsequently involved in serious human rights abuses
in Mount Elgon in a little-known conflict that had nothing to
do with terrorism in west Kenya. The whole issue of UK military
aid to countries where serious human rights abuses are occurring
should be given much more prominence. I hope that you will push
the Foreign Office on that.
Kate Allen: I agree with that
point about military aid to Colombia. May I give you some facts?
In the 12 months ending in June 2008, 1,500 civilians were killed
in the conflict, compared with 1,350 in the previous 12 months
and more than 180 people were the victims of enforced disappearances,
compared with 120 in the previous year. We do not think that Colombia
has become safer, but that some of the most intense parts of the
conflict have moved to more remote areas of the country. To add
to the comments about the way in which people are targeted, President
Uribe has made statements undermining the legitimacy of human
rights work and stigmatising human rights defenders, whom he has
accused of being guerrilla sympathisers. In that environment,
that is an invitation to kill. Colombia remains a very violent
place.
Q89 Andrew Mackinlay: Quite apart
from the urban killings, and even those in the countryside that
have the fingerprints of the state forces, indigenous people who
clearly cannot articulate their minds are also suffering. Is it
not bordering on genocide? In parts of Colombia, they are being
cleared. Is it out of sight, out of mind? My other question is,
when you raise these matters with the British Government, what
do your interlocutors say, whoever they are? Do they take you
seriously and respond? That is a separate question to the one
about the indigenous people, who make up small nations in Colombia.
Kate Allen: I don't have information
on that, but I will try to get back to you.
Tom Porteous: We have had several
meetings with the Foreign Office on Colombia, including at a more
political level. It listens sympathetically and that's it.
Q90 Andrew Mackinlay: Isn't there
an issue with land mines in Colombia, which we haven't touched
upon?
Tom Porteous: I would have to
get back to you on that.
Chairman: I think we have exhausted ourselves
and you. Thank you both once again for coming before us and giving
such a wide-ranging view of the challenges of human rights worldwide.
We are pleased and will definitely follow up on some of these
areas in writing. Kate Allen has had a particularly long grilling
today and we are very grateful.
|
