§ Miss Emma Nicholson (Torridge and Devon, West)I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity to raise this issue and I am glad that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is present, because I know that he will listen with his usual thoughtfulness, great knowledge and understanding of the problems that I will enunciate. I am glad that he is to reply, because I am confident about his knowledge of this large subject.
Although this place has heard tales of much horror and beastliness over the many generations that hon. Members have spoken about the plight of victims throughout the history of this place, I suggest that the plight of the people whose human rights we will discuss this morning transcends almost every other horror that we have heard here.
Genocide is a very heavy word. It is a word which is mostly only used when we discuss Hitler's treatment of the Jews or when we consider Cambodia. Some appalling things have happened to those poor people, but the plight of the Shias in the south of Iraq matches, and possibly even surpasses, the horrors that those poor people suffered. It is difficult to think of that. I visited Auschwitz last year. It is impossible to get it out of one's mind once one has been there. Indeed, having been brought up after the war and having heard of the plight of those poor people, one has never forgotten it in any case.
Of course, that left me with a large question—how could people ignore what happened to the Jews? How could people turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to the horrors that they suffered? Having seen the Shias in the refugee camps in south Iran and in south-east Iraq, I can understand at last how it is possible to ignore such appalling things. The reason is that when the reality is so truly appalling, it transcends everyone's imagination. One cannot absorb it and one just turns off.
Perhaps the way not to turn off is to think of individuals. Mr. Al Sultan is a primary school teacher of about 45, a civilian, not a man who joined the army—he is an educated man, a graduate. He taught in a primary school near Basra. Mr. Al Sultan is now a shrivelled, blackened person. His poor hands are black claws with burns from napalm bombing. He has no eyelids. He cannot sleep. His eyelids have been burnt off. He puts a scarf around his head to try to sleep. He has 90 per cent. burns all over his poor body. He is damaged beyond repair. He will never be able to write because he will not be able to use his hands. His pain is unending.
Perhaps the worst victim—if there can be a worst victim—is little Amar, the youngest and worst napalm victim to have survived. He is a boy of 10. Amar cannot sleep, either, but he cannot sleep because he cannot forget. His whole family, save a sister, were destroyed in March. His sister is still living, because she is in a hospital next door. The doctors fear that if they tell him that she is alive and she dies, the psychological trauma will be so enormous that he will give up completely.
Little Amar does not have a face any more. His face looks like a Halloween mask—fixed and rigid; a shiny mask all over his face. His neck cannot move; it is fused rigid. If he takes his clothes off, which he does not do very easily because it hurts so much, one sees open wounds 1213 from the top of his chest down to his toes. Amar cannot smile, he cannot cry, he cannot laugh—he cannot do anything because he has no muscles in his face, no nerves, no nothing. He has no ability to move anything at all. I am raising money for him at the moment. Kind surgeons have offered to operate on him, if only we can get him over here. But nothing will ever make up for Amar for the total loss of mother, father, entire family, house and everything.
One could say that Amar and Mr. Al Sultan are lucky. Despite their pain and suffering, they have got out—they have got away. They have been taken across the border—illegally. They have been smuggled out—out of Basra, out of their village, into the safe haven of Iran. Let us think for a moment about some of those who have been left behind.
There is an underground prison outside Basra. There, 700 men are said to have been imprisoned underground, without daylight, for 11 years. It is said that the stench is so appalling that no one can go near them now. They have long hair and long nails and, not unnaturally, a white pallor, and very little to eat. God knows how they are still alive.
Another one who got out is a doctor who translated for me. He went back into Iraq, in the marshes, at great personal danger to himself and translated for me when we met some Shias. He is a well-educated and articulate man. It is appalling to hear a doctor describe, with the detailed anatomical knowledge that only a doctor can have, exactly what happened to his poor body when he was tortured ceaselessly, unendingly, with just short gaps to let him regain consciousness, for weeks on end. That went on intermittently, sometimes for weeks at a time, for nine years. That poor man also finds it difficult to sleep.
