That this House has considered International Human Rights Day 2022.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting today’s debate to mark International Human Rights Day, which this year falls on Saturday 10 December, and I thank my parliamentary colleagues who supported the application, as well as those here to participate. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary human rights group—PHRG—it is a great honour to open the debate. The APPG works cross-party to raise greater awareness, both in Parliament and more widely, of serious human rights violations taking place across the world; to press for reform and redress; and to amplify the voices of those at the grassroots, including victims—or, as many prefer to be called, survivors—and human rights defenders working on behalf of affected communities. I strongly believe in the importance of an annual international human rights day.
Given the continued prevalence of authoritarian regimes and Governments who commit, facilitate or turn a blind eye to serious human rights violations, and of abuses committed by non-state actors such as terrorist entities and criminal groups, it remains as necessary as ever to highlight the universal applicability of fundamental rights—political, civil, economic, social and cultural—to everyone everywhere in the world.
We can sometimes take our rights for granted, or underestimate the impact of human rights abuses on communities, families and individuals, the vast majority of whom are peaceful and simply wish to live a life free from fear. When I hear about people arbitrarily detained, harassed, persecuted, brutally tortured or disappeared for trying to exercise their right to free speech, to protest or to join a trade union, or who are being discriminated against because of their ethnicity or religion, I wonder: what if that had been me, a member of my family, a colleague or a friend?
I want to support this debate, although I have a British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly meeting that will prevent me from contributing further. May I, through the hon. Lady, recommend that people go to the Upper Waiting Hall to see the display by PEN and Amnesty, and to learn about the journalists who were arrested and herded up 21 years ago in Eritrea? There, Members can see an illustration of how we cannot know what is going on in some countries, because those who could tell us—trade unionists, journalists, people in opposition and people in the Government who object to what is going on—cannot have a voice. We have to be a voice for them and watch out for them.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I will mention that display later.
There are those languishing in a crowded, filthy prison after an unfair trial, those being prosecuted simply for peacefully protesting about Government policy, and those who have had someone close to them killed for their political or social activism. I want them to be offered the same help, support and solidarity that I would fight to have provided to someone close to me. Today, I hope that we can, using the parliamentary platform that we are privileged to have, provide some support to victims, and to human rights defenders across the world, who often risk their personal safety to champion the rights of their community. I want to take this opportunity to express my concern about the human rights situation in a number of countries on which I have been focused for some time—countries in the middle east and north Africa, as well as Zimbabwe.
The situation in a number of Gulf Co-operation Council member states and Iran remains challenging. As I am sure colleagues are aware, I remain very concerned about serious human rights violations in Saudi Arabia by the state, which, according to the latest annual report from Human Rights Watch,
“relies on pervasive surveillance, the criminalization of dissent, appeals to sectarianism and ethnicity, and public spending supported by oil revenues to maintain power.”
I remain unconvinced by Saudi Arabia’s recent attempts to project a more modern and progressive image, including through glossy advertisements that try to entice tourists to holiday there. Most recently, since 10 November, while the Saudi regime thought that the world’s attention was elsewhere because of the World cup, the execution of those sentenced to death has resumed. Many of those killed were convicted of non-violent drugs offences, for which the Saudi Government had committed not to execute people. Some were Saudi nationals, but others were foreign nationals from Pakistan, Syria and Jordan. This latest wave of executions follows the execution of 81 people in a single day on 12 March 2022.
I am glad that the hon. Lady mentioned Saudi so early in her speech. Would she agree that one of the problems with taking action on Saudi is that the Government adopt double standards here? There was a perfect example of that last week. Responding to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) on the case of Hussein Abo al-Kheir, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), said:
“clearly torture was used. We find that abhorrent.”—[Official Report, 28 November 2022; Vol. 723, c. 673.]
He then made a ministerial correction to Hansard, in which he changed that to:
“in which torture has been alleged.”—[Official Report, 2 December 2023; Vol. 723, c. 12MC.]
