Ilford North Liberal Democrats

Sarah's bulletin: 11 December 2009

Copenhagen climate change summit

Last Saturday, before the Copenhagen summit kicked off, London was host to a huge climate demonstration aptly dubbed "The Wave" organised by the Stop Climate Chaos coalition. As the only mainstream party that really understands the climate threat, the Liberal Democrats first held a rally and then went on to join the rest of the crowds, bearing Green Liberal Democrat banners!

To mark the start of the summit on Monday, in an unprecedented project led by The Guardian, 56 newspapers in 45 countries ran an identical editorial: "Fourteen days to seal history's judgement on this generation". If you have not read it yet I strongly recommend you do (click here), it is a very poignant statement of the brink that the world now finds itself on. This excerpt is particularly good:

"Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted. ... We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics."

A number of my MEP colleagues including Chris Davies are currently in Copenhagen attending the talks. I'm delighted that EU leaders have today seized their responsibilities and agreed to pay €7.2bn (£6.5bn; $10.6bn) over the next three years to help developing nations adapt to climate change, see here.

The beginning of a decade of respect for fundamental rights?

Yesterday was international human rights day and I believe that it is a good opportunity to reflect on what has been going on in terms of security and rights over the last few years. It is now almost a decade since the 'war on terror' began on September 11 2001, which finally appears to be coming to an end. Decision-makers and opinion leaders have realised that the suppression of fundamental rights and civil liberties that it involved are ineffective and counter-productive in the fight against terrorism.

It is my hope that this next decade will be one of championing human rights and the rule of law. You can read my press release on my website here. I was in the United States earlier this week and made this case to various congressmen and administration officials. Now that we have a US administration with a renewed commitment to multilateralism and international law I look forward to the EU and the US together leading the world in this, something which I will continue to promote in my role as vice chair of the US delegation.

The right way to fight terrorism is through the criminal law, such as the conviction this week of Adam Khatib from Walthamstow of conspiring to murder civilians within the foiled transatlantic passenger airlines plot of summer 2006; he was given a 40 year sentence. You can read my press release about this here. Two others were convicted alongside him for lesser offences of preparing for terrorism. This was welcome news in that it means three more dangerous individuals have been incarcerated, but what it also shows is that our traditional criminal justice system is in fact the most effective way of bringing terrorists to justice. Although secret services may be tempted to use illegal kidnapping, detention and torture with the declared goal of protecting our country, what it in fact means is that any evidence gathered is inadmissible in a normal court of law.

Bagram prisoners provide more evidence of UK collusion in extraordinary rendition

More about rendition: London-based legal rights NGO Reprieve, led by the admirable Clive Stafford-Smith, and with which I have worked closely in the past on rendition and Guantanamo and cases like those of Samantha Orobator and Akmal Shaikh, this week published an investigation into two Pakistani citizens who have been held in Bagram prison in Afghanistan for the last 5 years. We already knew that these two men were captured by British forces in Iraq in 2004, handed over to the Americans and 'renditioned' to Afghanistan: I commented in February this year on the UK role, see here.

But Reprieve has now discovered that the men, named Amanatullah Ali and 'Salahuddin' (real name unknown), have been illegally detained and abused, even tortured, in Bagram prison ever since, a prison thought to be even worse than Guantanamo. The accounts and excuses of former defence secretary John Hutton for the capture and detention of these men have been proved to be completely implausible and Reprieve alleges he was misleading parliament. For instance, the government has always denied any direct involvement in such kidnappings but it now appears the two detainees were captured and detained by British, not American, troops. Hutton justified Ali's detention by claiming that he was part of the militant Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba, but Ali and his family are Shia Muslims whereas LeT is a Sunni outfit. Hutton said the move of the suspects to Afghanistan was because of a lack of interpreters in Iraq, but Ali's native Punjabi is no more common in Afghanistan than it is in Iraq.

The government should not only apologise unreservedly but also demand the return of these two men, and of course this reinforces the need for a full public enquiry for which I am calling into British involvement in the CIA's post 9/11 extraordinary rendition and torture programme. The ALDE group is also tabling more parliamentary questions calling for accountability of the role of all European governments in rendition.