Our short time for debate this morning should be given to those victims. A woman in a refugee camp outside the city of Ahwaz in the south of Iran said, "Take my voice to the world. Let the world hear my voice." That is what I want to do this morning. Those people have no voice themselves. That is the point about victims throughout the world—someone has to speak for them. But it is difficult to get there and to find people being tortured; it is such a horrible activity that it is done in secret. It is difficult to find people who have been tortured—so many of them are still in prison or have died.
The fate of those who are still living and of the hostages who are now being held by the regime in Iraq is not being decided by a beneficent Government. We have our wrangles in this place, but essentially we have a beneficent democracy. Most of us believe that we are here to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That is what drives us on. We differ on detail and sometimes on deep philosophical attitudes and questions, but none the less, our differences pale into nothing if we compare our beneficent democracy—which we have inherited, not created ourselves—with the wicked rule in Iraq and some other countries.
The fate of those people is being decided far away from where they are. It is being decided in Washington—perhaps by people in the Pentagon; perhaps by George Bush. If only we could persuade George Bush to look back at Iraq to see what has been left behind. Their fate is being decided in the United Nations, by the committees which endlessly discuss and debate and churn out pieces of paper
1214 that nobody seems to read. Even the United Nations Security Council, which has given thought and time to the plight of those troubled people, the Kurds, does not appear to have given any thought or time to the plight of the people in the south of Iraq, the Shia.
Their fate is being decided in the Hague, where a great man, a former Foreign Minister of the Netherlands Government, Mr. Van der Stoel, published his interim report as special rapporteur on Iraq and human rights on 17 November. His final report comes out in February.
Their fate is being decided in Geneva where, to my great sadness, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan resigned last week from his post as special United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Iraq because he had spent the previous 10 days in Baghdad, trying to persuade Saddam Hussein to ease the plight of his people.
Their fate is also being decided here in London, where our Foreign and Commonwealth Office and our Minister for Overseas Development, with whom I have had many talks on this large subject are doing all that they can to help.
I pay a special tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Overseas Development. During the summer and early autumn she helped me with Government aid and guided me in the direction of private aid. She helped me with advice, support and encouragement to bring humanitarian aid to the Shias who have escaped and are in the camps in south Iran. That has been monumental help, but it has not been just practical help.
With about £0.5 million that I have collected, a large sum of it from the Minister and other sums from other places, I went and bought, and watched the purchase, delivery, consumption and use of the simple bare necessities of people in the camps. Those necessities are sacks of flour and sacks of rice, although I am glad to say that the Iranian Government are now providing flour for every refugee within their borders, and certainly for the Shias. That is no mean undertaking, because Iran has 3.5 million refugees within its borders, the largest number of any member nation of the United Nations. The Red Crescent has the most work to do of any member of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The aid, including children's shoes and cooking oil—the simple, basic things—has been of large benefit to many thousands of refugees in Iran. Their plight is indeed a miserable one, but, as they say, they do not want charity. They want to be back at home. They want to be in a free and democratic Iraq where they can vote for their leaders and have a democratically accountable Parliament.
I say a warm thanks on behalf of those refugees to the Minister for Overseas Development, whose help has been inestimable, whose competence is great and known to us all and whose officials work with such commitment, concern and effectiveness—I can vouch for that. I know that my right hon. Friend will continue to do everything that she can, and that is a great deal.
When one is in the refugee camps, Mr. Speaker, people crowd around. You and I have been to many refugee camps in many parts of the world. I am aware that you know some of the most difficult parts of the world, such as Pakistan, where you have seen things of great importance and many suffering people. You might have seen refugees out of Afghanistan there. It is impossible to compare one person's suffering with that of another. Why should one 1215 victim be any more important or any more identified here than another victim? Surely, human suffering is all of a piece.
I suggest that there is something particularly inhuman and unbearable about the deliberate wiping out of a section of the population. I always thought that apartheid was one of the worst possible sins because it identifies someone and goes for them on the basis of the colour of their skin. The extermination being carried out in Iraq is of that order and type. If one is a Shia, one will be killed.
