Iran

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

My hon. Friend is right. We must do everything we can, in Iran or elsewhere, to protect religious minorities and everyday citizens against appalling abuses. She gives a fine example of the kind of thing we are dealing with. She certainly has my full support and I thank her for her personal efforts; I know this is an issue that she is passionate about and works very hard on.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The human rights abuses extend to women and girls and also the LGBT community. Since 1979, between 4,000 and 6,000 members of the LGBT community have been executed. Does my hon. Friend see that as a cause for concern?

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

My hon. Friend is completely right. That is something that people in this and many other countries would be horrified by. The community has suffered for many years and Iran in particular has a disgraceful record this this respect. Not just in Iran but around the world the UK has an important role to play in promoting LGBT rights and ensuring that everybody enjoys the same rights that we enjoy in this country. There is still a long way to go, even in this country, in what we can do to support people, but in Iran there is a huge problem. I thank him for his point; he is spot on.

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[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. As leader of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe, I have a great deal of respect for the European Court of Human Rights and for the liberties—our liberties—that it defends, but those liberties continue to be fundamentally challenged in the dark authoritarian corners of our shared international community, and no more so than in Iran.

Iran’s human rights abuses are well documented, and we have discussed some of them. They make for disturbing reading. Never in the Islamic Republic’s 44-year brutal reign has it faced such widespread and far-reaching calls for freedom. The country has been rocked by the largest and most diverse protests yet. By December, an estimated 516 Iranian civilians had been killed by the regime as a result of egregious and brutal crackdowns on freedom of expression, contributing to the almost 600 executions that had been reported over 2022—the highest figure since 2015. Many were peaceful protesters killed with live ammunition and buried in unmarked graves without their families receiving notification. One particularly heinous tactic that the regime is using is chemical attacks, which it unleashed against a reported 91 girls’ schools from November 2022 to March 2023, leaving hundreds hospitalised. I ask the Minister what assessment has been made of those sickening attacks.

Iran’s state-endorsed summary executions and the ever-tightening screw on the rights of women and girls point to crimes against humanity. Tehran even recognises that its treatment of women and girls diverges significantly from the freedoms that women enjoy in the west, which Iran’s Supreme Leader declared in 2017 to be a

“Zionist plot to destroy human community”.

That would be laughable if it were not so horrific for the girls living there. What more can the Minister’s Department do to support the rights of Iranian women and children suffering under the tyranny of Tehran?

Iran’s suppression of the press is no less ruthless, leading to its being ranked 177th out of 179 nations in the 2023 world press freedom index. For their coverage of Amini’s brutal murder, two journalists, Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi, have been accused of colluding with hostile powers, a charge that carries the death penalty under Iran’s Islamic law. In October, the IRGC accused the two of working for the CIA. Mohammadi’s lawyers have reportedly been denied the chance to defend her. We must call for their trials to be held in public, not behind closed doors where the regime has so often delivered corrupt verdicts with impunity.

Documents obtained from its official business registry show that in order to control its desperate population, Tehran has turned to Chinese face recognition surveillance technology. What steps can be taken to ensure that China does not export that technology to Iran? Will the Minister commit to providing ordinary Iranians with the software to gain internet access and protect journalistic autonomy? We must ensure that they do, whether overtly or covertly.

The treatment of Iran’s LGBT community is reprehensible, even entailing the risk of hanging sentences designed for maximum suffering and intimidation. Human rights groups claim that, since 1979, between 4,000 and 6,000 gay people have been executed. I am confident that the Minister will agree that the Government must do more to ensure that all people should be free to love who they wish, and that they will jointly inquire whether the LGBT rights organisations that the Government are empowering to assist in giving asylum to and strengthening Iran’s LGBT community can be strengthened even further.

The buck for all this stops with President Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Khamenei. What good are sanctions if the regime’s two most powerful despots are exempt? The Government must prove to ordinary Iranians that we are prepared to hold their tyrants accountable through targeted and personal sanctions. That is the only way we can fulfil our commitment to fundamental human rights, for the rule of law must be the ethos of a global Britain, unafraid to stand up for the individual and proud to lead our allies in the pursuit of justice.

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[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) on securing this crucial debate, because the Iranian regime represents a troubling international challenge that requires urgent attention from the United Kingdom. I am grateful that Members across the House are in attendance this morning and that we have the opportunity to press the Minister on these important matters.

I am concerned that for some years the UK’s policy towards Iran has been largely incoherent, with no clear strategy in place to address concerns on the international stage or, indeed, domestically in Iran. The sanctions on individuals involved in the violent crackdown on protesters following the death of Mahsa Amini in September last year have had a limited impact on the situation on the ground in Iran. As of June 2023, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) said, more than 500 protesters have been killed and as many as 20,000 have been arrested, although those figures are likely to be underestimates.

The regime has largely been able to suppress protest through strict censorship, through the enforcement of internet blackouts and through police brutality, so my first question to the Minister is what assessment the Foreign Office has made of the impact of the sanctions currently in place. Is the Department now considering employing the UK’s Magnitsky-style sanctions, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has called for?

[John Howell]

I applaud what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but I wonder whether he has picked up on the role that Iran is playing in the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We are moving to a conclusion of that in favour of both countries—a peaceful settlement—but Iran seems to be out to spoil it and to make a big play of the situation.

[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The problem is that Iran is a disruptive force in large parts of the globe; it seeks to destabilise and undermine political deals bringing countries together. He makes a very sound case about what is happening in that part of the world.

The picture internationally is no less grave. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military, has never been more powerful. Indeed, it is perhaps an understatement to refer to the IRGC as a branch; Reuters has called it an industrial empire, and it is estimated that anywhere between 10% and 50% of the Iranian economy is controlled through the IRGC’s subsidiaries and trusts. The IRGC has been linked to terror attacks, hostage takings, assassinations, human rights violations and the intimidation of journalists and critics across the globe, including here in the United Kingdom. From Yemen to Lebanon, from Iraq to Israel, and from Syria to Saudi Arabia, Iran has waged an ideological war against peace and stability—the very point that the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) was making. The IRGC provides financial support to several terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban.