Thank you very much, Mr Walker, for calling me to wind up the debate, and I also thank the Minister for his typically comprehensive and open response to the questions that have been put to him today. It does not take experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment and other psychological research experiments to see how bestial people can be to other people. We need only look at Rwanda, the situation in parts of Rakhine state in Burma and obviously the slave trade that we are discussing here today to see such bestial behaviour happening every day.
I will also just say thanks again to Constance Mbassi Manga and the signatories to the petition; to the supporters
who have raised the issue on social media to bring it to the public fore; and to Nima Elbagir from CNN and her team who, as we have heard, bravely reported this story. I spoke to Nima this morning and she is really fired up for following up the story, to make sure that some action comes out of it.
This has been a very good debate, and I will not go through what has been said, as I must be brief. I will just say that, although there have been calls on our time today from the main Chamber and elsewhere, we have hopefully done what we aimed to do, which was to tell the story of the people in Libya who are on the frontline and who are suffering. We must tell those human stories to raise the profile of the issue and to add depth to the coverage of it, so that we can try to find solutions. I very much thank everybody who has taken part in the debate today.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered e-petition 205476 relating to the enslavement of black Africans in Libya.
5.58 pm
Sitting adjourned.