By Mark Curtis
February 13, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - British
foreign secretary Dominic Raab recently
described the “rule of international law” as one
of the “guiding lights” of UK foreign policy. By
contrast, the government regularly chides states it
opposes, such as Russia or Iran, as violators of
international law. These governments are often
consequently termed “rogue states” in the mainstream
media, the supposed antithesis of how “we” operate.
The following list of 17 policies may not be
exhaustive, but it suggests that the term “rogue
state” is not sensationalist or misplaced when it
comes to describing Britain’s own foreign and
“security” policies.
These serial violations suggest that
parliamentary and public oversight over executive
policy-making in the UK is not fit for purpose and
that new mechanisms are needed to restrain the
excesses of the British state.
The Royal Air Force’s drone war
Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) operates a drone
programme in support of the US involving a fleet of
British
“Reaper” drones operating since 2007. They have
been used by the UK to strike targets in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Four
RAF bases in the UK support the US drone war.
The joint UK and US spy base at Menwith Hill in
Yorkshire, northern England,
facilitates US drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan
and Somalia. US drone strikes, involving an
assassination programme begun by president Barack
Obama, are widely regarded as
illegal under international law, breaching
fundamental human rights. Up to 1,700 civilian
adults and children have been
killed in so-called “targeted killings”.
Amnesty International
notes that British backing is “absolutely
crucial to the US lethal drones programme, providing
support for various US surveillance programmes,
vital intelligence exchanges and in some cases
direct involvement from UK personnel in identifying
and tracking targets for US lethal operations,
including drone strikes that may have been
unlawful”.
Chagos Islands
Britain has violated international law in the
case of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean since
it expelled the inhabitants in the 1960s to make way
for a US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest
island.
Harold Wilson’s Labour government separated the
islands from then British colony Mauritius in 1965
in
breach of a UN resolution banning the breakup of
colonies before independence. London then formed a
new colonial entity, the British Indian Ocean
Territory, which is now an Overseas Territory.
In 2015, a UN Tribunal ruled that the UK’s
proposed “marine protected area” around the islands
— shown by Wikileaks publications to be a
ruse to keep the islanders from returning — was
unlawful since it undermined the rights of
Mauritius.
Then in February 2019, the International Court of
Justice (ICJ)
ruled in an advisory opinion that Britain must
end its administration of the Chagos islands “as
rapidly as possible”. The UN General Assembly
adopted a resolution in May 2019 welcoming the
ICJ ruling and “demanding that the United Kingdom
unconditionally withdraw its colonial administration
from the area within six months”. The UK government
has
rejected the calls.
Defying the UN over the Falklands
The UN’s 24-country Special Committee on
Decolonisation — its principal body addressing
issues concerning decolonisation — has repeatedly
called on the UK government to negotiate a
resolution to the dispute over the status of the
Falklands. In its latest call, in June 2019, the
committee
approved a draft resolution “reiterating that
the only way to end the special and particular
colonial situation of the Falkland Islands
(Malvinas) is through a peaceful and negotiated
settlement of the sovereignty dispute between
Argentina and the United Kingdom”.
The British government consistently rejects these
demands. Last year, it
stated:
“The Decolonisation Committee no longer has a
relevant role to play with respect to British
Overseas Territories. They all have a large measure
of self government, have chosen to retain their
links with the UK, and therefore should have been
delisted a long time ago.”
In 2016, the UN Commission on the Limits of the
Continental Shelf issued a
report finding that the Falkland Islands are
located in Argentina’s territorial waters.
Israel and settlement goods
Although Britain regularly condemns Israeli
settlements in the occupied territories as illegal,
in line with international law, it
permits trade in goods produced on those
settlements. It also does not
keep a record of imports that come from the
settlements — which include wine, olive oil and
dates — into the UK.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
|
UN Security Council resolutions
require
all states to “distinguish, in their relevant
dealings, between the territory of the State of
Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”. The
UK is failing to do this.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza
Israel’s blockade of Gaza, imposed in 2007
following the territory’s takeover by Hamas, is
widely regarded as illegal.
Senior UN officials, a UN independent
panel of
experts, and
Amnesty International all agree that the
infliction of “collective punishment” on the
population of Gaza contravenes international human
rights and humanitarian law.