It is not an easy death. The kind of deaths that Saddam Hussein and his people pursue include a method of execution which involves simply lining people up in rows and running tanks over them. It includes pushing people out of helicopters in full flight. It includes killing babies in front of mothers. I have seen the evidence. It includes horrific torture of defenceless human bodies. You can see the arms, the legs, the faces, the bodies. You can see the marks and the twisted limbs bent beyond repair for ever. You hear what the people tell you.
Of course, when we left Kuwait, we knew that we had done a good job of work. We had brought Kuwait back to have its own rulers. We believed it to be right and proper to honour the sovereign borders of Iraq, and we withdrew. Perhaps we did not foresee—although perhaps people in the Foreign Office did—that Saddam Hussein would turn against his own people and that the brave Kurds and Shias would rise up against him, but would fail.
Since then, we have witnessed the genocidal attack on the people in the north and south who opposed him. Those people are on our side. They want democracy and freedom of speech. Not only is there no freedom of speech in Iraq, there is no freedom of listening. If one is caught with a radio, it is assumed that one has been listening to the BBC World Service and one is killed, as an old lady of 85 was the other day, when I was there.
The position is even worse if one is caught even on suspicion of not wanting to hurt other people. One can be hounded to death for that. Such a story was told by a man in a refugee camp near the border who has just got out. His brother was a general in Hussein's army until last month. He could take no more of the killing and somehow he must have indicated that, by some sign or language or something he said or did not say. Or perhaps it was simply that he did not rush fast enough to kill people. Saddam ordered his brother officers to get petrol, to pour it down the man's throat and to puncture a hole in his stomach and set light to him. His brother watched him burn. He did not tell anyone that he was his brother. He decided to come out and tell the tale.
Then there is the women who watched her husband being executed. She was one of 700 women who were lined up to watch their husbands being run over by tanks. The stories are endless and the appalling fact is that they are true. It is not easy to get there, to speak to people and to gain their confidence so that they will talk.
I respect and admire the part that the Iranian Government and people have played in keeping their borders open and in offering hospitality to their many hundreds of thousands of unwanted guests. I have a large respect for the Iranians, who have been my hosts on visits, and I hope that they will be my hosts on future visits. We seem content to let Iran get on with it. Is that because it is far away or that they had a triumphant war? Is it because we feel that those people, after all, are not us and do not pass the language, cricket or some other test? Does our 1216 insularity make us say that we are part of Europe, but we go no further than that? Are we a people of such narrow imagination that we discard our past and understanding of those places?
Shall we respond to the people in the camps and marshes who say, "We trust the British. They have had several hundred years of knowledge of us and we know that they will not let us down. Thank God for the British"? I do not think we have that short a memory. But if we let those people suffer, we shall be as ashamed of ourselves as many people must have felt about deliberately not listening to the plight of the Jews in Europe in the second world war.
If we ignore those people, let us do so in the knowledge of the suffering on which we are deliberately turning our backs. I know that we in the United Kingdom do not take that point of view. We have a Foreign Office which is full of knowledge and understanding, as is our chargé-d'affaires in Tehran. As I said, our Minister dealing with aid matters extends herself beyond the capacity of everything that could be asked of her, as does my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary who is to reply to the debate.
Can we not somehow bring alive again the other major players in this most devilish of games, the sacrifice of human rights in Iraq? Can we not get them to do something and not respond and succumb to the continuing blandishments of Saddam Hussein?
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd)Clearly there are other hon. Members who wish to get in, but I am afraid that the debate started later than was anticipated.
Saddam Hussein's blatant disregard of internationally accepted norms of behaviour is certainly beyond dispute. The human rights record of the Iraqi Government is appalling and has been graphically added to in the catalogue of further horrors that have been perpetrated, as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson).
The abuses inflicted by the Iraqi dictatorship include also the use of chemical weapons against its own unarmed people in 1988, appalling atrocities committed during the occupation of Kuwait, the mistreatment of western hostages and prisoners and, most recently, as alluded to by my hon. Friend, the brutal suppression of uprisings and the denial of human rights and torture of the civilian population in Iraq. All this has been well documented and in the spine-chilling descriptions that my hon. Friend has produced in these early hours we have further information to alarm and depress us.
