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Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South): Is my right hon. Friend aware that, until recently, Belize had a Lord Chief Justice who professed to hear messages from God?
Mr. Kaufman: I once had a chief constable who said the same thing for a while. It appears to have spread from one continent to another. One of the messages from God that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai was "Thou shalt not kill." There was no proviso in that commandment that it should exclude judicial killing.
Mr. Mullin: This Lord Chief Justice was hearing the opposite messages from God.
Mr. Kaufman: I cannot regard myself as the greatest expert on religion, but it seems to me that the ten commandments were unequivocal.
Governments in the Caribbean are withdrawing from international agreements to carry out hangings. On 16 December last year, Guyana informed the United Nations Secretary-General of its withdrawal as a party to the optional protocol to the international convention on civil and political rights. Like Trinidad and Tobago, it then immediately reacceded, with a reservation purporting to exclude the UN Human Rights Committee from considering petitions brought by people under sentence of death relating to the capital proceedings against them. This course of action was instigated following the decision earlier in the year by the Human Rights Committee on a petition brought by two men under sentence of death.
The Human Rights Committee concluded that both men had been deprived of a fair trial and thus, if executed, would be arbitrarily deprived of their lives. It recommended not only that their death sentences be commuted, but that they should be released. The Guyanan Government said that they would not follow the recommendation. If one does not like a verdict, get rid of the judge--that appears to be their attitude.
Trinidad and Tobago has done the same thing. The Government set strict timetables for the Human Rights Committee and the IACHR to consider petitions made on behalf of people under sentence of death. In May 1998, Trinidad and Tobago notified the secretary general of the Organisation of American States of its intention to withdraw as a state party to the American convention on human rights, which came into force last month. That unprecedented step removed the obligation on the Government to guarantee the rights enshrined in the treaty to people within its jurisdiction.
Last August, Trinidad and Tobago's withdrawal from the optional protocol to the ICCPR became effective. Like other countries that are following that practice, Trinidad and Tobago immediately reacceded as a party to the optional protocol, with a reservation precluding the Human Rights Committee from considering any communications by a person under sentence of death relating to the capital proceedings against them. Jamaica has gone through the same kind of charade, and has paid no attention to requests by Her Majesty's Government to change that position.
We are not dealing with a zeal to hang, obnoxious though that is. We are dealing with deliberate violations of human rights and the rule of law. We are dealing with countries which, where their wish to violate human rights clashes with their international commitments, then withdraw from those commitments in order to be able to carry on with the hangings.
The Commonwealth has made statements about human rights to which these Governments have subscribed. There is to be another meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government in Durban in November. No doubt these countries will go through the same hypocritical charade and pay their respects to human rights in the communique with their fellow members of the Commonwealth--and will then go on violating human rights as they have done.
In Trinidad, one of the bodies entrusted with overriding human rights is called--almost hilariously--the mercy committee, which is chaired by the National Security Minister. It was the mercy committee that ordered the execution of Mr. Briggs, and it would have got away with executing Mr. Briggs if the Privy Council--which had authorised the hangings in Trinidad and Tobago--had not withdrawn that authorisation.
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary for the firm stand that he has taken on this matter. When it became evident at the beginning of this month that hangings were to go ahead in Trinidad and Tobago, I telephoned my right hon. Friend's office and asked if it would communicate my concerns to the Government of Trinidad. Not only that, but my right hon. Friend wrote to me on 2 June saying:
What those countries say to persons such as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and me, and institutions such as the EU, the UNCHR, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth and all the others, is, "Keep your nose out of our business. We are sovereign countries and we can do as we like. You are intruding on our sovereignty by saying such things." I suppose that there is an argument for that, but they cheerfully allow their sovereignty to be intruded on in other ways. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development provided me with details of the financial aid being provided by this country and the EU to Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean which have the death penalty. It is significant that the two countries which receive by far the greatest aid are Trinidad and Tobago, which received £20.4 million in 1997, and Jamaica, which received £45.6 million.
It is of course countries in the Caribbean which have taken a strong stand in insisting on the retention of preferential treatment by the EU for, in particular, their bananas. Our Government have responded to that. If people will not respond to appeals to their better nature, or if they do not have a better nature, it seems to me that we should re-examine the generosity with which we deal with some of their requests for help. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development might argue that it would not be fair to the people of the country to punish them for what their Governments do, but we are told by those Governments that they have overwhelming support from the people of their countries. Much as I dislike using such pressure, if that is the only kind of pressure we have, we should use it; and I urge my colleagues on the Front Bench to do so.
Some of us in this House, together with lawyers and other outside agencies, have been a nuisance to the Governments involved for a long time. I intend to continue being as big a nuisance as I can be until we get them to acknowledge that human rights are universal. We have just been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the United Nations declaration on human rights, article 5 of which states:
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough):
I congratulatethe right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) on achieving this Adjournment debate on what is a most important but often neglected subject. I also join him in commending the work of the pro bono solicitors in London who act without charge for the capital defendants before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
I also wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) on his promotion to the Front Bench and I look forward to many contributions from him on foreign policy matters. I am speaking from the Back Benches deliberately because the subject does not fall within my Front-Bench responsibilities, and also because I am speaking from a personal position as a long-time opponent of capital punishment. I have been an
opponent since the first time I realised that such things went on, which was in the late 1950s or early 1960s, when I was about 7, 8 or 9 years old. The only exception is that the state must reserve to itself the ability to resort to the death penalty in time of war. However, this Parliament has taken that punishment away and, as I understand the position, we no longer have any form of capital punishment in this country.
