The College of Policing is involved in fresh controversy today concerning their training of police in countries that regularly use torture. In the summer it was revealed that they had training large numbers of Saudi and Bahraini police and that this training has aided them to arrest protestors who were then tortured.
On the BBC’s World at One radio programme there was an interview with a woman who’s husband had been arrested and disappeared for a month. She alleges he was “subjected to the worst kind of physical and psychological abuse”, they beat him brutally and concentrated these beatings on his genitals.
Reprieve has published a report detailing the allegations against Mohammed Ramadan. It now appears that the release of the information and documents about the College of Police’s activities was not meant to have happened and was as a result of ‘human error.’ From now on, details of the College’s activities will not be disclosed.
The Foreign Office maintains that the best way to improve human rights in these countries is by engagement and that we should not criticize from the sidelines. Crispin Blunt MP, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee said:
Human rights assessments are quite bleak [in these countries] and it is going to reinforce the arguments of those who are against engagement
Quit so. So the worse it is, the better the justification for our engagement. This might be fine of course if by ‘engagement’, there was some kind of visible or tangible improvement. But it seems our involvement makes matters worse not better. As Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at Reprieve comments on their website:
It is scandalous that British police are training Saudi Arabian and Bahraini officers in techniques which they privately admit could lead to people being arrested, tortured and sentenced to death
Earlier in the year, the Home Affairs select committee strongly criticised the College of Policing and the secretive way they had gone about this work. The Chief executive had apparently been told by the Foreign and Colonial Office not to answer questions for reasons of commercial confidentiality and security.
The argument that closer integration with unpleasant regimes yields positive benefits could have some merit. If by trading, cultural contacts, training schemes, and other contacts – social or economic – good behaviour (however defined) rubs off onto the regime then that can be claimed as a benefit.
But the suspicion with the College of Policing and other commercial activities in the region, is that it is profit and money driven with little more than lip-service given to ethics and human rights. It is all of a piece with our arms sales to the Saudis which are causing such devastation in Yemen.
One would have expected that the College of Policing of all organisations, to have ethics and human rights at the top of their agenda. The police have some ground to make up following a number of scandals like Hillsborough. Helping repressive regimes to be more efficiently repressive hardly fits the bill. Making it secret is a tacit admission that they have something to hide.
Sources: Sputnik; The Guardian; Reprieve; World at One (BBC)
On Monday 22 November we had the annual evensong for Amnesty International. We are delighted to work with Salisbury Cathedral on this event, which has been running for a number of years now, especially as it ends in the Trinity Chapel where the Amnesty candle is situated and under the Prisoner of Conscience window.
All the celebrants are given a candle and carry these through at the end of the service to the chapel. Canon Robert Titley spoke during the service and he said:
This evening we hear one of the uglier Christmas stories. When the wise men visit local ruler Derod, they say the are looking for ‘the King of the Jews’, and he realises that they don’t mean him. Herod judges – rightly – that Jesus, the child they seek, is a threat to his kingdom and to his way of doing power. And so, says Mathew the gospel writer, Herod begins some targeted slaughter to neutralise this potential source of rebellion, and Jesus and his family must escape as refugees.
Herod’s way of doing power is of course still alive and kicking. Mathew would find present day Syria – where innocents are killed as a means of neutralising so-called ‘rebels’ – very familiar. He does not describe the experience of being a refugee, though it is unlikely that things were so different then:
the indifference of some of the native population in the land you come to
their understandable caution
their fear of the threat you might pose, especially if there are a lot of you – a ‘swarm’ perhaps
a tendency to talk about you as part of a lump, a collectivity, an issue, a problem, not a person with a story.
He then went on to talk about Amnesty today;
Throughout its 55 years, Amnesty – to the vexation of the Herods of this world – has tirelessly brought into the light the stories of people whose rights are abused, people like a teacher in Indonesia who we are supporting with our prayers during this month.
Groups like Amnesty International patiently and persistently bring to the minds of rulers and their representatives the stories of people they would rather forget. And now, as our continent faces the severest displacement of people since Second World War, refuges are at the top of Amnesty’s concerns.
Arthur Aron. Pic: Time.com
On Amnesty’s website you will find a short film called A Powerful Experiment. According to the psychologist Arthur Aron, four minutes of eye contact is enough to bring people close together, even to fall in love. And so, in a bare factory space, a group of native Europeans – women, men, and one girl – each sit with a refugee for four minutes.
In that space and time the ‘issue’ acquires a human face: Samira from Syria and Danuta from Poland and Fatima from Somalia: they open their eyes and at first just look at each other. Soon the are smiles – warm or perhaps shy – some tears, then words ‘nice moustache. I’m sixty-five. Are you new in Berlin? Eight months. And are you alone here or with your family? Alone. And finally, touch – a handshake, a hug, a game of It, and that word ‘refugee’ is made flesh.
