[Relevant documents: e-petition 554150, Implement sanctions against the Nigerian Government and officials, e-petition 300146, Impose sanctions on China over its treatment of Uyghur Muslims, and e-petition 585237, Sanction Hong Kong officials responsible for human rights violations.]
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate, in line with guidance. I also remind Members to have a lateral flow test twice a week if they come to the parliamentary estate. Please be aware of one another as you move in and out of the room.
That this House has considered Magnitsky sanctions and human rights abuses.
It is a great delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller, and always a delight to be in the same room as you.
If global Britain is to mean anything, it has to mean a passionate commitment by the United Kingdom, in every corner of the globe, to liberty, personal freedom, a fair trial, the rule of law, freedom from torture, freedom from slavery, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the right to a family life. Sometimes that will be inconvenient for us and for other countries. We may want strong trading partnerships with Colombia or Saudi Arabia, but we will always find it difficult to do business where human rights are trampled underfoot.
I have been banging on about all this for many years, and I will explain where it started. It goes back to 1986 when I was living in post-dictatorship Argentina. One night I was having a drink with a friend, who I knew had had a difficult time during the dictatorship, when someone came in and sat at the next table to us. A few moments later, my friend disappeared. I presumed he had just gone to the toilet, but he did not come back for a long time. I went to look for him. He was in a shuddering mess on the floor of the toilets. I said, “What’s wrong?” He said, “That man at the table next to us tortured me for four months.” I asked him how he could possibly know that, because he had told me that he was blindfolded throughout that time.
My friend then said, “Well, the thing is, if somebody has every single day for four months grabbed you, shoved your face into a bucket of shitty ice cold water until you nearly drown, has tied you to a metal bed and applied electrodes to your tongue, the back of your ears and your testicles, and has beaten you senseless every single day for four months, you get to know not just what their voice sounds like or the smell of their breath, but the way they come into a room and sit down at a table. That’s how I know.” Ever since that day, I have thought how fortunate we are in this country to enjoy liberties and freedoms, which are guaranteed to us by our democracy and by battles that people have fought in previous centuries.
I want to thank the hon. Gentleman for his speech and for giving way. I want to put on record the Liberal Democrats’ support for the Magnitsky sanctions. Indeed, we welcome the cross-party support on this issue, which is shown in this room.
Members will be aware that the Uyghur Tribunal is going to report tomorrow. In that tribunal, Uyghur families have given harrowing stories of what they have suffered. Does he agree that tomorrow would be an ideal time for the Minister to announce sanctions against Chinese Communist party officials such as Chen Quanguo, who, as the Communist party secretary of Xinjiang, will have overseen these crimes against humanity? We all know that those would potentially amount to the crime of genocide.
That was pretty much going to be my next but one paragraph. Of course, I completely agree. The Uyghur population have been and continue to be subject to mass detention, forced sterilisation, forced abortion, the forced removal of children and other forms of torture. To my mind and, I think, in law, that is genocide. It meets all the criteria that are laid down in the conventions. The UK Government have so far omitted to sanction several of those most responsible for these atrocities, all of whom have been sanctioned by the United States. I understand that some of the detail on that has already been provided by non-governmental organisations to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and I am sure the Minister has that.
The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) mentioned Chen Quanguo. He is referred to as the architect of the human rights abuses in both Xinjiang and Tibet. He is the party secretary to the Communist party in the region. He is responsible for the mass detention, torture, and cruel and degrading treatment of over 1 million people from ethnic and religious minorities. I still find it perplexing that parts of the middle east, where there are fellow Muslims, still fail to condemn that.
The recently released Xinjiang papers confirm Quanguo’s role in directing the Government’s policies in the region and he should be sanctioned.
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The Xinjiang papers talk about Chen Quanguo and the fact he was assisted by deputies, Zhu Hailun and Zhu Changjie, in implementing the mass internment of the Uyghurs. I understand the Government have sanctioned four Chinese officials, but that is not enough. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must now take steps to introduce further Magnitsky sanctions, including on Chen Quanguo, the architect of the Xinjiang genocide, and his deputies?