In addition to all these specific cruelties, the Iraqi regime continues to show complete disregard of the welfare of its own citizens. I will touch in rather more general terms than did my hon. Friend on the situation in Iraq in that regard.
The United Nations and the other international agencies have done what they can to protect the Iraqi people from the worst of these excesses and to provide basic shelter, food and medicine. We and our coalition partners have also made a considerable contribution. Thanks to the initiative of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, safe havens were established in northern Iraq and an enormous international relief effort was mounted
1217 to sustain the civil population there. The coalition deterrent force which we maintain in southern Turkey continues to provide valuable reassurance to all Iraqis and to deter further repression by the regime. Iraq must now take advantage of the mechanism provided by the United Naitons to sell oil to finance humanitarian supplies. The Iraqi authorities now have in their own hands the opportunity to alleviate the suffering of their own people.
Perhaps it would be helpful to the House if I gave a brief description of the situation in the north and in the south of the country. If the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) wishes to intervene I will accept an intervention from her. I am sorry that I could not enable her to speak.
We are concerned, of course, by reports of a blockade by the Iraqi authorities on the Kurdish north and by limited clashes in the area. We have made our concerns known to the Iraqis on many occasions and as recently as 9 December. The Iraqi authorities and the Kurds now seem to have agreed a series of measures which will allow the situation in the north to return to normal. We expect those measures to be implemented.
The United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights has reported that the winterisation programme in the north is now complete. We are also informed that he can cope with the recently reported increase in the number of displaces Kurds. We remain in close touch with him and have confirmed our willingness to provide further help if needed.
We have made it clear many times to the Iraqi authorities that we expect them to co-operate with the United Nations and the international relief agencies. We have also warned that further oppression and violations of Security Council resolution 688 will have serious consequences.
§ Mrs. Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley)The Minister claims that there is an agreement between the Kurds and the Iraqi authorities. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I was in the area a short time ago, and my understanding of events is entirely different. There is an economic blockade; negotiations have taken place to try to lift it, but the blockade continues. There are people on hunger strike, as the hon. Gentleman knows, in Sulaymaniyah. They are protesting against the economic blockade, which is causing fuel and food shortages. The administrators of major cities are no longer being paid by the Iraqi authorities.
The Minister said that the winterisation programme is complete. I understand that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a press release three weeks ago that stated that tents were a rare sight in northern Iraq and the winterisation programme had gone on apace. The commissioner has revised that statement and now claims that up to 400,000 refugees will need additional cover and that the winterisation programme will be extended. He agrees with many observers that the plight of the Kurds, as the winter approaches, is extreme. The means are not available at present to provide protection against a severe winter, food shortages and medical supply shortages. I ask the Minister to reconsider these matters.
§ Mr. Lennox-BoydI am grateful to the hon. Lady for what she has said. The winterisation programme is a moving target to some extent. We have been given the 1218 assurances that I reported to the House. The existing programme will meet the needs of about half a million people during the winter months. It will lead to the repairing and upgrading of hospitals and will provide shelter and water supplies. Thousands of kerosene stoves, blankets and tents are being distributed. The hon. Lady will know that the United Kingdom's contribution to the international relief effort since April amounts to about £44 million.
Perhaps it will be of help to the House if I commented on the situation in the south. I shall then have to move on fairly rapidly to conclude my remarks.
The United Nations has a humanitarian centre at Basra. It has been pressing the Iraqis to permit the establishment of a further humanitarian centre at Nasariya, which is close to the marshes. The Iraqis have refused so far. We strongly support an expansion of the United Nations presence in the south. We have raised our concern about the south directly with the Iraqis, with the United Nations and with Mr. Van der Stoel, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West referred, who is the United Nations rapporteur on human rights in Iraq. My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office has met representatives of the Shia community to hear from them about the situation at first hand.