Gaza has about 1.8 million inhabitants who remain
“locked
in” and denied free access to the remainder of
putative Palestine (the West Bank) and the outside
world. It has
poverty and unemployment rates that reached
nearly 75% in 2019.
Through its naval blockade, the Israeli navy
restricts Palestinians’ fishing rights,
fires on local fishermen and has intercepted
ships delivering humanitarian aid. Britain, and all
states, have an
obligation “to ensure compliance by Israel with
international humanitarian law” in Gaza.
However, instead of doing so, the UK regularly
collaborates with the navy enforcing the blockade.
In August 2019, Britain’s Royal Navy took part in
the largest international
naval exercise ever held by Israel, off the
country’s Mediterranean shore. In
November 2016 and
December 2017, British warships conducted
military exercises with their Israeli allies.
Exports of surveillance equipment
Declassified
revealed that the UK recently exported
telecommunications interception equipment or
software to 13 countries, including authoritarian
regimes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi
Arabia and Oman. Such technology can enable security
forces to monitor the private activities of groups
or individuals and crack down on political
opponents.
The UAE has been
involved in programmes monitoring domestic
activists using spyware. In 2017 and 2018, British
exporters were given
four licences to export telecommunications
interception equipment, components or software to
the UAE.
UK arms export
guidelines state that the government will “not
grant a licence if there is a clear risk that the
items might be used for internal repression”.
Reports by
Amnesty International document human rights
abuses in the cases of UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman,
suggesting that British approval of such exports to
these countries is prima facie unlawful.
Arms exports to Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has been
accused by the UN and others of violating
international humanitarian law and committing war
crimes in its war in Yemen, which began in March
2015. The UK has licensed
nearly £5-billion worth of arms to the Saudi
regime during this time. In addition, the RAF is
helping to
maintain Saudi warplanes at key operating bases
and
stores and issues bombs for use in Yemen.
Following legal action brought by the Campaign
Against the Arms Trade, the UK Court of Appeal ruled
in June 2019 that ministers had illegally signed off
on arms exports without properly assessing the risk
to civilians. The court
ruled that the government must reconsider the
export licences in accordance with the correct legal
approach.
The ruling followed a report by a cross-party
House of Lords committee, published earlier in 2019,
which
concluded that Britain is breaking international
law by selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and should
suspend some export licences immediately.
Julian Assange’s arbitrary detention and
torture
In the case of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange
— currently held in Belmarsh maximum-security prison
in London — the UK is defying repeated opinions of
the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD)
and the UN special rapporteur on torture.
The latter, Nils Melzer, has
called on the UK government to release Assange
on the grounds that officials are contributing to
his psychological torture and ill treatment. Melzer
has also
called for UK officials to be
investigated for possible “criminal conduct” as
government policy “severely undermines the
credibility of [its] commitment to the prohibition
of torture… as well as to the rule of law more
generally”.
The WGAD — the supreme international body
scrutinising this issue — has repeatedly
demanded that the UK government end Assange’s “arbitrary
detention”. Although the UN states that WGAD
determinations are
legally binding, its calls have been
consistently
rejected by the UK government.
Covert wars
Covert military operations to subvert foreign
governments, such as Britain’s years-long operation
in Syria to
overthrow the Assad regime, are unlawful. As a
House of Commons briefing
notes, “forcible assistance to opposition forces
is illegal”.
A precedent was set in the Nicaragua case in the
1980s, when US-backed covert forces (the “Contras”)
sought to overthrow the Sandinista government. The
International Court of Justice
held that a third state may not forcibly help
the opposition to overthrow a government since it
breached the principles of non-intervention and
prohibition on the use of force.
As Declassified has
shown, the UK is currently engaged in seven
covert wars, including in Syria, with minimal
parliamentary oversight. Government
policy is “not to comment” on the activities of
its special forces “because of the security
implications”. The public’s ability to scrutinise
policy is also restricted since the UK’s Freedom of
Information Act
applies an “absolute exemption” to special
forces. This is not the case for allied powers such
as the US and Canada.
