UK faces court over arms sales to Indonesia, Israel
UK faces court over arms sales to Indonesia, Israel
Richard Norton-Taylor and John Aglionby, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, London/Singapore
The legality of Britain's arms sales to Israel and Indonesia is to be challenged in the courts on the grounds that they breach stated government policy, The Guardian has learned.
Bringing an unprecedented action, lawyers for human rights groups will tell the high court that the sales violate the government's criteria for export licenses.
They argue that the assurances of the Indonesian authorities that the arms would not be used for internal repression, and by Israel that they would not be used in the Occupied Territories, have proved hollow.
When the case against Indonesia was announced on Wednesday, human rights day, Amnesty International and Oxfam will challenge the UK government to sign a proposed arms-trade treaty which would outlaw the export of weapons likely to be used in "violations of international human rights or humanitarian law".
Britain's "consolidated criteria" -- in effect binding secondary legislation incorporating both UK and EU policy -- say that an export license will not be issued if there is a clear risk that the proposed export may be used for internal repression or international aggression, or may threaten regional stability.
A case against the UK's Department of Trade and Industry and its Foreign Office is being brought by an Indonesian, Aguswandi, who is associated with his country's human rights organization, Tapol.
"The British government has failed to admit that British weapons were being used in Aceh and is ignoring human rights violations," he said on Tuesday. He said British Hawk jets and Scorpion light tanks had been seen in Aceh province, where rebel forces are fighting for independence.
His lawyer, Jamie Beagent, whose firm is also preparing the case against Israel, said the risk of use for internal repression, mentioned in the criteria, was "patent".
The Guardian revealed last week that figures given to Menzies Campbell, the UK Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, showed that this year the government has approved export licenses for broad categories of arms, including machine guns, rockets and missiles, for Indonesia.
After foreign observers were refused access to Aceh, the UK government told MPs last month that it "remained concerned about the situation" there.
The UK Foreign Office says in its latest human rights report that although the professionalism of the Indonesian security forces has improved, "serious problems remain, with allegations of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, arbitrary detention, rape, torture and mistreatment of prisoners".
In the latest operation to crush the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Sumatra, 40,000 heavily armed soldiers have pushed the rebels into the jungle-covered hills.
The death toll, officially put at about 1,600 since President Megawati Soekarnoputri declared martial law in May, is impossible to assess because there is a de facto ban on foreign media and local journalists are strongly intimidated into what the military describes as "patriotic" reporting.
Official figures show that a large quantity of arms and internal security equipment is being sold to Israel, despite London's public criticism of the country's human rights record and growing violence.
Amnesty and Oxfam say that Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Macedonia, Costa Rica, Finland and the Netherlands have pledged support for an international arms trade treaty which is backed by the UK Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy.