20 July 2011
By RAY MOSELEY
AL ARABIYA
A British parliamentary committee called on Wednesday for immediate action to ensure an end to torture and politically motivated detentions in Bahrain and accused Iraq of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and poor conditions in prisons.
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee also said it plans to launch in inquiry in the autumn concerning aspects of British foreign policy and the Arab Spring.
20 July 2011
By RAY MOSELEY
AL ARABIYA
A British parliamentary committee called on Wednesday for immediate action to ensure an end to torture and politically motivated detentions in Bahrain and accused Iraq of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and poor conditions in prisons.
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee also said it plans to launch in inquiry in the autumn concerning aspects of British foreign policy and the Arab Spring.
In a report on human rights around the world, the committee said events of the Arab Spring should remind the Foreign Office that there are risks for the United Kingdom in failing to take a stronger and more consistent stance against rights violations by foreign regimes.
It said the committee was less confident than the Foreign Office that there is little conflict between Britain’s simultaneous pursuit of commercial interests and improved human rights standards abroad.
The Foreign Office, it recommended, should take a more robust and consistent position on human rights violations in the Middle East and North Africa. It said the Foreign Office should have treated Bahrain as a “country of concern” in its 2010 annual human rights report.
The committee welcomed the Bahrain government’s establishment of a commission to investigate recent events involving protestors but said: “We remain concerned that immediate action is needed to ensure an end to torture and politically motivated detentions.”
Human rights, it said, should be at the heart of Foreign Office work in implementing its so-called Arab Partnership program. The government recently announced a four-year, £110 million partnership fund to support political reforms, give economic aid and carry out public finance reforms.
[..] alarabiya.netForeign Affairs Committee – Eighth Report
The FCO’s Human Rights Work 2010-11
Bahrain
18. Witnesses regarded the consistency of the Government’s approach between different countries as a particular issue in the Middle East and North Africa, and one having resonance beyond that region. Of countries in the region, the FCO Report identified Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen as “countries of concern” (see paragraphs 48-57). Human Rights Watch argued that Bahrain was a “glaring omission” from the list, on the grounds that “serious human rights abuses existed before 2011” and a “noticeable crackdown” had began already in August 2010.[21]
19. Sir Emyr Jones Parry, former UK Permanent Representative to the UN, writing to us in his current capacity as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of REDRESS (the NGO that works on behalf of torture survivors), criticised the FCO Report for its relatively mild treatment of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain specifically as regards torture. Sir Emyr said that the passage on torture in the report’s “country of concern” section on Saudi Arabia was “muted and not contextualised”; and that the omission of Bahrain from the list of “countries of concern” was “unfortunate, given the history of torture there and the close links between Bahrain and the UK”. Sir Emyr highlighted the fact that British nationals had been tortured in Saudi Arabia, and that a dual UK-Bahraini national appeared to have been tortured in Bahrain. Sir Emyr said:
Egypt has demonstrated how the West failed to be sufficiently robust on values and rights, and tolerated policies and practices which it has taken the courage of the people of Egypt to bring us closer to ending […] Silence, defended by discrete diplomatic pressure to make clear British opposition to torture, fails to put us publicly on the right side of the argument and has demonstrably not produced improvements within the countries concerned.[23]
57. Inasmuch as they are all countries where human rights are being seriously violated, we have no quarrel with the FCO’s selection of “countries of concern” in its 2010 report, though we consider Bahrain should have been included. We share the FCO’s deep concern about the human rights situation in all these states.
126. We also asked Mr Browne in May why arms export licences to Saudi Arabia had not been revoked, given the risk that certain categories of British-supplied equipment could be used for internal repression, either in Saudi Arabia or in Bahrain. On the Minister’s behalf, Thomas Drew, Director for National Security at the FCO Directorate for Defence and Strategic Threats, replied that “it is a question of looking at this case-by-case—at specific equipment for specific areas. […] There is no arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, therefore we have looked specifically item by item, which is why we came up with the conclusions that we did”.[202]
128. We conclude that the recent policy of revoking arms export licences to countries in the Middle East and North Africa appears to have been inconsistently applied, inasmuch as no licences to Saudi Arabia, Syria or Yemen have been revoked, despite the fact that the risk of repressive use of equipment sold by British companies to those countries for their own use, or supplied by Saudi Arabia to other states such as Bahrain, appears to be as high as in the countries to which licences have been revoked. We recommend that the Government’s review address specifically the issue of policy towards Saudi Arabia.
166. As we prepared this Report in June and early July 2011, the developing situation in the Middle East and North Africa engaged a wide range of human rights issues:
In Bahrain, the authorities were detaining and imprisoning large numbers of civilians after protests against the regime. In particular, the authorities had detained, reportedly mistreated, tried and in some cases imposed lengthy prison sentences on medical personnel who had treated injured civilians. Over 30 people were reported to have been killed by the security forces, and the regime had called in armed support from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. By early July, the Sunni regime had opened talks with the main Shia opposition group, in a “national dialogue” on political reform; and it was being reported that the regime had announced an investigation into the security forces’ handling of the unrest and that most of the Saudi troops were being withdrawn.[251] Subsequently the Bahrain regime has announced the establishment of a commission to investigate the events of recent months.[252]
170. We welcome the way in which the Government has put the UK at the forefront of international support for political and economic liberalisation in the Middle East and North Africa in response to the ‘Arab Spring’. We agree with the Foreign Secretary that the ‘Arab Spring’ represents an opportunity for an historic advance in human rights and political and economic freedoms. However, the political outlook across the region is far from clear and may yet deteriorate. The human rights agenda in the region is now vast, ranging from urgent humanitarian and security risks facing civilians to the necessarily slow embedding of human rights norms in the security and other state institutions of democratising states. In Bahrain, we welcome the regime’s establishment of a commission to investigate recent events, but we remain concerned that immediate action is needed to ensure an end to torture and politically-motivated detentions. We recommend that the FCO place human rights—and in particular political and civil rights—at the heart of its work with the Middle East and North Africa through the ‘Arab Partnership’ in coming years. We further recommend that the FCO devote a major dedicated section of its 2011 human rights report to reporting in detail on the human rights work which it is undertaking in the region.
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