Palestinians inspect the damage caused by an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis on 7 January. Photograph: Mohammed Dahman/AP
Experts say submission to international court of justice on Myanmar six weeks ago makes stance ‘wholly disingenuous’
The UK is facing accusations of double standards after formally submitting detailed legal arguments to the international court of justice in The Hague six weeks ago to support claims that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group through its mass mistreatment of children and systematically depriving people of their homes and food.
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Tayab Ali, the head of international law at Bindmans, said the significance of the UK’s submission on Myanmar “lay in showing the importance the UK attaches to adherence to the [UN] Genocide Convention and in showing the UK took a wide, and not a narrow, definition of acts of genocide, and the intent to commit genocide. It also made clear that the court should take into account risks to life after a ceasefire caused by disabilities, inability to reside in their homes and wider injustices.
“It would be wholly disingenuous if the UK, six week after advancing such a significant and broad definition of genocide in the case of Myanmar, now adopts a narrow one in the case of Israel.”
South Africa is likely to highlight the UK’s arguments about Myanmar, submitted in conjunction with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, when it makes its high-stakes accusation of genocide against Israel.
Protesters block Westminster Bridge during a Free Palestine Coalition demonstration in central London, January 6, 2024
PALESTINE campaigners responded with fury today after peer and former Labour MP John Woodcock said protest organisers should foot the bill for policing their demonstrations.
As thousands once again thronged the streets of towns and cities across Britain demanding an end to the slaughter in Gaza, Mr Woodcock, now known as Lord Walney, the government’s independent adviser on “political violence and disruption,” made the call for police costs to be dumped on organisers in a review carried out for the Home Office.
He specifically targeted protests by Palestine supporters who have campaigned tirelessly against Israel’s murderous actions for three months.
The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) accused Lord Walney of attempting to end “hundreds of years of the right to protest” and said it was the police themselves who chose to mobilise thousands of officers for the protests.
Stop the War co-convener Lindsey German told the Morning Star: “This is just the latest scheme to stop the demonstrations.
“The government, the police and Lord Whatever should be clear that the demonstrations will continue as part of our democratic rights.
“We completely reject the idea that we should be paying for the police. We do not ask the police to turn out. We police our demonstrations ourselves.”
BRITISH democracy is under attack. The threat comes not from foreign bogeymen but from our own overbearing state.
Lord Walney — as hard-right ex-Labour MP John Woodcock renamed himself after his ennoblement for services against Jeremy Corbyn — wants to ban protests, at least if they aren’t bankrolled by the rich.
The demand that protest organisers meet the cost of policing demonstrations is as dangerous as it is dishonest.
Woodcock claims “disorder” at Palestine demos justifies billing the organisers.
In fact the mass peace demonstrations (which Woodcock, who called on the public to vote for Boris Johnson in 2019 to dash prospects of a socialist government, terms “anti-Israel marches”) have been strikingly peaceful.
Clashes with police, where they have occurred at all, have taken place away from the main demonstrations and certainly beyond the reach of the organisers’ stewards. They have been rare, with most arrests taking place for allegedly hateful speech or signage rather than violence or vandalism.
It adds insult to injury that Lord Walney advises the Home Office to start charging people to protest when the most serious recent disorder on our streets featured far-right hooligans incited to mob the Cenotaph on November 11 by the then home secretary herself.
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Palestine demos are huge because Westminster is at loggerheads with the people it claims to represent. There is a gulf between the government and opposition’s endorsement of Israel’s murderous war and the popular demand for peace.
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Woodcock was made a lord precisely for betraying his party to help defeat that movement, something Lord Rooker (another ex-Labour MP) described as a “national service.” He was tasked by the serial liar he backed for PM with advising the British state on how to stop such movements arising again.
IAMLA joins UN agencies, UN experts and other lawyers in expressing deep concern that serious violations of international law are being committed in the Middle East conflict.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Lawyers Association (IAMLA), a global body comprising of more than 900 lawyers, former judges, and legal academics, has condemned the mass killing of innocent civilians in the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.
As part of the Voices for Peace campaign, an initiative to raise voices on behalf of the oppressed and encourage world peace, the Muslim lawyers sent a letter to world leaders in December. The letter calls on all states to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and warns of serious violations of international law in the commission of war crimes in the conflict. The group says it condemns the ‘abhorrent murder and hostage-taking of innocent civilians by Hamas forces on 07 October as unlawful and contrary to the teachings of Islam.’
They continue how the violations of international law by Hamas forces do not justify violations by Israeli forces.
“We are horrified by the grossly disproportionate bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces which has killed more than 20,000 people, about 70% of whom are said to be women and children,” the lawyers continue.
Despite Rishi Sunak’s attempts to rally his troops behind his plan and belief that there is a narrow path to victory, one Tory backbencher has candidly admitted that the Tories face ‘obliteration’ at the next general election.
Danny Kruger, the MP for Devizes, and founder of the New Conservatives Group, told a private event of Tory members organised by the thinktank ResPublica last October that the Tories had left the country ‘sadder, less united and less Conservative than we found it.”
The Guardian reported that he told the meeting: “The narrative that the public has now firmly adopted – that over 13 years things have got worse – is one we just have to acknowledge and admit.”
He added: “Some things have been done right and well. The free school movement that Michael Gove oversaw, and universal credit – and Brexit, even though it was in the teeth of the Tory party hierarchy itself, and mismanaged – nevertheless Brexit will be the great standing achievement of our time in office.
In May 2022 then UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak sabotaged the oil and gas windfall tax so that it was converted to a huge fossil fuel subsidy driving fossil fuel exploitation of the North Sea. This is a massive implicit fossil fuel subsidy while the UK government claims not to participate in fossil fuel subsidies. The UK taxpayer will be 91% financing development of the proposed Rosebank Oil development in the North Sea near the Faroe Islands. It is difficult to see any monetary benefits or justifications for the UK government financing foreigners to take North Sea oil. The UK plays no part other than paying for it, giving it away and buying it back from the international market at market rates if needed. The oil is going abroad and will be bought from abroad. Somebody please ask Rishi Sunak where is the benefit to UK.
Referring to subsidies to develop the Rosebank oil field, image of UK Prime Minister reads Hey foreigners in huge boats, I’ll pay £3billion to take all our oil.
It is very likely that fossil fuel exploitation is unviable without fossil fuel subsidies.
According to calculations by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), seven trillion U.S. dollars were spent on direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels in 2022. The war in Ukraine and the resulting rise in energy prices are partly responsible for the significant increase in the previous year.
But even before that, the trend was already upwards, as this infographic illustrates. Subsidies are also likely to increase in the future. According to analysts, the reason for this is the economic growth of the Global South and the resulting increase in the consumption of coal, oil and gas.
Government support for fossil fuels is equivalent to just over seven percent of the planet’s economic output. A direct comparison with another important government budget item, for example, shows how enormous this sum is. Education spending by all countries combined accounts for 4.3 percent of global gross domestic product.
Countering fossil fuel subsidies, according to the IMF, would not only offer a chance to put humanity back on track to meet its climate goals, but could also prevent 1.6 million premature deaths per year and increase government revenues by $4.4 trillion.
Addendum: Sunak is wasting this vast sum of money for some unknown reason. Is it corruption, does he expect some back in his back pocket or perhaps a job paying millions for nothing after being PM?
What I wanted to say was about these terrible floods that we’re experiencing at the moment. They are made much worse by climate change – that there is far more water in the air, that our climate has been destroyed. Getting back to this vast sum that Sunak is wasting. He’s wasting this vast sum and as a consequence our climate will be further damaged, will deteriorate further when it’s already fekked.