That is not a ministerial correction; that is tailoring one’s words to suit a barbaric regime.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the intervention. We have to be strong when we speak out against human rights abuses; there is no doubt about it. The Government say that they speak privately with nations all over the world.
Before we move off this point, the worst of it is that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has now admitted that it made the ministerial correction because Saudi Arabia asked it to. We cannot have Saudi Arabia telling Parliament what to do about human rights, surely.
I could not have put it better. The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. We should not allow Governments other than the UK Government to say what the right response is. I thank him for the intervention.
Over 50% of those executed were convicted on the basis of their participation in pro-democracy demonstrations back in March. As executions are confirmed only once the death sentence has been carried out, we do not know how many people are on death row in Saudi Arabia. That is also the case in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Egypt and Iran. I will speak about the latter two shortly.
I understand that between 500 and 600 people have been executed in Iran in the past year, so if there is a country that is top of the league, and really has to be brought to book, Iran is that country.
I will come on to speak about Iran; the figures that we hear are shocking.
I say this to the Saudi regime: the world is watching, and will continue to call it out on these executions, particularly when the offences are considered not to be the most serious, or are non-violent or involve juveniles, and when the sentence follows a manifestly unfair prosecution. This is, of course, a violation of the most fundamental right: the right to life.
That brings me to the Saudi criminal justice system, which remains opaque. We know that international fair trial standards are not generally upheld there, and there are credible allegations that some of the accused are tortured to make them sign confessions. Of course, we must not forget the brutal and brazen killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, which US intelligence concluded, with a medium to high degree of certainty, had been carried out on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. I truly hope that one day, there will be real accountability for that heinous murder.
Lastly on Saudi Arabia, I highlight the case of imprisoned human rights defender Mohammed al-Qahtani, who is reportedly being kept incommunicado after his family filed a complaint about attacks on him by inmates. Al-Qahtani is a founding member of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, which was dissolved in 2013. That year, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly providing false information to outside sources, including UN human rights mechanisms.
Like Saudi Arabia, Iran continues to be one of the world’s leading implementers of the death penalty, as we heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The death penalty is used for such acts as insulting the Prophet, apostasy, same-sex relations, adultery, drinking alcohol and certain non-violent drug-related offences, although some drug-related offences are now meant to be exempt. Iranian courts, particularly revolutionary courts, regularly fall far short of providing fair trials, and use confessions likely obtained under torture as evidence in court.
I want to add one further example, although we could add many: human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which are getting worse every year, particularly through state-sanctioned settler violence. I pay tribute to Yachad and B’Tselem, which brought an exhibition on that issue to Parliament this week. Occupation adds another level of illegality and abuse to human rights, and it is right that it be called out. I entirely agree with the hon. Lady that the Government have to publish their findings more regularly if people are to be held to account.
I attended that drop-in, and it was shocking. I advise all Members to look at the report.
Every person, Member of Parliament, Government Minister and member of the public alike can take some form of action, be it by writing letters for campaigns such as Amnesty International’s “Write for Rights”, or just by raising awareness within our own social circles. I strongly encourage every person listening today to use their voice, so that those without can be heard.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Maria. Today, as we mark Human Rights Day, I want to focus initially on article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights, which states that everyone should have the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.
Right across the world, people are losing their jobs, education, homes, livelihoods, land, families, freedom, access to justice and even life itself simply on account of what they believe. People are being discriminated against, threatened, marginalised, beaten, tortured and killed, too often by their own Governments—the very Governments who have a duty to protect people’s freedom of religion or belief. That freedom is important, not least because it is so closely connected to other rights such as the right to life, assembly and expression as well as other social, economic and cultural rights.
No one should face discrimination, hatred or violence simply because of what they believe, yet, in the 21st century, millions do. They include Zhang Zhan, a young woman and Christian citizen journalist from China. She is a human rights defender who in 2019 bravely attempted to report the truth during the early days of the covid-19 pandemic. She travelled to Wuhan while everyone else fled, and posted articles on social media. She spoke up against the authorities’ abuse of human rights and was arrested in May 2020. Prior to her court hearing in December of that year, she was reportedly force-fed, tortured and put in a tiger chair, and her health dramatically deteriorated. She was sentenced to four years in prison, having been charged with picking quarrels and provoking trouble—a charge regularly levelled at Chinese lawyers, activists and journalists.
Zhang’s lawyer visited her and recounted her words at the time of her trial. She said:
“I want to stand firm in my faith and do what I believe to be right before God. I cannot accept lies nor deceit and I’m even more unwilling to coexist with darkness.”
It is a delight to take part in this debate, not least because my biggest anxiety about the world is that it is becoming more, not less, authoritarian. More Governments have given up on democracy and moved towards dictatorship than we thought possible. We always thought that progress would mean people enjoying greater freedoms as the world moved forward. Unfortunately, that is not the case for many people around the world.
I am struck by the number of countries that retain the death penalty. It is obviously shocking that so many states in the United States of America retain it. I am conscious that there are many countries in the world where people can be executed solely for their sexuality, including Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Many of those countries would say that they do not use the death penalty as there have been no executions. None the less, people are sentenced to death and then have to live in a sort of limbo land, thinking that they may be executed at any point.
On Saudi Arabia, I will simply say that it was quite shocking earlier in the year when the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) came to the Foreign Affairs Committee as Foreign Secretary. I asked her about when she had raised human rights concerns with Gulf states. There was just silence in the room. She tried to suggest that she had done it several times—or it had been done several times—but she could not come up with a single occasion on which the British Government had raised human rights abuses with Saudi Arabia.
I understand why the Government want to turn away from relying on gas and oil from authoritarian states such as Russia, but it is not much good if we then just simply turn to another set of authoritarian states in the middle east, and are not prepared to ask the questions that we now feel able to ask of Russia. For instance, it is truly shocking that the British Government have still not said that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the deliberate instigation of the Saudi Government, and dismembered on Saudi territory. That does not do anybody any favours. It is shocking that the British Government do not seem to have complained to Saudi Arabia about the 81 executions that happened on a single day earlier this year, or that there are now more than 100 people on death row, potentially awaiting execution at any point.
The hon. Member must also be aware that it seems to have been a consistent Foreign Office policy for about 10 years now to reduce the number of human rights advisers in our embassies around the world.
I was going to come to that point. The right hon. Gentleman has made it for me, which is great. Another point is that the European convention on human rights was written by a Conservative Member of Parliament. It was drafted, on the back of the second world war, to say that we did not want the human rights abuses that happened in Italy and Germany to happen on our continent again. Yes, there are all sorts of complications with the way that the Court operates, but if the British Government keep on rattling the cage about leaving the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention, we would automatically no longer be a member of the Council of Europe. We would join Belarus and Russia as the countries in Europe that no longer subscribe, which would be a terrible shame.
One of the things that we have got terribly wrong over the last 12 years in our foreign policy is that we have kept trying to appease authoritarian dictatorships around the world rather than stand up for what we genuinely believe. Sometimes we have relied too much on the United States, which is sometimes a wonderful ally and sometimes not very reliable, depending on who the President is. Who knows what may happen in two or three years? If Donald Trump were in the White House now, what would we be saying in relation to Ukraine? Far too often we vacillate on China. The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) was right to refer to the situation facing the Uyghurs in China. Our Government have flip-flopped endlessly on whether to be robust on that policy, which is a terrible shame.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) spoke about the Minister withdrawing his comment. He was not correcting the record; he was withdrawing his comment on Saudi Arabia and whether the gentleman concerned had been tortured, which all the evidence shows he was. All that points to a Government who are uncertain about whether human rights really matter in the way in which we define ourselves as a country around the world. That will pay poor dividends in the long term for the UK and the values we believe in.