Most Caribbean countries that used to be part of the British empire are now completely independent, although they are members of the Commonwealth and it must, therefore, be a matter for the people and Governments of those countries to make up their own minds about domestic criminal justice policy, subject to international convention obligations. I was concerned to learn from the right hon. Member for Gorton that several of those independent Caribbean states are resiling from their obligations under international conventions, albeit rejoining them under some sort of ruse. I deprecate that, but I am not sure what we can do about it--apart from the suggestions made by the right hon. Gentleman--save to note it.
I made a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association visit to three Caribbean states in the autumn of 1996, shortly before the election. I visited Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent. During my visit, I met politicians, lawyers and judges operating in the courts of the east Caribbean jurisdiction. I met the then acting chief justice of the east Caribbean, and I also met a retired chief justice of the east Caribbean who sits from time to time--at least, he did so then--as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council here in London.
The general rule is, as I discovered when I was in the Caribbean, that elected politicians tend to support the death penalty. It is popular and Governments who execute murderers have a good chance of getting re-elected. To be fair, it may also be the case that politicians believe that capital punishment is a just and proper way to punish serious criminals. It is another generalisation, but I observed that judges and lawyers tend to take a different view. They are broadly opposed to capital punishment, although obviously there are some exceptions, and they wish to keep the Privy Council as the final court of appeal.
The position among lawyers may be changing, as most lawyers in the Caribbean aged under 45 were not trained in London at the Inns of Court, but are trained and qualified in Caribbean law schools and universities. Some are also trained in the US and Canada. There is a difference in attitude towards links with the Privy Council, just as there is a difference in attitude towards the usefulness or otherwise of capital punishment.
It is not my intention this morning to discuss the role of the Privy Council as the court of final appeal. It is to draw attention to the poor facilities available to courts and lawyers in the Caribbean. There are very few law libraries. Lawyers often work alone or in small chambers, and lack proper facilities or books. The jurisdiction of the east Caribbean is huge, stretching from the northern boundaries of south America to the northern Caribbean.
The right hon. Member for Gorton made a stark point about the absence of legal aid. Most defendants charged with capital crimes are poor and many are addicted to drugs. They have no access to the high-quality lawyers whom big bank balances would command. There are as a result huge differences in the fire power available to the
prosecution and the defence: prosecutors have the advantage of funding from the state, whereas defence counsel and defendants generally do not.
The problem identified to me by one senior judge was that he often heard advocates pleading and conducting trials on behalf of capital defendants without even an out-of-date copy of "Archbold", the standard text on criminal law in this country. To appear before any court here with an out-of-date textbook would be deemed negligent in the extreme, but to do so on behalf of a client at risk of his life with no text, not even an out-of-date one, and no law reports is appalling.
The judge to whom I spoke had to deal as fairly as he could with the cases before him. His practice was to return to his chambers at the end of a working day and do all the work himself. He would place himself in the defence counsel's position, look in his own library for the relevant authorities and principles, and reconstruct the defence case. He did that as a matter of duty, as he did not want to be responsible for being in charge of jungle justice--an expression that I do not use lightly.
The judge wanted the job done well, but that was impossible. He urged me to see what this country could do to increase or improve the level of assistance to the judicial systems of those Caribbean states. I made some inquiries of the previous Government when I returned, and discovered an organisation called Bookaid. With the assistance of Sir Nicholas Bonsor, one of the present Minister's predecessors in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I contacted that organisation to find out what could be done. I urge the Minister to encourage the work of Bookaid in sending out modern legal textbooks.
Assistance need not be confined to books, which tend to disintegrate in the Caribbean's humid climate, where many lawyers' offices and courts are not air conditioned. However, that does not mean that we can do nothing. Personal or collective access to the internet is available all over the world, and I urge the Government to do what they can to provide internet links. That would give lawyers and judges in the Caribbean direct access to legal judgments, precedents, textbooks and so on. Those resources are available in my chambers at the touch of a button, and they could be just as easily available in the Caribbean.
We complain, rightly, about some of the prison regimes in the United States and about how some states execute capital defendants who for many years have been lingering on death row. Some recent executions have been for crimes committed when the prisoner was under 18. Although we might have moral scruples about the justice system in the United States we have no moral responsibility for it, as that country has been independent for more than 200 years.
However, we have a moral responsibility to the Caribbean, which remained under our governance until relatively recently. We have a responsibility to ensure that the legal system, judges and lawyers are properly equipped to do justice.
"I, too was concerned that Trinidad and Tobago was considering resumption of executions after a de facto moratorium of five years. Together with our EU partners, we have made clear to the Government of Trinidad and Tobago on a number of occasions that we oppose the death penalty in all circumstances. Baroness Symons, as Minister responsible for our relations with the Caribbean, has followed up these representations by meetings with the High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago in London.
he chairs the mercy committee--
Most recently, Baroness Symons spoke to the Minister of National Security"--
"on 10 May while he was visiting Britain and in repeating our abolitionist views raised the case of Dole Chadee and his associates"--
the men who were hanged. My right hon. Friend continued:
"On 17 May, after these men had lost their most recent appeal, the UK joined other EU partners in demarching the Government of Trinidad and Tobago once again in Port of Spain.
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary for the firm and clear position he has taken and for the firm and clear position taken by the European Union.
If the executions of Dole Chadee and his associates do go ahead I will be pressing for a public statement by the EU as we did recently when the Philippines resumed executions."
"No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
These countries are undoubtedly inflicting such treatment or punishment, and it is time they stopped.
10.4 am
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