My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 119B and in support of Amendment 119A, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy of the Shaws and Lady Chakrabarti. I should mention that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, is overseas in Estonia at this moment and unable to be here. In speaking to these amendments, I draw attention to my entries in the register of interests. I am patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response and vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on the Yazidis and on the Uyghurs. In introducing my amendment, I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Kirkhope. I strongly support what has just been said.
I begin by referencing the play “Leopoldstadt” by Sir Tom Stoppard. It is a heart-breaking story of one Jewish family in the years before the Second World War and in the aftermath of the war. Among other issues, it highlights the challenges faced by people subjected to persecution and what we now know was genocide and the Holocaust—people who could not find a safe haven anywhere else. Strict quotas meant that only a few of them would find a safe haven. Long waiting lists meant that some people would never move to a safe country. That same challenge continues to this very day.
Amendment 119B, concerning those who are subject to genocide, returns to an issue that was also the subject of an amendment tabled by myself, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, my noble friend Lady Cox, and
the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, which I moved in 2016. We drew the attention of the House to the plight of the Yazidi, Christian and other minorities who were said to be facing genocide. We argued that our asylum procedures should create a specific category to help those judged to be at immediate risk of genocide. That was five years ago on 3 February 2016, as recorded in Hansard col. 1888; we moved Amendment 234A, which sought to offer help to those whose lives were so clearly at risk of genocide. Although at the conclusion of the debate, the then Home Office Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, agreed to give the proposal further consideration, it was ultimately vetoed.
That amendment, like this one, followed the presumption that a person would be granted asylum when a senior judge determined that a group to which that person belongs is, in the place from which that person originates, subject to genocide. The presumption would operate in the United Kingdom but, in addition, applicants would be able to apply at British consular posts overseas—a point that I raised during earlier proceedings in Committee.
I remind the House that genocide is defined in Article 2 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as follows:
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: … Killing members of the group; … Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; … Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; …Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; … Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Although, in 2016, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had adopted a resolution stating that ISIS
“has perpetrated acts of genocide and other serious crimes punishable under international law”
—a view incidentally supported in a letter by 75 Members of your Lordships’ House, including the former chief of staff of our Armed Forces and the former head of MI5—the Home Office refused to accept that a genocide was under way. There was clear evidence that the Yazidi genocide extended to religious minorities, with assassinations of church leaders, mass murders, torture, kidnapping of women, forcible conversion, the destruction of churches, monasteries, cemeteries and religious artefacts, and thefts of land and wealth from clergy and laity alike. ISIS made public statements taking credit for the mass murder of the Christians and Yazidis and expressing its intent to eliminate these minority communities and other groups such as homosexuals from its territory.
The government response was the usual one designed to avoid the duties set out in the 1948 convention:
“It is a long-standing government policy that any judgements on whether genocide has occurred are a matter for the international judicial system rather than Governments or other non-judicial bodies.”
This continues to be a frustrating and circular argument. In 2016, a Foreign Office Minister told the House:
“We are not submitting any evidence of possible genocide against Yezidis and Christians to international courts, nor have we been asked to.”
As for referring the matter to the International Criminal Court, we were told:
“I understand that, as the matter stands, Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor, has determined not to take these matters forward.”—[Official Report, 16/12/15; col. 2146.]
No one was willing to name this genocide for what it is or take forward the necessary responses.
As recently as this morning, in a debate in Westminster Hall in another place, Brendan O’Hara and members of the All-Party Group on the Yazidis raised these very issues and the continuing the atrocities that occur against the Yazidis. It has taken up until November of last year for a court—in this case, a German one, in Frankfurt—to convict one of those responsible for the crime of genocide. The UK still refuses to do the same. That member of ISIS was jailed for life, in November, for buying a five year-old Yazidi girl as a slave and then chaining her up in the hot sun, where she burnt to death.
Since our debate in 2016, I have pursued this circular argument in amendments to the Trade Act, the telecommunications Act, the Health and Care Bill and this Home Office Bill. I admit to having been deeply affected by visiting northern Iraq and taking first-hand accounts from Yazidi, Assyrian and Chaldean Christian survivors in 2019.
A United Nations report stated that ISIS held 3,500 slaves hostage, mainly women and children, and had committed acts that
“amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide.”
Murder has been accompanied by other horrors. An estimated 5,000 young Yazidi women and girls were abducted by ISIS, suffering horrific and prolonged sexual abuse. They were imprisoned for months on end, beaten, burnt and exposed to daily rape and torture. Horrifyingly, some of those victims were as young as nine. Sadly, some girls took their own lives in desperate attempts to escape the horrors of captivity.