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point on the supposed correction of the record. Surely if the Foreign Office now has evidence that shows that what the Minister said then is incorrect, there is a mechanism for him to come to the House and explain why the mistake was made. Surely that would be a more appropriate way to proceed.
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I am sure other colleagues will speak to my next point, so I will limit my remarks about the widespread protests in Iran, following the death in September of Jina Mahsa Amini in detention. She was arrested by Iran’s so-called morality police for not wearing her hijab properly. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights highlighted that Iranian security forces,
“notably the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij forces have used live ammunition, birdshot and other metal pellets, teargas and batons”
against protesters. An estimated 300 people were killed and 15,000 arrested.
Turning to human rights defenders at risk, imprisoned human rights defender Arash Sadeghi has been jailed on multiple occasions for his activities in defence of human rights, and was arrested again on 20 October 2022 for unknown reasons. He has been placed in indefinite detention, and his health is deteriorating. I echo the calls for his immediate release. One of the cases featured in Amnesty International’s “Write for Rights” 2022 campaign is that of Vahid Afkari, who remains in solitary confinement following unsafe and highly questionable convictions. His brother Navid was sentenced to death on similar charges and secretly executed in September 2020, sparking international outrage.
I will continue with this focus on the middle east, but move on to Bahrain. In common with many others, I remain open to constructive engagement with the relevant Bahraini authorities and those in Bahraini civil society, who work under very difficult conditions. However, I am worried that in the longer term, the country’s stability will be undermined by increasing polarisation, due at least in part to multiple allegations of human rights violations, including against those widely deemed to be political prisoners. I remain concerned that despite some welcome releases under the alternative sentences law, a number of political prisoners, such as Hassan Mushaima, Dr Abduljalil al-Singace and Sheikh Ali Salman, remain in Jau prison. Quite simply, they should not be in jail, and I join calls for their immediate release.
I urge the UK Government to play a more positive role that is not limited to giving support to oversight bodies in Bahrain, but that instead extends to encouraging and assisting the Bahraini Government in taking such confidence-building measures as, in particular, the release of political prisoners and the initiation of meaningful political dialogue.
I also highlight the exploitative practices against migrant workers, which has come under the spotlight with the building of infrastructure for the World cup in Qatar. The kafala system is the framework that defines the legal status of most migrant workers in the Gulf region, Jordan and Lebanon. Workers are often recruited on time-limited contracts to work for a specific employer. Although there have been welcome changes to the conditions applicable to migrant workers in most Gulf Co-operation Council countries, such as a move to allowing workers to change employers more easily, these reforms can be hard to enforce, and worker protests may result in deportation.
Workers also often still face poor working and living conditions, overt racism and debt bondage. Difficulties continue to beset many migrant domestic workers, who may not benefit from labour laws, including in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon. They can reportedly face the most abuse, and can be victims of sexual violence. Many women choose not to report these serious violations for fear of losing their job or even being charged with a crime; some women have been prosecuted for having extramarital sex, even in cases of alleged rape.
I am aware that my time is limited, so although I could speak about the middle east all afternoon, I will now briefly highlight concerns in north Africa, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia. Egypt is sadly yet another country where the death penalty is carried out, often after manifestly unfair trials, and many people are arbitrarily detained, often in very poor conditions. There was some media coverage of that in the run-up to COP27.
I make a special plea to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to do all it can to secure the release of British-Egyptian dual national, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, as well as his lawyer, Mohamed el-Baqer, who are among thousands unjustly imprisoned in that country. I can only agree with Amnesty International that Egypt’s adoption of a national human rights strategy is completely disconnected from the reality on the ground. I trust that no one will be taken in by that cynical propaganda exercise.