I am normally very reluctant to draw direct parallels with what happened in Nazi Germany, but when we see detention camps, people being taken away from their families and people being identified by virtue of their genetic make-up, it feels remarkably similar. If the world chooses to turn away at this point, in the end it will regret it.
There is an important point here about the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which is known as the XPCC. It is a state-owned paramilitary organisation, known for its involvement in the mass imprisonment and severe physical abuse of the Uyghurs, and its use of forced labour to produce the majority of the region’s cotton. As the recent report by the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice shows, this cotton ends up in the global supply chain and people often cannot spot that the clothes they are wearing come from slave labour.
While the UK has recognised this use of forced labour and sanctioned a subsidiary of the XPCC, it has yet to sanction the corporation as a whole, despite the fact that it controls large swathes of the region’s industries, associated with widespread labour abuses. In relation to that, it is important that Peng Jiarui and Sun Jinlong, who have both held senior positions in the XPCC and have had command and control over the arbitrary detention, ill treatment and forced labour of Uyghur Muslims, should also be added to the Magnitsky list.
Huo Liujun, the former party secretary for the public security bureau in the region, oversaw the use of artificial intelligence to racially profile, track and imprison members of the Uyghur community. Recent reports indicate this same system was used to target and forcibly sterilise Uyghur women. He should also be on the list.
Let me turn to Iran. As many Members will know, Iran’s arbitrary detention, torture and ill treatment of foreign and dual nationals for diplomatic leverage over other states has escalated since 1979, with state hostage taking becoming an institutionalised part of its foreign policy. We have seen this most notably with some of our own nationals, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is being held hostage in Iran and is now spending her sixth Christmas away from her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and their daughter, Gabriella. Also, Anoosheh Ashoori has now been detained in Iran for four and a half years. Our hearts go out to them.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for his work as one of the co-chairs of the APPG. If I am fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mrs Miller, I hope to raise the case of General Shavendra Silva, current chief of defence staff in Sri Lanka and apparently responsible for gross human rights violations including torture and extra-judicial killings. I appreciate my hon. Friend’s need to focus his remarks today, but I ask his APPG to consider that case at a further session down the line.
My co-chair, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), is telling me that we will, but my hon. Friend makes a really good point, which is that we need a proper process whereby we can feed into the Government all the suggestions and concerns that individual Members have from their connections with other parts of the world, and get good outcomes.
Right at the beginning of the process, I think I asked the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), something like 27 times when the Government would introduce Magnitsky sanctions. We now have them in place, but the whole idea was that there would be a parliamentary process for assessing who else should be added. We want to work with the Government to achieve that, because in the end we all share our humanity. If a child goes hungry in Botswana, that is a problem for the children of this country. If somebody is deprived of their freedom in Russia, Chechnya or any part of Africa, that is a matter for our freedom too. We all share in the same humanity.
Order. I plan to call the Front-Bench spokespeople at around 6.4 pm. We have four speakers on the list. If you do the maths, five minutes each means that everyone will get in. I call Iain Duncan Smith.
It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mrs Miller. As was referred to earlier, I am a co-chair of the APPG and we are in complete agreement about this. I will résumé the list, as it were, though not in the detail laid out by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—and he is my hon. Friend in this case. We should do so without fear of retribution, because that is the natural form of debate. I say that as someone who is already sanctioned by the Chinese Government. My answer to them is: “Yeah, so what?” Several countries have been mentioned. I congratulate the Government on having introduced the Magnitsky sanctions. There is no question but that they have shown a willingness to take some actions, and we have put some people on the sanctions list. However, as has been said, we are not going far and fast enough, and that is the whole point of the APPG and of today’s debate.
I will start with China. As I said, I am sanctioned. Today the Prime Minister said categorically, as I understood it, that the policy of Her Majesty’s Government is to have a diplomatic boycott of the winter Olympic games in China. I think I was not alone in hearing him say that. He even illustrated it by saying clearly that not only Ministers but officials would not attend. Thus it is, de facto, a diplomatic boycott. I put that on the record and hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will take back to the Foreign Office the clarity of that statement. As far as we in the Chamber are concerned, and now publicly, this country now has an official diplomatic boycott of the winter Olympics, and there can be no difference of opinion on that matter.