Commission tells UK that time has run out to clean up London's air

The Commission announced today that it is not going to grant the UK any additional time to comply with its EU air quality obligations in London. The UK government had asked for a temporary exemption regarding the dangerous airborne particles known as 'PM 10'. The Commission says a UK exemption is not necessary since all air quality zones except the Greater London zone were in compliance in 2008. "The Commission found the air quality plan for this particular zone did not meet the minimum requirements of the Directive for a time extension." I fully support the Commission in this and think it is shameful that the UK has not been able to get its act together for so many years and relies on Brussels to whip it into shape!

A better use for London's sewage...

You've heard of wind power, solar power... now there is what we could delicately call 'person power'. Thames Water announced this week that using human faeces to generate electricity saved it no less than £15m in electricity bills last year, meeting 14% of the company's power needs by either burning sewage sludge or the methane derived from it. Given that Thames Water is under so much pressure from the UK government, the European Commission and campaigners such as myself for discharging millions of cubic metres of raw sewage into the Thames every year, anything that stops sewage flowing into the Thames is good news! Of course we still need to urgently build the Thames super-sewer, but generating electricity from this most renewable of sources is something to be encouraged!

Read more about this initiative, and the other work I have been doing on the Thames sewage issue here.

Making the corruption fight a top priority in the EU

Wednesday was International Anti-Corruption day, a good occasion to highlight the very important issue of bribery and graft. Two years ago I pressed the Council on which member states had signed the United Nations Convention on Corruption, and I'm pleased to say that since then all 27 EU member states have finally ratified the treaty, Estonia being the last.

However we are still very far off an EU-level anti-corruption policy, and as Transparency International have shown corruption persists in a number of EU member states (and candidate countries!) - Greece, Bulgaria and Romania are only the joint 71st least corrupt countries on the TI index. Even here at home the UK government failed to prosecute BAE over their bribery scandal.

The EU's accession to the Council of Europe Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) must be fast-tracked, and combating bribery both within and without the EU must be made an absolute priority.

Threatened ban of Turkish Democratic Society party

In my role as patron of the Peace in Kurdistan campaign, today I met with a representative of the Kurdish National Congress, an organisation that promotes Kurdish interests. We met to discuss the current case against the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Turkey which is being threatened with closure due to accusations of ties with the banned PKK. If Turkey's constitutional court rules against it, this will be a huge setback for the prospect of a political settlement over Kurdish rights in Turkey, with the risk of a return to violence. It will also count against Turkey in its hope to join the EU - banning peaceful political parties is unacceptable in liberal democracies.

If you are interested in this issue do have a look at my press release and other work I have done on the Kurdish issue here.

Irish abortion law and the European Court of Human Rights

You may have had of the case at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg where a number of women are claiming that Ireland's ban on abortion breaches a number of articles of the European human rights convention, notably the right to life, privacy and a family life, and the convention's ban on discrimination and inhuman and degrading treatment.

Whether or not this is the case will be for the court to decide - I personally hope they do agree that access to safe, affordable and legal abortion is a human right for women. But I wanted to draw attention to the erroneous reporting of the case in the British press. The Times' headline was "Women fight abortion in EU court" and the Mail's was "Ireland's abortion ban faces EU fight".

This is incorrect as the European Court of Human Rights does not, in fact, have anything to do with the EU! The court was established in 1950 by the Council of Europe, an international organisation that focuses on human rights, democracy and the rule of law and which stretches from Iceland all the way to Russia. I completely understand why people can get confused between the Council of Europe and the EU's 'European Council' and 'Council of Ministers', but professional journalists should by now know better, and their Eurosceptic rush to paint the EU as 'interfering' is what clouds their judgment. Europhobia should at least be based on hard facts, not inaccuracy!

Ugandan death penalty for homosexuality

The Ugandan parliament is on the brink of introducing legislation that would impose life imprisonment for having gay sex, and the death penalty if this is with under-18s or disabled people. In addition, members of the public would be legally required to report any possible homosexual activity within 24 hours or face 3 years in jail, legalising what could easily become a witch hunt for homosexuals. Next Thursday the European Parliament will hold a debate on the issue. This is an atrocious violation of personal freedoms, and as vice president of DELGA I have signed a petition demanding that Gordon Brown condemn the Ugandan government if it does manage to get the "anti-homosexuality" bill through. This takes no time at all, and I encourage you to do the same and add your name to the petition, which you can do here.

Best regards,

Sarah Ludford