In just four weeks’ time, we shall proclaim again the good news of the word of God made flesh and the birth of Jesus. The Christmas stories will remind us how glorious is the full ness of God: how infinitely treasured is each human life, made in the image of God.
And tonight we give thanks to God for Amnesty, for the patient, persistent work of its staff and volunteers in reminding the powerful of this treasure and how blasphemous it is to deny it; and reminding us all that the refugee glimpsed on a screen or news page is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, that each one, like each of us, has their story to tell.
Around 80 people attended which is fewer than usual but the bad weather would have deterred many. Our thanks to Cathedral staff for their help with this event.
How about this death row prisoner’s definition of Capital Punishment?
Them without the capital get the punishment.
Dan Dolan. Picture: Reprieve
This was how Dan Dolan launched his talk on the work of Reprieve, which started by taking on the defence of British nationals on the USA’s death row and, 30 years later takes on any nationality. They expose the torture and unjust sentencing of Guantanamo inmates but their chief mission is to end the Death Penalty – on the grounds that it is not a deterrent, but an expensive public policy disaster. They work mostly as ‘lawyers in courts’ but also know how to influence ‘the court of public opinion’.
Their focus is twofold: first, a campaign to end the use of lethal injection in the USA and second, to fight the use of the death penalty for drug-related crime in Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere. Dan explained that in the context of the gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad, the use of lethal injection gave a veneer of respectability to the death penalty. But ‘humane execution’ is a myth – the drugs are not designed by clinicians, and are administered by untrained prison staff.
Their investigations amazingly found that ‘Dream Pharmer’, the main supplier of death row drugs to the USA, was actually one man operating from behind a London driving school with a cupboard-full of imported drugs from the EU! After initially losing their case against the UK government, Reprieve, following judicial review, achieved a ban on specific lethal drug exports. This UK ban then became an EU one.
Next, the Danish pharmaceutical firm Lundbeck was persuaded to apply distribution controls to prevent the inadvertent supplying of companies feeding death row executions. 30 businesses followed in 6 years and with that supply failure came a pause in executions. And with that pause came reflection. Utah, Kansas and New Hampshire are looking at a moratorium. Those that are looking elsewhere for suppliers (Texas, Georgia, and Mississippi) are more exposed to ‘the court of public opinion’ – a public gaze directed at botched executions.
Reprieve’s methods are pragmatic – focusing not on moral arguments but on tracing sources and support structures: ‘throwing sand in the wheels of the machinery of death’.
The second focus of Reprieve’s current work is withdrawing EU aid to drug-related executions, chiefly in Iran and Pakistan which account hugely for the global total. (Iran hanged 600 last year, Pakistan has 112 on death row.) Here the ‘chain of complicity’ is being investigated. The officials who arrested and prosecuted Arshad Ahmed were trained by UK staff, used scanners provided by UK aid and received UK legal assistance in the making of their laws. The innocent ‘mule’ was the only prosecution among 25 arrests – and he awaits the death sentence.
So the policy is both unjust and counter-productive – with an increase in drugs trafficking and a heroin confiscation of only 2 – 4 %. Reprieve persuaded the UK to make ‘Raid Aid’ conditional on Pakistan renouncing the death penalty. Now 6 EU countries have withdrawn ‘Raid Aid’ to focus on rehabilitation and give law-enforcement support only when not death-penalty related.
The analysis of agency – the use of leverage and the building of ‘coalitions of interest’ – are the methods that Reprieve (with only 30 staff) has employed so effectively. However Dan wryly admitted that the possibility of ending the Death Penalty in our lifetime has perhaps receded significantly given this week’s US election result.
Our thanks to Dan Dolan and to New Forest Amnesty for hosting this lively and informative talk.
Hosted by New Forest Amnesty in The Lymington Centre on 12 November 2016.
If you are interested in joining us then a good moment would be to come along to the Arts Centre on December 15th at 7 o’clock or so when we will be hosting a film (you don’t have to stay for the film); card signing in Salisbury on 10 December in the morning or Evensong at the Cathedral on 21 November (if you are not religious you do not have to stay for the service). Details will be on the web site and on Twitter @salisburyai. We will be wearing Amnesty tabards at all events (except the Cathedral).
Our first video film is here which concerns the dire human rights situation in North Korea. A first attempt at a longer video. Our thanks to those who took part which included members of the Romsey and Mid Glos groups of Amnesty and to Fiona Bruce MP who agreed to be interviewed. We will be publishing other versions of this video soon.