Torture and the refusal to hold an inquiry
In 2018 a
report by parliament’s Intelligence and Security
Committee found that the UK had been complicit in
cases of torture and other ill treatment of
detainees in the so-called “war on terror”. The
inquiry examined the participation of MI6 (the
secret intelligence service), MI5 (the domestic
security service) and Ministry of Defence (MOD)
personnel in interrogating detainees held primarily
by the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay
during 2001-10.
The report found that there were 232 cases where
UK personnel supplied questions or intelligence to
foreign intelligence agents after they knew or
suspected that a detainee was being mistreated. It
also found 198 cases where UK personnel received
intelligence from foreign agents obtained from
detainees whom they knew or suspected to have been
mistreated.
In one case, MI6 “sought and obtained
authorisation from the foreign secretary” (then
Jack Straw, in Tony Blair’s government) for the
costs of funding a plane which was involved in
rendering a suspect.
After the report was published, the government
announced it was refusing to hold a judge-led,
independent inquiry into the UK’s role in rendition
and torture as it had previously promised to do. In
2019, human rights group Reprieve, together with
Conservative and Labour MPs, instigated a
legal challenge to the government over this
refusal–which the High Court has agreed to hear.
The UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer,
has formally warned the UK that its refusal to
launch a judicial inquiry into
torture and rendition breaches international
law, specifically the
UN
Convention Against Torture. He has
written a private “intervention” letter to the
UK foreign secretary stating that the government has
“a legal obligation to investigate and to
prosecute”.
Melzer accuses the government of engaging in a
“conscious policy” of co-operating with
torture since 9/11, saying it is “impossible”
the practice was not approved or at least tolerated
by top officials.
UK’s secret torture policy
The MOD was revealed in 2019 to be operating a
secret policy allowing ministers to approve
actions which could lead to the torture of
detainees. The policy, contained in an internal MOD
document dated November 2018, allows ministers to
approve passing information to allies even if there
is a risk of torture, if “the potential benefits
justify accepting the risk and legal consequences”.
This policy also provides for ministers to
approve lists of individuals about whom information
may be shared despite a serious risk they could face
mistreatment. One leading lawyer has
said that domestic and international legislation
on the prohibition of torture is clear and that the
MOD policy supports breaking of the law by
ministers.
Amnesty for crimes committed by soldiers
There is a
long history of British soldiers committing
crimes during wars. In 2019 the government outlined
plans to grant immunity for offences by soldiers
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland that were
committed more than 10 years before.
These plans have been
condemned by the UN Committee Against Torture,
which has called on the government to “refrain from
enacting legislation that would grant amnesty or
pardon where torture is concerned. It should also
ensure that all victims of such torture and
ill-treatment obtain redress”.
The committee has specifically urged the UK to
“establish responsibility and ensure accountability
for any torture and ill-treatment committed by UK
personnel in Iraq from 2003 to 2009, specifically by
establishing a single, independent, public inquiry
to investigate allegations of such conduct.”
The government’s proposals are also likely to
breach UK obligations under the European
Convention on Human Rights, which obliges states to
investigate breaches of the right to life or the
prohibition on torture.
GCHQ’s mass surveillance
Files revealed by US whistleblower Edward Snowden
in 2013
show that the UK intelligence agency GCHQ had
been secretly intercepting, processing and storing
data concerning millions of people’s private
communications, including people of no intelligence
interest — in a programme named Tempora. Snowden
also revealed that the British government was
accessing personal communications and data collected
by the US National Security Agency and other
countries’ intelligence agencies.
All of this was taking place without public
consent or awareness, with no basis in law and with
no proper safeguards. Since these revelations, there
has been a long-running
legal battle over the UK’s unlawful use of these
previously secret surveillance powers.
In September 2018, the European Court of Human
Rights
ruled that UK laws enabling mass surveillance
were unlawful, violating rights to privacy and
freedom of expression. The court observed that the
UK’s regime for authorising bulk interception was
incapable of keeping “interference” to what is
“necessary in a democratic society”.
The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the body
which considers complaints against the security
services, also found that UK intelligence agencies
had unlawfully
spied on the communications of Amnesty
International and the Legal Resources Centre in
South Africa.