The abuses in China are phenomenal. It leaves all other countries behind it. The level, scale and ferocity of the abuses is unprecedented in modern times, when we think about the Uyghurs and the genocide. I know that the Government do not want to say genocide because they stand by the legal stuff about having to get it either through the UN or the International Criminal Court, but China is not a member of one and we know that it blocks the other. Every other country that I know of—many of great potency, such as the Americans—has declared it a genocide.
Order. Will the right hon. Gentleman bring his comments to a close?
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That is why I still fight today to end human rights abuses. I am proud that, in memory of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, a suite of Magnitsky sanctions is now available in British law. I pay tribute to the Government for introducing them. For me, building a “network of liberty”, to use the Foreign Secretary’s phrase from this morning, must mean more than just expanding free trade. It must mean expanding freedom. Sometimes, I have to say, it has felt like the Government have been reluctant to act. How many times did we have to urge the Foreign Secretary to act on Hong Kong? I still find it perplexing that Carrie Lam is not on any list. Why is the UK list of those sanctioned so much shorter than the US version? Do they care more than we do about human rights? I do not think so.
As co-chair of the new all-party parliamentary group on Magnitsky sanctions, I asked the Government to consider some names. My co-chair and I are going to be doing this on a fairly regular basis—that is our aim. It is important that we have privilege in Parliament. We do not want to abuse that privilege, but we want to be able to speak without fear or favour on human rights abuses around the world.
Let me start with China and the situation in Xinjiang, where—
I understand that detailed evidence about this has already been provided to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, but let me list some people who I think should be added to the sanction list. Ali Ghanaatkar has acted as head of interrogations and as judge in Evin prison. In his role, he has been involved in the ill treatment of detainees, particularly in the use of forceful interrogations and threats, and in bringing false charges against them. He should be on the list.
Gholamreza Ziaei is the former head of Evin prison, which has become synonymous with torture and death and is where a number of British nationals, including Nazanin and Anoosheh, have been detained. As the head of the prison, he was responsible for the inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners and was sanctioned by the European Union in April this year. He has been sanctioned by the EU, but not yet by us. I think he should be on the list.
Ali Rezvani is an Iranian state media journalist for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-controlled 20:30 News. He has not only been involved in the interrogation of detainees but has revealed detainees’ interrogation files, broadcast forced confessions, forcibly detained family photos and spread misinformation regarding political prisoners, dissidents and hostages. He has peddled propaganda against victims to justify and encourage their ill treatment, thereby promoting, inciting and supporting Iran’s practices. He should be on the list.
On 25 October 2021, the military staged a coup in Sudan, overthrowing the joint civilian-military transitional Government. Since then, violence has escalated rapidly, with reports of the military torturing and killing protestors and carrying out enforced disappearances. It all sounds remarkably like Argentina. Again, I understand that evidence has been provided to the FCDO, but let me give some names. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is the leader and public face of the military coup in Khartoum. Security forces under his command targeted activists, members of resistance committees and journalists, ordering their arbitrary detention or enforced disappearance. Al-Burhan has also implemented an ongoing internet blackout, trying to prevent news of his human rights abuses from leaving Sudan. He has failed, but he should be on the list.
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, is the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, previously known as the Janjaweed—Government-supported militias that committed gross human rights abuses in Darfur. Under his leadership, the RSF played a critical role in the planning and execution of the coup and has repeatedly used excessive force to beat and kill protesting civilians in Khartoum. He should be on the list. Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo is reportedly an active member of what security analysts describe as a small security council responsible for the planning and execution of the coup. The council has directed the militarised response to the protest, including the use of live fire against peaceful protestors. He should be on the list.
I turn finally to Rwanda. In August last year, Paul Rusesabagina, the subject of the film “Hotel Rwanda”, which many Members may have seen, and a vocal critic of President Kagame and a cancer sufferer, was drugged, bound and forcefully returned to Rwanda, where he has been imprisoned and tortured. I have met his daughters online, and it is a very upsetting story. A large number of international human rights organisations have recognised this case as one enforced disappearance. Two individuals are directly involved.