Since September, we have given £1 million to UNICEF for medicines, water and sanitation in the south, £78,000 to the Save the Children Fund for water and sanitation in the south, and almost £700,000 to organisations that are working to help refugees from southern Iraq and south-west Iran.
I made some brief comments about the winterisation programme. I shall not proceed further in that direction.
§ Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington)The Minister says that violations of resolution 688 will have serious consequences. That statement has been made repeatedly from the Government Dispatch Box over the past six months. Will the Minister tell us what the serious consequences will be?
The Minister talked about the Iraqi Government resisting the arrangements to which he referred in the south. Is it not true that under resolution 688 the Iraqi Government are required to comply with United Nations requirements on aid and humanitarian assistance. Why do we not enforce that resolution?
§ Mr. Lennox-BoydThe hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that I shall not spell out or make policies at the Dispatch Box in the early hours of the morning on precisely what measures may be being considered and might be implemented. He has heard the position and I cannot add to it.
There is a great deal of concern in the country—I receive a lot of correspondence—about the effect of the sanctions regime on the civilian population. Our quarrel is with the regime, not with the long-suffering Iraqi people, but it must be recognised that Saddam Hussein's misguided policies have brought Iraq to its present position. He continues to inflict suffering on his people by his stubborn refusal to implement Security Council resolutions in full. We want all the Iraqi people to be able to receive food, medicine and humanitarian supplies, which is why we have contributed more than £44 million to the international relief effort since April this year.
1219 A mechanism exists to enable Iraq to import all the humanitarian supplies that it needs. It was set out in Security Council resolutions 706 and 712, which allow Iraq to export $1.6 billion worth—although the total is subject to review—of oil over six months, to finance the purchase of essential humanitarian supplies. Those resolutions are mandatory. We expect Iraq to co-operate in implementing them.
Iraq is now discussing the arrangements with the United Nations, but the Iraqi regime's failure to implement the scheme promptly is preventing the Iraqi people from receiving humanitarian assistance. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein bears full responsibility for that—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) keeps interrupting from a sedentary position. If he will forgive me, I shall make my own speech in my own way.
In spite of all the efforts of the international community, many Iraqis are still living in desperate fear of the regime. The achievement of Prince Sadruddin, the UN Secretary General's executive delegate, in securing an extension of the agreement covering UN operations in Iraq, including the UN guards, will have given some reassurance to the civilian population, but continued international pressure is necessary to prevent further excesses occurring and to ensure that all the people of Iraq can live without fear of intimidation, repression or attack. We shall maintain sanctions until Iraq has implemented UN Security Council resolutions in full. Only when the Iraqi people have the freedom to choose their leadership openly and democratrically will they be able to enjoy the human rights to which they are justly entitled.
§ Mrs. Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley)That is a most unsatisfactory reply to a serious and deteriorating problem in Iraq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) on her moving speech. She has taken a particular interest in the plight of the Shias, and I have taken a particular interest in the plight of the Kurds and in human rights in Iraq over a very long time.
1220 I am deeply worried about the bad situation. Western television crews are now going to Iraq. They will again see Kurds dying on the mountainsides this winter, the Shias continuing to die in the marshes of southern Iraq, and people continuing to be rounded up by Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. People were tortured in Iraq prisons for many years before the Government recognised the violation of human rights that was going on in Iraq, about which some of us have been concerned for many years.
§ Miss Emma NicholsonWill the hon. Lady give way?
§ Mrs. ClwydNo, I am not giving way.
The Government must deal with the plight of the Iraqis. They have promised so much to the Kurds. The safe haven was looked on as something which would continue to ensure that the Kurds would be safe. They have been let down, and feel that they have been let down. An old Kurdish man who had fled for the third time told me just the other week, "John Major promised us a hammer—where is the hammer?" That is what people are asking over and over again.
People are on hunger strike in Sulaymaniyah: one person has died and others undoubtedly will die soon. They are trying to draw the attention of the world, the allies, the Prime Minister of this country and the President of the United States to the promises that they and others made. All the United Nations resolutions are in place; they are supposed to protect—
§ It being Eight o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.