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Democratic Republic of Congo

Thank you, Mr. Hancock, for the fair way in which you are chairing this debate. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) and for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) and the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) for the report of their harrowing experience. We must consider the history and the victims of the DRC. I believe that I am the only Member in this Chamber who has a substantial Congolese community in their constituency. The community that I have the honour to represent dates back to the 1960s, when Patrice Lumumba's family first arrived in the Finsbury park area of Islington. They have been there ever since, and there is a substantial Congolese community as a result. A local church, St. Mellitus, and its excellent priest Father David Ardagh-Walter, actively work with the community. The church has services in Lingala and in many other ways gives wonderful support to distressed people in the community. I put on the record my appreciation of them. I have not had the good fortune to visit the DRC—I hope that I will in the not-too-distant future—although I have visited Rwanda and Angola. I had an experience that does not in any sense compare with that of my colleagues, but it involved an interesting point of history. I visited the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Brussels, which was constructed by Leopold. On one level, it is a bizarre and absurd folly, but at another level it shows the lunacy of the Belgian policy in the Congo from the mid-19th century onwards and the way in which Leopold manipulated the Congress of Berlin to get exactly what he wanted, which was the private ownership of the Congo. Human rights abuses have gone on ever since. Indeed, there were many reports of human rights abuses at the turn of the century. Roger Casement, a British diplomatic representative, exposed many of them. Sadly, he was later executed for his part in the Easter rising, but he is fondly remembered in Islington for his work in helping to bring about Irish independence. The intensity of media coverage of conflicts around the world is a distorting prism. It used to be said that a war was serious if it was happening, but that it was very serious if Kate Adie was there—it had to be taken notice of. We now have 24-hour news running on cable channels all over the world, but if I were to step outside this room, stop 10 people in the street and ask them where is the worst conflict in the world, they would talk about Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps Colombia; I would be very surprised if anybody mentioned the DRC, or, indeed, any conflict in Africa. I am not minimising the effect of those other conflicts, but at least 3 million people have died in recent years in the DRC. The deaths, violence and abductions continue. A first world war rate of slaughter is happening in one of the largest countries in Africa with the largest mineral resources available anywhere. It is clear that the intrusion in DRC affairs by forces from Angola, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda and several other countries over the years has not helped the situation, but made it made it much worse. The Lusaka accords allowed an opportunity to withdraw those forces, and in many cases the formal armies were withdrawn, but I am far from convinced that informal support is not being given to forces in eastern DRC by neighbouring countries and Governments. We should be very cautious about those countries' protestations of innocence. On immigration matters, Committee Room 14 hosted a meeting of hundreds of Congolese people who were terrified of being returned to DRC. I hope that the British Government will no longer return people to DRC, but recognise that the situation there is incredibly dangerous. Several speakers mentioned street children. Unless we do something to support street children—the victims of war—by giving them hope, education and housing, they will become the terror gangs, criminals and fighters of tomorrow. They know no other course. Finally, we must consider what the international mineral companies are doing and where coltan, diamonds, gold and all other minerals are coming from. The Congolese people see nothing of those minerals, neither their benefits nor their profits, but because of them, they see environmental destruction, conflict and the arming of illicit groups. There are people in this very city who have made an awful lot of money out of the death and destruction in DRC, and they, too, should be brought to book.