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Debate on the Address

My Lords, I will focus on the Government’s commitment in the gracious Speech to the eradication of poverty worldwide. In so doing, I will highlight the plight of people in three areas I visited recently: northern Uganda, Burma and southern Sudan, where conflict and oppression have long been contributory factors towards grinding poverty. Just three weeks ago, I was in northern Uganda and last week I drew your Lordships’ attention to the continuing hardships of the people there and their acute fear of renewed conflict. I shall not repeat those points this evening because the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Winchester has spoken eloquently on those issues. However, I ask the Minister if Her Majesty’s Government will ensure that the problems of northern Uganda will be discussed fully at the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Kampala. I turn briefly to the tragic plight of the people of Burma, which has been seen on TV screens around the world, as monks, nuns and civilians made their courageous public stand for democracy until the brutal SPDC regime moved in with violence to obliterate communications and punish the demonstrators. Only a trickle of information has since leaked out about torture, killing and the continued imprisonment of at least 2,000 demonstrators, including many monks. We have even less knowledge of the fate of the ethnic national groups such as the Shan, Karen and Karenni peoples fighting for survival along the eastern border in a bitter war which has left 500,000 living as displaced people, including 90,000 still living and dying in appallingly harsh and precarious conditions inside Burma. They are hiding in the jungle with little food, shelter, health care or education. Meanwhile, the SPDC regime continues to attack villages, to murder, rape, torture, to use forced labour in conditions so harsh that many perish and to force civilians to act as human minesweepers. The plight of other ethnic groups such as the Chin, Kachin and Rohingya people is also dire. Although not engaged in active conflict, they suffer all the horrors of occupation, with SPDC troops stealing their crops and livestock as well as carrying out extrajudicial killings, rape, torture and forced labour. Health care is virtually unobtainable, so many die of treatable diseases. No education is allowed beyond primary level. One woman whom I met speaks for countless others as her story is typical. Her husband was forced to serve as a porter and as a human minesweeper and was blown up. She was then compelled to work as a porter, carrying 30 kg of rice or ammunition from dawn to dusk with little rest, food or water. At night, she and other female porters had to undertake a different kind of service for the SPDC soldiers. She eventually escaped to Thailand with her children, but her eldest son was so badly beaten by the SPDC that he suffers permanent brain damage. The ethnic national peoples of Burma are in a horrendous predicament: those who oppose the regime militarily in an attempt to retain some freedom face the threat of ethnic cleansing by the SPDC’s overwhelming military might, and those who seek accommodation by laying down their arms face physical and cultural extinction by strangulation of resources and systematic oppression. I welcome assurances given by the Government in another place on 29 October to increase pressure on the SPDC through increased EU sanctions and statements by UN Security Council. I also welcome the commitment by DfID to increase aid. In the welcome increase in aid, will there be more provision for those suffering and dying as internally displaced people in the jungles of Burma and the occupied territories, including support for organisations whose personnel risk their lives to take aid across the border? How do Her Majesty’s Government assess the role played by China and India? Is China doing all that it should to bring the SPDC to account? If not, what is the Government’s view of the appropriateness of China acting as host to the forthcoming Olympic Games? And will the Government raise with India its policies of selling arms and providing military training to the SPDC? I turn to Sudan. The situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate. I am not going to focus on Darfur because that situation is in the public domain. I turn to other areas in Sudan such as the south, the Nuba mountains, the Southern Blue Nile and Abyie county, where the people are suffering acute deprivation and extreme poverty, often without any aid, and where the political situation is so serious that the fragile peace achieved by the comprehensive peace agreement—CPA—may be broken. Indeed, in some areas, the discussion centres on not ““if”” but ““when”” war will break out again. The Government in Khartoum have been depriving the areas now administered by the Government of Southern Sudan of resources essential for the reconstruction of the infrastructure devastated in the bitter war which was waged by the National Islamic Front regime against the south from 1989 until two years ago, a war—indeed, a jihad, as they called it—in which 2 million perished and 4 million were displaced. The refusal of the Government in Khartoum to honour the conditions of the CPA and to share the resources needed for the rehabilitation of the south has led to such dismay, frustration and anger that, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned, the representatives of the Government of Southern Sudan have walked out from the proceedings of the Government in Khartoum and the leader of the south, Salve Kiir, has accused Khartoum of serious breaches of its commitments. In our work, we witness the effects of these developments. Earlier this year, with my organisation HART, we visited eastern Upper Nile and Equatoria. People were suffering and dying from preventable and treatable diseases, including leprosy, malaria, meningitis, measles and problems with childbirth. The people are inevitably disaffected with the present situation: they feel marginalised, alienated and dissatisfied with the peace process. In many places there is no provision of aid. In others only Islamic aid organisations such as Dawa Islamia may be present, but the people often refuse to go to it for help, as it requires conversion to Islam and the local people say that they would rather die than convert. My noble friend Lord Thomas of Swynnerton has highlighted the growth of militant and strategic Islam in Europe. We find similarities in Sudan. The leaders of the south have in their possession a document outlining the proposals for the Islamisation of southern Sudan, with a budget of US$29 million for Islamic teacher training colleges, schools, school uniforms, hospitals, clinics, medical staff salaries, medicines and so on. They claim that this budget has been sent to Saudi Arabia and to Libya and that money is pouring into the south, the design being to use humanitarian aid as a means of conversion to Islam, and they point out that the name of the major Islamic aid organisation, Dawa Islamia, means not ““aid”” but ““conversion””. The peoples of the south and the other marginalised areas are deeply concerned. They claim: "““We are losing in peace what we managed to hold onto at such terrible cost in war””." There is clearly an urgent need for unconditional and uncompromising humanitarian aid in these vast, war-torn regions of Sudan. Therefore, I ask the Minister: will the Government recognise the need for assistance to the Government of Southern Sudan and for independent resources to be available to the people of the south and not channelled through Khartoum? And will the Government consider supporting aid organisations working in areas where at present there is no independent assistance? Finally, the United Kingdom has a seat on the Assessment and Evaluation Commission of the CPA and is charged, together with Kenya and Ethiopia, with responsibility for observing and monitoring the implementation of the CPA. But I understand that this commission has not been functioning. Many people in Sudan believe that the United Kingdom could reactivate it and that it would be critical to the success of the peace agreement. Therefore, I ask the Minister: will the Government undertake as a priority to fulfil their obligations as a member of this commission to reactivate it and to work through it? This is very important, because if the peoples of southern Sudan despair of achieving a peace that will enable them to rebuild their land in ways that enshrine the fundamental values of freedom and justice for which they fought and for which so many have died, and if they see a strategic Islam, well resourced from Khartoum, gaining ground, they may feel that another war, with all its horrors, may be their only option for survival. Such a development would be catastrophic for not only some but all of Sudan.