The first is Johnston Busingye, Minister of Justice at the time of Mr Rusesabagina’s arrest and under whose authority he was detained and tortured. During a televised interview, Johnston Busingye admitted that the Government of Rwanda paid for the flight that transported Mr Rusesabagina back to Rwanda. He has since been removed as Minister of Justice and appointed high commissioner to the United Kingdom. As far as I understand, the UK Government have still not given their agrément to the appointment. I hope they will announce today that they have absolutely no intention of doing so. He should be on a list of sanctioned individuals, not of people to be escorted to Buckingham Palace to have their credentials agreed by Her Majesty. Secondly, Colonel Jeannot Ruhunga, secretary general of the Rwanda Investigation Bureau, was also heavily involved with that unlawful kidnapping and the associated human rights violations. All these names should be added to the list of those sanctioned by the United Kingdom.
The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) is quite right that tomorrow there will be the final outcome of the tribunal. There is no question in my mind that new names will come from that in due course, and we will look to get them sanctioned, but there is the genocide of the Uyghurs, the oppression and suppression of the Tibetans over decades, and forced labour camps. We should actually call them what they are, which is concentration camps, not forced labour camps. Why do we try to find another phrase that takes the meaning out of it? As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda said earlier, they are concentration camps and this is redolent of that terrible time when we turned our back on so many, and so many people died as a result. In addition there are the Christians, the Falun Gong and now the Inner Mongolians. China is arresting and persecuting peaceful democracy campaigners on a daily basis, threatening its neighbours, taking over the South China sea, killing Indian soldiers and threatening to declare war on Taiwan.
I do not know how much more a country can do to tell us its direction of travel. It is not as though the Chinese are hiding it or that it is a secret from us any more—they are very clear. We need to react to that and to make it clear that they will not get away with it. That is why I will repeat the names that have just been mentioned.
In China, we have Chen Quanguo, the Xinjiang Communist party secretary who has been talked about and is the architect of and key to the whole design of what is being done. He was also the key to what was done in Tibet—the Minister will no doubt make that point. We also have the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. It is interesting, and unusual, to ban an organisation through Magnitsky sanctions, but it is state owned and clearly a paramilitary organisation, and it is up to its eyeballs in what is going on in Xinjiang.
We also have Sun Jinlong, who has a senior position in XPCC, as mentioned earlier, and very clearly part of the Uyghur genocide suppression. Huo Liujun is the former party secretary of the Xinjiang public security bureau. Critically, he has overseen the area of artificial intelligence and racial profiling—how can we say now, in this day and age, that people are being profiled and chased because of their race? It is almost like reading a book about the 1930s.
In going to Iran, I will not make any more of what has been made of it already, because we are limited in time, except to say simply that Iran is another despotic state that cares nothing for human rights or the rule of law. Again, I will repeat the names that have already been mentioned. Ali Ghanaatkar is head of interrogations and the judge at Evin prison. With the ill treatment of detainees and all the rest that has been mentioned, that man should be on the list. Gholamreza Ziaei, the former head of Evin prison, should also be on the list—no question at all about that—as should Ali Rezvani, an Iranian state media journalist who has also been involved in the interrogation and brutalisation of detainees.
In Sudan, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan—his name has been mentioned, but I repeat it—is the leader and public face of the military coup in Khartoum. He is a brutal individual who commands security forces and is hugely implicated in the ongoing arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of key players in that area. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is commander of the Rapid Support Forces, known for being the Government-sponsored militias that committed gross human rights abuses in Darfur. Many others have been mentioned, but I want to come to Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, who is reported to be an active member of what security analysts have described as the small security council. He is a brutal individual responsible for the planning and execution of the coup, plus the detention and torturing of many people in that country.
Finally, I mention Johnston Busingye in Rwanda. I reiterate this point: what exactly do the Rwandan Government think they are doing in nominating that well-known and abusive individual who has been responsible for so much of what is going on in that country as an ambassador to London. Goodness gracious me, I have no idea! Do they think that the UK is an easy touch, for some reason, and that they can easily get that individual in here and it will all be all right? We need to see a strong statement from our Government, first and foremost, and secondly—