The latest edition of the death penalty report is now available thanks to group member Lesley for compiling it. China leads the world in the number of its citizens it executes.
The Human Rights Act is under threat by the Conservative government and they want to withdraw from the European Convention which we helped found. It is timely therefore that we celebrate the achievements of the ECHR which receive too little attention by our media and by politicians such as the prime minister and our local MP Mr John Glen.
As we wait to see what the government brings forward to replace the Human Rights Act it seeks to repeal, a book was recently published which is recommended to all those who believe in human rights and – despite its faults – that the HRA is a major step forward in granting rights to its citizens. The book is called On Fantasy Island* by Conor Gearty who, amongst other things, is professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Institute of Public Affairs at LSE. He has written several other books including the Struggle for Civil Liberties (2000)
The HRA has come under sustained attack in the media particularly but not exclusively at the tabloid end of the market with regular stories of criminals and terrorists escaping justice because of it. Positive aspects of the Act including use by the media themselves to protect sources, seldom get a hearing. A recent example from the Daily Mail gives a flavour of the type of reporting which is common at that end of the media market:
Folly of human rights luvvies: As actors fight plans to axe Human Rights Act, how thousands of foreign convicts use it to stay in Britain
Number of foreign offenders on UK’s streets has spiralled to a record high
Includes killers, rapists and paedophiles who have avoided deportation
Left-wing luvvies lining up to oppose plans to scrap the Human Rights Act
Benedict Cumberbatch and Vanessa Redgrave condemn Tory proposals
25 June [accessed 31 October 2016]
Conor Gearty methodically discussed the history of rights in the UK and tackles head on some of the absurdities regularly reported in papers like the Mail and the Sun. Myths abound and include the case of Abu Qatada; the murderer of Philip Lawrence outside the school and Denis Nilsen’s request to access pornography and write a book. In each case, the HRA is in the frame when it was either irrelevant or the event complained of was not going to happen anyway. Perhaps the most famous instance was the absurd statement by Theresa May at the Conservative Party conference in 2011 about a Bolivian student who could not be deported because of a cat. ‘I’m not making this up’ she said: problem was she did make it up and had grossly exaggerated a small part of the case.
The government – now led by Theresa May – is apparently preparing a British Bill of Rights. Gearty discusses this and says:
…attentions shifted to the Human Rights Act. Here we find uppermost the fantasies that drove the much of the first part of this book – you cannot change a law for the better if it has never been what it you have claimed it to be in the first place. (p189f)
He sets the context of hostility to the Act in terms of a deadly combination of the nostalgic and the negative. For a country which until the recent past, ruled a large part of the world and whose power and influence was supreme, we now have to form partnerships and accept that our writ no longer runs as it once did. Strasbourg is just one of the elements of this. Nostalgic because were we not the inventors of common law so who are these overseas people interfering in our law making? The role of the media is discussed and a fuller account of the media’s role in ‘monstering‘ the HRA is provided by Adam Wagner of RightsInfo.
Human rights offer a route to a society where all are equal before the law and where each of us has a chance to engage in political activity on a level playing field if we so wish.
Several years have gone by since the Conservatives announced their desire to abolish the act and we are still waiting to see what happens. The new Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has reaffirmed that and of course Theresa May is now prime minister. We wait and see … Our Local MP, John Glen, is on record in the Salisbury Journal as someone who agrees with abolition so we wait and see when the time comes.
Damning criticism of government’s blind eye to arms sales to the Saudi Arabians
Recommends suspension of arms sales to the Saudis
Picture: mintpressnews.com
Followers of this blog will be aware of the attention we have been drawing to the war in Yemen and our government’s role in it. It started by accident with a letter to our MP Mr John Glen who forwarded a bland reply from a Foreign Office Minister, Tobias Ellwood. The answers began to unravel quite quickly when it was revealed that, for example, far from reigning in the Saudi’s, we were promoting their membership of the UN’s Human Rights Council.
Now the International Development and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committees have produced a lengthy report which is extremely critical on several different levels. The chair’s summary remarks were:
The UK led the way in establishing international humanitarian law to govern the sale of arms. The conflict in Yemen has raised serious concerns that we are not showing equal determination in ensuring that these are respected.
During this inquiry we have heard evidence from respected sources that weapons made in the UK have been used in contravention of International Humanitarian Law. The Government can no longer wait and see and must now take urgent action, halting the sale of arms to the Saudi-led coalition until we can be sure that there is no risk of violation.
We call on the Government to continue the UK’s long-standing commitment to IHL and lead the international community in establishing a strong, independent inquiry. The circumstances surrounding incidents in Yemen, such as allegations of the use of cluster bombs, must be firmly established and send a clear message to all combatants in Yemen that human rights must be respected.
