EDM 370: Israeli settlements and settlement goods
December 18, 2008
That this House welcomes the statement from the Prime Minister in December that `one of the blockages’ to peace `is clearly the settlement issue’ and his desire to `seize the opportunity we have before us to make 2009 the Middle East year of peace’; notes that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal under international law, and is therefore concerned that British retailers may be breaking the law by selling goods from these settlements; further notes the detrimental impact that settlements have on the daily lives of Palestinians, with over 40 per cent of West Bank land confiscated for settlement construction; also notes that Palestinians are enduring increased violence at the hands of settlers; welcomes the Government’s actions on the mislabelling of settlement produce as `Produce of Israel’; and calls upon the Government to call for the dismantling of illegal settlements and to ensure that companies in the UK are not breaking the law by selling settlement goods.
Winter community report
December 15, 2008
My Winter 2008 report is available now. It covers the global financial crisis, the Cripplegate Foundation’s research into hidden poverty and hardship in Islington, local transport and housing issues, and how to get help with winter fuel bills. Click here to download a copy.
EDM 98: Lloyds TSB Plc and British charities
December 3, 2008
That this House notes the excellent work of the British charity Interpal in helping the Palestinians with £40 million worth of humanitarian aid development since 1994; acknowledges that Lloyds TSB Group Plc has served notice to the Islamic Bank of Britain to discontinue its services to Interpal or subsequently to face closure itself without offering any reason; further notes the wide distress that this has the potential to cause, in both the local Muslim community and the wider Arab world, since both hold the charity in particularly high regard; further notes that Interpal has withstood three previous investigations by the Charity Commission; and calls upon the Government to note the precedent this will lay down regarding any other charities Lloyds may choose to target and to ensure that this bank which is in receipt of enormous state benefit be pressurised to behave in a socially responsible manner.
Congo
December 1, 2008
The Congo’s existence within its current borders is solely down to the colonial adventures of former Belgian King Leopold in the 19th century, and the imperialist proceedings of the Congress of Berlin in 1884 which carved up Africa for the benefit of European states. No African was represented at the Congress, and after weeks of protracted negotiations the Congo was given, not to Belgium, but personally to King Leopold.
The brutality of his regime in the Congo was legendary and brilliantly described in Adam Hothschild’s book, King Leopold’s Ghost. The Irish nationalist Roger Casement, a British consul in Leopoldville, helped to expose the slave labour system employed by Leopold in collecting rubber. In 1908, on the death of Leopold, the Congo was effectively nationalised and handed to the Belgian state, which ran it in much the same way, with minimal development and maximum extraction of the huge mineral and forest wealth of the country.
Independence came in 1961 accompanied by the flight of the Belgian medical legal and administrative professionals, and Patrice Lumumba was elected first Prime Minister of independent Congo. He was assassinated two years later by forces supported by the CIA and in the succeeding war, where UN forces were deployed, the Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, was killed in a mysterious plane crash. Decades of dictatorship followed, when the military and in particular, Mbuto, gained incredible personal wealth at the expense of the poverty of the masses. Lauren Kabila eventually became President after an insurgent war in 1997, and was assassinated in 2001 and succeeded by his son Joseph. Kabila was subsequently declared the winner of a presidential election held two years ago, and the National Congress was elected separately a few months later.
Huge amounts of aid have gone to the Congo from Britain, EU and the US, with enormous Chinese investments in roads, railways and other infrastructure. However, poverty levels remain appalling, only half the children receive primary education and Kinshasa’s ditches, streets and even sewers are home to thousands of orphan children who escaped the conflict. In the past 10 years, over five million people have died, more than the total of all wars all over the planet during the same period. The war in the East is the most acute, where Nkunda’s forces, claiming to represent the Tutsi people of Rwanda and Eastern Congo, are fighting what they claim to be the remnants of the Hutu forces that carried out the Genocide in Rwanda in 1996.
Whilst there is a huge ethnic dimension to the fighting, there is the underlying cause which has to be addressed, and that is the enormous mineral wealth of the region. Corruption and military control of some mines has meant that minerals are illegally exported from the Congo, where no tax is paid on them. Their value is not realised for the people of the Congo, and huge profits are made by international dealers and mining companies. The inexorable connection of international trade, violence, corruption and poverty ends up with thousands of people trying to survive in refugee camps, and for the women of the East of Congo, rape and mutilation is a weapon of war.
MONUC, the UN force in the DRC has 17,000 troops in the Congo at the present time. It is the largest peace keeping force in the world but they are expected to cover the whole country, that’s an area larger than the whole of Western Europe. Most of their forces are in fact in the East, and have not proved themselves able to protect refugees or control the situation there.
In a statement to the House of Commons on 4th November, Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell reported that 50,000 people had been displaced in the last week alone, amounting to 250,000 since August, as well as of the 600,000 who were already displaced. The situation is very dangerous, and the immediate requirement is for a huge relief effort to be made.
Beyond that, the solution has to be political. The real relationship between Rwanda and Nkunda’s forces must be exposed, as does the corruption and inefficiency of the Congolese army. The Congo is a society being destroyed by its own riches, hardly any of which reach the local people who suffer from the most desperate poverty imaginable.
The root of the disaster lies in colonialism and mineral greed. Whilst aid and peacekeeping are essential at the present time, it is not until all the mineral wealth of the region is guaranteed to stay in the hands of the people of the region, that the conflict will continue to subside. The losers are the millions of children who never even live to see their first birthday, and the women who are forced into refugee camps for survival.
From Liberation, November 2008.
(Jeremy Corbyn MP is the Chair of Liberation and has twice visited the Congo, as election observer of the presidential election in November 2006, and with the All Party Parliamentary Great Lakes Region of Africa visit to Goma and refugee camps early in 2008.)