Turning to the country that was pivotal to what, at the time, was referred to as the Arab spring, it is very sad to see the democratic backsliding that we have witnessed in Tunisia in the last 18 months. It follows what was effectively a coup by President Saied, who suspended Parliament, removed the immunity of parliamentarians, dismissed the Prime Minister, removed other high-level officials from their positions and assumed oversight of the office of the public prosecutor.
Although there had been political deadlock in Parliament and a deteriorating economic situation, which has not since improved, the way forward for Tunisia cannot be a return to authoritarianism, and President Saied cannot be viewed as the country’s saviour. According to the presidential road map, there are to be parliamentary elections next week, but they are very unlikely to be free and fair, the President having been given wide-ranging powers before, during and after the vote. It is feared that Parliament will be reduced to a consultative body at best, and will be there to effectively rubber-stamp decisions by the Executive.
In addition, the Tunisian Parliament is going backwards when it comes to female representation. Whereas it had been a beacon for gender equity in the region, a new law introduced in September strips gender parity provisions from a previous electoral law aimed at ensuring more gender equality in elected assemblies.
Finally, I come to the situation in Zimbabwe. I ask that the UK Government pay special attention to it in the run-up and aftermath of the elections that are due to be held next year, given that past elections have been the catalyst for violence and serious abuses. I continue to urge accountability for the assaults, mistreatment and ongoing persecution of three Opposition politicians from the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance: Cecilia Chimbiri, Netsai Marova, and Member of Parliament Joana Mamombe. They were abducted from police custody by suspected state agents for taking part in a protest in Harare, and are being prosecuted, unbelievably, for making false reports about their abduction. That is another case featured in Amnesty’s “Write for Rights” campaign 2022. Joana’s case has been taken up by the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s committee on the human rights of parliamentarians, which in 2021 dealt with the cases of more than 600 MPs from 44 countries whose rights had been violated.
Though I have focused on the challenges we continue to face in ensuring respect for human rights globally, I would also like to take the time to highlight the positive impact on the ground of human rights defenders, whom the PHRG is privileged to meet regularly, and organisations such as the UN. Recently, we have been delighted to host the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor; the Council of Europe; Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch; Peace Brigades International; Reprieve; and Redress, among many others. Their work, and our work here, truly does make a difference. The arbitrarily detained, such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Anoosheh Ashoori and other dual nationals in Iran, are released; those at risk are better protected; and miscarriages of justice are overturned.
One of my small victories this year was the release on humanitarian grounds of a British national in a United Arab Emirates prison. He remained in detention even though he had received a pardon from the King and had served his original sentence. The resilience of this man is unparalleled, and his ability to remain optimistic despite all he went through during his detention is inspiring. I was delighted to finally meet him in person here in London following his release. It was a real reminder of why continued work in this space is so essential, and of the impact that can be had. That work would not have been possible without the help and support of Nicole Piché, secretariat for the PHRG, and the FCDO. That man is now fighting for better medical care for other foreign prisoners in the UAE, to give those he had to leave behind much support that is not otherwise available. I follow his work as he continues with this fight, and feel immensely grateful for the fact that, owing to his release, he is now able to lend his voice to the voiceless.
I want to close by thanking both former and present FCDO Ministers and officials for their positive engagement with the PHRG, and their representations and action on human rights cases. They will be all too familiar with our regular correspondence on various cases, but there is always more that can be done, including on the many issues that I have raised today. I ask the Government to resume publishing their annual human rights report and releasing their human rights updates, as the last one appears to have been published in July last year. The reports provide a useful summary of the action undertaken by the FCDO and are a demonstration of the UK Government’s ongoing commitment to the international human rights framework.
I have only spoken about a small number of countries with worrying human rights records. So many people across the globe—both those whose names we know, and those whose names we do not yet know—are relying on the support of those of us who have the freedom to speak out on their behalf.
I often think about Zhang Zhan’s suffering in a Chinese prison, because she was sentenced in the same week that I was appointed by the Prime Minister as the special envoy for freedom of religion or belief.
