Foreign AffairsSupplementary written evidence from Amnesty International

Re Follow up to FAC Evidence Session 11 June 2013

I am writing to you to provide additional information (as requested) to issues raised during Kate Allen’s (Director of Amnesty International UK’s) evidence session with the Foreign Affairs Committee on 11 June 2013 regarding the FCO’s human rights work in 2012.

1. Follow-up monitoring on arrangements for those detained having been returned from the UK under DWA arrangements, if you have any (Q 19)

Amnesty International considers that no system of post-return monitoring of individuals will render assurances an acceptable alternative to rigorous respect for the absolute prohibition of transfers to risk of torture or other ill-treatment. Such ad hoc monitoring schemes necessarily omit the broader institutional, legal and political elements that can make certain forms of system wide monitoring of all places of detention in a country just one way, in combination with other measures, of potentially reducing the country-wide incidence of torture over the long term. Moreover, a series of post-return visits to a particular individual or just a few people would also put the detainee in an untenable position: the person is forced to choose between staying silent or reporting abuse in a situation where he or she will be clearly identifiable as the source of the report, and which may therefore heighten the risks such a person faces.

With respect to Algeria, the assurances negotiated between the UK and Algerian governments do not provide for formal arrangements for post-return monitoring. The UK’s domestic courts have found that the assurances are nonetheless capable of being verified through informal means, including indirectly by international NGOs, such as Amnesty International. We have, however, rejected any suggestion that we can be relied upon to verify or monitor assurances, even indirectly. To assume so, we believe, misrepresents the type of work that Amnesty undertakes and the conditions, frequency, privacy, and degree of access the organisation has to detainees returned in such circumstances (for example). Furthermore, it undermines international legal principles of state responsibility pursuant to which states must uphold their international obligations, and not rely on non-governmental organisations to do so for them.

As far as Amnesty is aware, no one has been returned to Ethiopia, Morocco or Lebanon under a Memoranda of Understanding (MoU).

With respect to Ethiopia, Amnesty has noted that the UK’s Court of Appeal recently found that the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC)—the monitoring body for the MoU—“could not be trusted to report deliberate breaches by the Ethiopian Government” and that there is “work to be done before the EHRC will have developed proper capacity for monitoring” and “the EHRC is not at the moment competent to monitor the conduct of junior officials; it may or may not become so in the future.”1

We would also highlight Amnesty’s submission to the Committee Against Torture (April 2013) which contains a section on post-return monitoring (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/EUR45/002/2013/en).

2. Any further information on whether Mikhail Khodorkovsky is expected to face another trial (Q 58)

On 17 May 2013, the Russian Supreme Court ordered to start a supervisory procedure regarding the sentence to Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev in the second case. The Court took this decision following a supervisory appeal submitted by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev’s lawyers on 4 February 2013. This is already the second supervisory appeal in the case and the last possible domestic instance. The appeal will be heard on 6 August 2013.

In the meantime, it transpired that the Russian Investigation Committee initiated questioning of several experts who participated in drafting a report commissioned by the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in 2011 on the second case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. Besides, premises of some of the experts were searched and their electronic correspondence was taken. Following the wave of the searches and rumours that they might signal the start of the third Yukos case, at least one of the experts, Rector of the Russian School of Economics and one of the leading Russian economists, Sergei Guriev, fled Russia fearing that he might be arrested.

Since May 2011, Amnesty has considered Khodorkovsky to be a prisoner of conscious and, as such, calls for him to be unconditionally released once his original sentence had been served (25 October 2011).

3. Any indication that women’s groups (and other human rights groups) in Colombia have chosen not to apply for funding from the UK. It has been suggested that the “requirement” by the UK Embassy in Bogota that groups work in conjunction with the Colombian Government has deterred some groups from applying for funding from the UK (Q 60)

We understand that the FCO is asking NGOs receiving support from UK to work with the Colombian Government. This would be an unreasonable condition for human rights organisations including for women’s NGOs which are denouncing serious sexual violence against women other serious human rights violations or abuses, criticising government policy/lobbying government to take appropriate action, all work which exposes them to considerable risk and requires them to protect the anonymity of their sources and undertake discreet work to protect women under threat.

We note the recommendation made by AB Colombia in its written evidence to the inquiry (section 5.6: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmfaff/writev/humanrights/hr07.htm):

“Over recent years our partners in Colombia have raised their concerns that the funding provided via the British Embassy has increasingly emphasised working in partnership with the Colombian government. Funding to women’s organisations and NGOs working on conflict related sexual violence should not be conditioned on working in partnership with national governments. The emphasis on this has excluded many human rights organisations from applying to the UK Embassy (in Colombia) for funding.”

We have no further information at this point and would recommend that the FAC asks the Minister to respond to AB Colombia’s concern.

4. What work, if any, has been undertaken by the Government in drawing up a list of goods, software and technology which might be used to restrict freedom of expression on the internet, to make them subject to export controls (Q 61)

Amnesty has not conducted any substantive research into this area but would highlight that these types of items should be subjected to necessary export controls, which would require a rigorous human rights risk assessment as part of the export control licensing process, as with other categories of military, security and policing equipment. The UK’s Export Control lists should be in line, inter alia, with the European Union common military and dual-use goods and the Wassenaar Agreement and notes the commitment made in the Government’s final response to the FAC’s 2011 report (published in December 2012, page 22) to work through this mechanism and with international partners to agree such a list over the course of 2013.

The Committee may find ongoing work by Privacy International relevant (eg https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/oecd-complaint-against-gamma-international-accepted-for-further-investigation).

5. Whether controls on the export of such equipment have been discussed in the FCO’s Expert Panel on Freedom of the Internet (Q 62)

Amnesty does not recall any discussion on this in sub-group discussions although believes it has been mentioned in passing.

28 June 2013