Despite all this, we have failed to create a safe or legal route to enable safe passage for those who were so grievously at risk. At the time, the Weidenfeld fund, Mercury One and Operation Safe Havens said they were able to process asylum applications and do the necessary security clearances to a higher standard than the UNHCR and in a matter of weeks. Lord Weidenfeld’s decision to create a special fund to assist endangered minorities at risk of genocide should have inspired us all to do more, but it did not.
My noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead advised us on the formulation of Amendment 119B, and we have followed his advice. It would ask a judge of the High Court of England and Wales to examine the evidence and make a determination. It would provide a process and duty to act. It would then ensure that victims of genocide were given priority in asylum applications. This is not about numbers, nor about those who threaten the security and ideals for which this country stands. Many suffer, but this is about those who have been singled out and our duty under the genocide convention to protect them.
It is worth recalling that in 2016 the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said to the then Minister,
“I say to my noble friend the Minister: throw away the brief from the Home Office and go back to the department and tell it what has been said this evening. I am certain that, despite the media
coverage and the information that is available, people in this country have no idea of the extent of the horrors that are being perpetrated”.—[Official Report, 3/2/16; col. 1894.]
That rather echoes what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said a few moments ago about the true attitudes of people in this country. That amendment was supported by people such as the noble Lords, Lord Marlesford, Lord Dubs and Lord Wigley, the late Lord Judd, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and others. But despite the promise in 2016 of further thought, and a subsequent vote in the House of Commons declaring events against those minorities in northern Iraq to be a genocide, here we are five years later still failing to define when a genocide is under way and conveniently avoiding our responsibility to act under the terms of the convention. That convention was so brilliantly crafted by Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the word genocide and saw more than 40 of his own family killed during the Holocaust.
We now need a different approach to give a chance to the communities facing annihilation. Closing the door to them should not be an option. The Bill offers us an opportunity to create a safe and legal route for victims of genocide. By way of example, in January this year I asked the Government
“what plans they have to create a bespoke humanitarian visa scheme for Uyghurs”,
another ethno-religious community facing annihilation, this time in Xinjiang in China—but they also live in other places. The response to this Question can be described only as negligent. I was told:
“While we sympathise with the many people facing difficult situations around the world, we have no plans to introduce a bespoke humanitarian visa scheme for Uyghurs.”
However, there is a small glimmer of hope in that Uighurs from Afghanistan may be considered for resettlement under the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme as religious minorities at particular risk. The amendment could logically build on that.
On the downside, that resettlement route is unlikely to be even considered before 2023. If a person is facing an existential threat—a phrase used earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope—whether in Afghanistan or at risk of being repatriated to China, where they would face existential threats with the rest of the Uighur community, is it reasonable to expect them to wait more than a year for their case to be considered?
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The same applies to the Hazara community in Afghanistan, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. The community is being slaughtered both by the Taliban and ISK. Since August, I have received hundreds of messages from Hazaras who have been in hiding for weeks and months and are scared for their lives. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, has received copies of many of those emails, which I have sent her. Again, how realistic is it to tell them that they may have to wait a year—or maybe years—for their case to be considered?
We need to learn from the past and the failed responses to other genocidal atrocities. We need to analyse and learn from the failed responses to the Daesh genocide against Iraq’s minorities: as the Yazidis and other
minorities were slaughtered by Daesh, we did not open the door to them. Reports suggest that among those resettled to the United Kingdom, there have been no Yazidis whatever and no Christians from northern Iraq—none. I would be most grateful if the Minister could tell us what the numbers are, or, if she does not have them, perhaps she could arrange for us to receive them between now and Report.
It is quite extraordinary that no one from a religious minority facing Isis genocidal atrocities has been considered as being at particular risk or as particularly vulnerable, among those considered for resettlement in the United Kingdom. To this day, these communities face serious risks—from Daesh, still present in the region, but also from Turkish attacks that continue to bombard Yazidi homes in Sinjar in Iraq and northern Syria. They continue to be terrorised and are living in fear. Many young people cannot cope with this level of threat and pressure, and we hear of high rates of suicide among the minority communities at risk. That is why I believe that Amendment 119B is needed.
I will leave it to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, to deal with Amendment 119A on emergency visas, but I say simply that I associate myself entirely with the motives that underlie it. I have accompanied the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, to a number of meetings with Afghan judges, journalists and other human rights defenders, and the case being made for that amendment—comparing it with what goes on already in countries such as Canada—is well worth examination. I certainly commend it to the Committee.