Another prisoner, who has suffered for years, is Shamil Khakimov. He is at the other end of his life, at 71. He is a Jehovah’s Witness in Tajikistan. In 2019, as a result of the peaceful exercise of his religious beliefs, he was convicted of inciting religious hatred and sentenced to seven and a half years in a strict regime prison. He was ill when he entered prison. He now suffers from heart and eye problems, and has gangrene in his leg and other health problems. There is a real danger that his term of imprisonment will effectively become a death sentence.
Last year, Mr Khakimov was adopted as a religious prisoner of conscience by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the UN Human Rights Committee also requested that Tajikistan
“ensure, without delay, that Mr. Khakimov receives adequate medical treatment”.
This November, the 42 countries that form the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, which I have the privilege of chairing, took up his case. I am very pleased to say that he has now been given three hearings, including one in which the prisoner doctor testified that the prison cannot give him the care that he needs. Let us hope that that joint advocacy secures for him the treatment he needs, and that he will be moved before it is too late. It is joint advocacy that is so effective in such cases.
Another concerning case is that of a 24-year-old young woman, Hanna Abdirahman Abdimalik. She was sentenced in August this year to five years’ imprisonment simply for becoming a Christian and was reported to the authorities by her own family. The specific charges were insulting Islam, disturbing religious functions and public incitement. Her lawyer was not even informed of when the verdict would be issued, and therefore was not present in court. Once again the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, alongside other multilateral organisations, has taken up her case, and I am pleased to say that an appeal against her sentence was heard just last week, on 27 November. The outcome is now awaited and I hope that she will be released.
Where they still exist, offences related to blasphemy or apostasy can result in significant prosecution, either by states or communities. Concerted advocacy across the human rights family is needed to change that. In 2022, there are still 12 countries with criminal blasphemy laws for which a person can be sentenced to death. Countries including Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia have the death penalty for blasphemy—individuals defying or simply criticising the prevailing religion of their country. Our alliance has been supporting the efforts at the UN General Assembly of two of our member countries, Australia and Costa Rica, to call for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty for these offences. It is hoped that that may pave the way for global abolition. I urge all those listening to support those endeavours, and I trust that the UK Government will do all they can to support the relevant resolutions at the forthcoming UNGA plenary session.
Tragic cases such as the following should not occur in the 21st century. Mubarak Bala, about whom we have spoken in this Chamber before, is an atheist and president of the Nigerian Humanist Association. This year, he was imprisoned for 24 years for charges in relation to blaspheming Islam. Let us hope his appeal succeeds. The couple Shagufta Kausar and Shafqat Emmanuel were kept on death row in Pakistan for six years until this year. They were accused of sending blasphemous texts via a SIM card that had been obtained by someone using a duplicate of Kausar’s national identity card. Thanks to international advocacy, they were ultimately released, but only because the courts finally accepted that they could not possibly have sent the text messages because neither of them can read or write.
Consider the situation of Yahaya Sharif-Aminu. He is a young Nigerian Sufi musician—a singer. He was imprisoned in northern Nigeria under Kano state’s blasphemy law, the penalty for which is death by hanging. He is appealing his criminal case to the Supreme Court of Nigeria. I will go into a little more detail about his situation because I am urging all who can to join our international alliance and other advocates to urge the Kano state government to drop this unjust prosecution, for the international human rights community to speak out on behalf of Sharif-Aminu and for Nigeria to repeal its blasphemy laws.
The case is very important. The Supreme Court issued a filing number this week, so we await the hearing date. Sharif-Aminu was first arrested and charged with blasphemy in March 2020. He was convicted in an upper sharia court, despite not having legal representation at the time of his trial. He had shared audio messages on WhatsApp that some people thought were blasphemous to the Prophet Mohammed because they elevated another person above the Prophet. As I said, the Kano state sharia penal code codifies blasphemy, which in this case is defined as insulting the Koran or any Muslim prophet, as an offence with the penalty of death.