In 2014, revelations also
confirmed that GCHQ had been granted authority
to secretly eavesdrop on legally privileged
lawyer-client communications, and that MI5 and MI6
adopted similar policies. The guidelines appeared to
permit surveillance of journalists and others deemed
to work in “sensitive professions” handling
confidential information.
MI5 personal data
In 2019, MI5 was
found to have for years unlawfully retained
innocent British people’s online location data,
calls, messages and web browsing history without
proper protections, according to the Investigatory
Powers Commissioner’s Office which upholds British
privacy protections. MI5 had also failed to give
senior judges accurate information about repeated
breaches of its duty to delete bulk surveillance
data, and was criticised for mishandling sensitive
legally privileged material.
The commissioner
concluded that the way MI5 was holding and
handling people’s data was “undoubtedly unlawful”.
Warrants for MI5’s bulk surveillance were issued by
senior judges on the understanding that the agency’s
legal data handling obligations were being met —
when they were not.
“MI5 have been holding on to people’s
data—ordinary people’s data, your data, my data —
illegally for many years,”
said Megan Goulding, a lawyer for rights
organisation Liberty, which brought the case. “Not
only that, they’ve been trying to keep their really
serious errors secret — secret from the security
services watchdog, who’s supposed to know about
them, secret from the Home Office, secret from the
prime minister and secret from the public.”
Intelligence agencies committing criminal
offences
MI5 has been operating under a
secret policy that allows its agents to commit
serious crimes during counter-terrorism operations
in the UK, according to lawyers for human rights
organisations brin
ging a case to the Investigatory Powers
Tribunal.
The policy, referred to as the “third direction”,
allows MI5 officers to permit the people they have
recruited as agents to commit crimes in order to
secure access to information that could be used to
prevent other offences being committed. The crimes
potentially
include murder, kidnap and torture and have
operated for decades. MI5 officers are, meanwhile,
immune from prosecution.
A lawyer for the human rights organisations
argues that the issues raised by the case are
“not hypothetical”, submitting that “in the past,
authorisation of agent participation in criminality
appears to have led to grave breaches of fundamental
rights”. He points to the 1989 murder of Belfast
solicitor Pat Finucane, an attack carried out by
loyalist paramilitaries, including some agents
working for the British state.
The ‘James Bond clause’
British intelligence officers can be authorised
to commit crimes outside the UK.
Section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act
vacates UK criminal and civil law as long as a
senior government minister has signed a written
authorisation that committing a criminal act
overseas is permissible. This is sometimes known as
the “James Bond clause”.
British spies were reportedly given authority to
break the law overseas on 13 occasions in 2014
under this clause. GCHQ was given five
authorisations “removing liability for activities
including those associated with certain types of
intelligence gathering and interference with
computers, mobile phones and other types of
electronic equipment”. MI6, meanwhile, was given
eight such
authorisations in 2014.
Underage soldiers
Britain is the only country in Europe and Nato to
allow direct enlistment into the army at the age of
16.
One in four UK army recruits is now under the
age of 18. According to the
editors of the British Medical Journal,
“there is no justification for this state policy,
which is harmful to teen health and should be
stopped”. Child recruits are more likely than adult
recruits to end up in frontline combat, they add.
It was
revealed in 2019 that the UK continued to send
child soldiers to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan
despite pledging to end the practice. The UK says it
does not send under-18s to warzones, as required by
the UN Optional Protocol on the Involvement of
Children in Armed Conflict, known as the “child
soldiers treaty”.
The UK, however, deployed five 17-year-olds to
Iraq or Afghanistan between 2007 and 2010: it claims
to have done so mistakenly. Previous to this, a
minister
admitted that teenagers had also erroneously
been sent into battle between 2003 and 2005,
insisting it would not happen again.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
expressed
concern at the UK’s recruitment policy in 2008
and 2016, and recommended that the government “raise
the minimum age for recruitment into the armed
forces to 18 years in order to promote the
protection of children through an overall higher
legal standard”. Parliament’s Joint Committee on
Human Rights, the children’s commissioners for the
four jurisdictions of the UK, along with children’s
rights organisations, all support this call. DM
Mark Curtis is editor of Declassified UK
and tweets at @markcurtis30
This article was
published by "Daily
Maverick" -
Do you agree or disagree? Post
your comment here
==See Also==