The current system for overseeing the sale of arms must be improved. At present we do not have sufficient transparency to hold licensing decisions to account or the confidence that the benchmarks ensuring human rights law is respected are high enough. This must be addressed immediately.
Backbench committees do valuable and largely unsung work in the House of Commons and provide an opportunity for members to question government activities more closely than they are able to do in the House itself.
Background
The background situation in the Yemen is dire. The UN categorises it as a level 3 crisis which is the most severe. UNICEF say that 1,211 children have been killed and 1,650 injured, both are likely to be under-estimates in view of the difficulty in reporting. The economy and health care systems are on the verge of collapse. Over a million people are internally displaced.
Britain however continues to profit from the war by supplying huge amounts of weaponry to the Saudis. Between April and December 2015 we supplied £1.7bn worth of aircraft and a further £1bn of air-delivered bombs. More shockingly is that, although we are no longer supplying cluster munitions, previously supplied ones have turned up on the ground. These weapons kick out tens or hundreds of sub-munitions which saturate an area the size of several football fields. Duds can be dangerous to children especially who can lose limbs or be blinded if they pick them up.
Both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have provided evidence to the FCO about the use of these weapons.
The report
The report makes interesting reading most particularly concerning the UK government attitudes to the conflict. It contrasts the FCO’s attitude to the documented evidence it is presented with on the Yemen by NGOs including Amnesty and HRW, which it ignores, with that from Syria where evidence is accepted. David Mepham, the UK director of HRW said in evidence:
I was at a meeting with [the Foreign Secretary] several months ago when I gave him copies of our report and said, “These are the GPS coordinates; these are the strikes; these are the markets and schools that were hit.” Therefore, he has that evidence. The Foreign Office has had that evidence for months. It is extraordinary that the line comes back that they do not have evidence, when that evidence has been shared with them for a considerable period of time.
Picture: the Independent
The line from the government is that the UK has ‘the most robust arms control export regimes in the world’. The committee heard evidence of how long this robust arms control regime took to make its decisions: a matter of days. The hundreds of licences take around 20 or 25 days to approve. In comparison with other government decision making, this is merely the blink of an eye. It seems fairly obvious that little control is exercised. No licence has been refused.
In the face of the hundreds of incidents of schools, marriage ceremonies, factories and hospitals being hit by bombing, the UK government accepts the answers given it by the Saudi government. The committee was sceptical at FCO reliance on Saudi assurances and said:
We are not convinced that Saudi Arabia is best placed to investigate reports of IHL breaches and their lack of progress with reporting findings only confirms our concerns that they are obstructing progress. Of 185 incidents reported by UN, HRW and AI, only 9 investigations have taken place
UK personnel
Our involvement is not just limited to supplying weapons but military and civilian personnel are also involved in the control centre and elsewhere. The claim is that they are not directing the actual bombing. The committee were not convinced by this argument.
It is impossible, on the basis of the evidence that is before us to claim plausibly that the United Kingdom is not involved. We provide the aircraft and the bombs. This level of involvement without being party to a conflict is unprecedented. This is an area where there is much confusion and greater clarity is needed. (para 75)
Human Rights
The committee considered our political role in this conflict and our supposed commitment to an international rules based order. We were now in a tricky position. UK’s support for the Saudi led coalition primarily through the sale of arms and in the face of violations of International Humanitarian Law is inconsistent with our global leadership role in the world. The very rules the UK championed – represented by the Arms Trade Treaty – are at risk of unravelling.
The committee heard evidence that the arms companies were a huge source of employment and that if we did not supply the weapons, others would. An argument which could easily be applied to slavery.
Summary
For the sake of weapons sales, the government has become ensnared with a war which is fast becoming a humanitarian disaster. Our involvement is much to close for comfort and attempts to dissemble and hide the truth are at risk of unravelling. We also risk losing the moral argument as well. It is difficult for us to criticise the Russians and Syrians for their barbaric activities in Aleppo and elsewhere, when we are only slightly removed from doing the same things in Yemen. So far the government has been lucky: all eyes are on Syria and there are few reports emerging from Yemen. But this report is a welcome spotlight on the unsavoury and ultimately foolish activities by our government in that country. They recommend ending arms sales to the Saudis.
On 26 October the House of Commons debated the question of withdrawing support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. The intention was to send a message to the government that MP’s do not want to support a war without a UN investigation into breaches of international humanitarian law. Labour MPs did not attend and the vote was lost. Mr Glen voted against the motion. So the carnage continues.
The College of Policing is involved in fresh controversy today concerning their training of police in countries that regularly use torture. In the summer it was revealed that they had training large numbers of Saudi and Bahraini police and that this training has aided them to arrest protestors who were then tortured.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 