Sharif-Aminu is arguing that his case should be dismissed because the blasphemy law is unconstitutional. In August this year, the Court of Appeal upheld the constitutionality of the blasphemy law. That is why he has appealed to the Supreme Court. He argues that his situation and the Kano state law violate not only international law in terms of freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression but the Nigerian constitution, which on paper protects both of those rights. He would welcome international advocacy highlighting his case, which is a very important one. It is the first time the Nigerian Supreme Court will hear a constitutional challenge to the northern states’ laws on death penalties for blasphemy. A positive ruling in such a case offers the possibility of abolishing them.
I turn now to persecution in the most egregious form: genocide, the crime of crimes. In 2016, I tabled a motion on genocide against the Yazidis, Christians and other religious groups at the hands of Daesh in Iraq and Syria. Some in the Chamber today will recall that there was a passionate debate in the House. The House spoke with one voice and voted unanimously to recognise these atrocities as genocide. Over the following years, we have seen more cases where the elements of the definition of genocide have been there, including the atrocities specifically targeting religious groups: the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, Christians in Nigeria and Hazaras in Afghanistan.
In the case of the Uyghur Muslims, the House made the determination that the atrocities against them constituted genocide. One million Uyghurs, some estimate many more, are detained in concentration camps in Xinjiang. An independent tribunal has found that to be genocide. I join colleagues from both Houses in calling it that. I know that we must be careful about the words that we use, but where the elements are there, we should call out atrocities for what they are. It is time that our Government found ways to engage effectively on the issue of genocide.
In 2019, the Bishop of Truro published the Truro review, which I have the responsibility for taking forward to implementation as the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief. In recommendation 7, the bishop called upon the UK Government to ensure that,
“there are mechanisms in place to facilitate an immediate response to atrocity crimes, including genocide through activities such as setting up early warning mechanisms to identify countries at risk of atrocities, diplomacy to help de-escalate tensions and resolve disputes, and developing support to help with upstream prevention work.”
We must ask ourselves what else we can do to ensure that we implement that recommendation fully and meaningfully. In April this year, the independent expert review of progress on the Truro review found that recommendation 7 has not yet been delivered.
On 28 October this year, in the other place, Lord Alton of Liverpool introduced the Genocide Determination Bill. It had its Second Reading then, on the day after International Religious Freedom Day. The Bill provides for important mechanisms, including one that empowers victims to have a court determination of atrocities as genocide or as a situation at serious risk of genocide. I ask the Minister to ensure that time is given for that Bill to be considered. We know that our responses to genocide are not perfect. Genocides continue to occur and change is required. The Genocide Determination Bill is a step in that direction. For those who are undecided about whether we need change, I recommend a book written by Lord Alton and Dr Ewelina Ochab, “State Responses to Crimes of Genocide: What Went Wrong and How to Change It”.
At this time of profound global uncertainty and insecurity, we must be more vigilant than ever to shine a light on human rights abuses. In particular, we must be alert to early warning signs of atrocities. We must work together. I hope I have shown in some of my examples that together we can make a difference to promote and protect fundamental human rights for the vulnerable and the exploited, and for the good of us all.
We have to continue to ask those questions. I do not think that anybody respects us when they know what we think, but we refuse to say it. It just means that we are weak, and people rely on our weakness. I find it shocking, too, that a country such as Indonesia has just introduced a new law that outlaws sexual activity of any kind outside marriage. I am not sure how that will aid the tourism trade in Indonesia. The country is only just getting back on its feet. Those kinds of repressive measures are simply backward, and do nobody any favours.
I worry about our Government for two reasons. First, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), we have not had an annual report on human rights since 8 July 2021. That is a long time ago. We have been doing it since 2003. It has become standard, and all the human rights organisations in the UK look to the process and love to feed into it. Other countries around the world look to the UK’s leadership in this space, and it feels as if the Government have simply surrendered that space.