argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): I shall come to that point as well, but let me say now that the whole purpose of the efforts of the International Syria Support Group—and those of other elements, under Staffan de Mistura—is to answer the question that my right hon. Friend has so eloquently posed The fifth failure lies in the surrounding countries, particularly Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Although they have acted heroically in dealing with the extraordinary number of people who have fled across the borders, often under gunfire, there has been a lack of support from the international community for countries whose populations have ballooned, given that one in three of the people in Jordan and Lebanon has fled from Syria. Britain has undoubtedly done her stuff. I am pleased to see that the Secretary of State for International Development is present; she can be extremely proud of the Department that she has inherited for the outstanding work that Britain has done in helping refugees in the surrounding countries—more, I might add, than has been done by the whole of the rest of the European Union.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): Not in respect of the camp. On the basis of my knowledge of these matters, I think that my hon. Friend the Minister of State was right to say that air drops should be used only as a last resort, but clearly they should be used if we reach that point The sixth and final barrier to progress has, of course, been the reception of refugees in Europe, where there has not been proper processing. Many of these people have cast themselves into the hands of the modern-day equivalent of the slave trader in the hope of reaching a more prosperous and safer shore. I think that Europe as a whole—which, admittedly, has its inward-facing problems—has failed to address this problem adequately, and to show proper solidarity with Greece and Italy as they tackle a very severe problem There are only two ways in which this can end: a military victory by one side or the other, or through negotiation. I submit that there is no way in which a military victory will be secured by any side in Syria. We must therefore hope that the fighting stops as soon as possible in order to create the space in which negotiations for the future can take place. We have all seen the heroic work that has been done by Staffan de Mistura, and the backing provided to him and the International Syria Support Group is essential. I will say more about that in a moment. To bring about a cessation in fighting we need the influence of the United Nations, of the great powers and of the countries in the region who have influence over some of the protagonists, in particular Iran and the Saudis. Where a country is able to exercise influence to stop the fighting and create the space for politicians to engage, in Geneva and elsewhere, it is absolutely essential that it should do so.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): I commend my right hon. Friend for securing this debate. Does he agree that the Russian military has a deep history with the Syrian military, and that it is in Russia’s gift to deliver a peace process? When we visited Russia as part of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Russian politicians kept reminding us they wanted to be taken seriously by the whole world and that they were a serious power. In order to be taken seriously, however, they really should be following the rule of law and international law. They should not be aiding and abetting war criminals such as Assad.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point The extraordinary misfortune of timing that I mentioned is being exacerbated by international attention being elsewhere. In Europe, Brexit, the issues with the euro, Greece, the German banks and the focus on migration have all meant that the focus has been on the symptoms rather than the causes of this conflict. In the United States, politicians have turned in on themselves as the election approaches, and Obama has underwritten an isolationist approach. However, there are people such as Senator Lindsey Graham and Secretary Kerry who are seized of the importance of this moment in tackling what Russia is doing. Then of course there is Russia, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) has alluded. It is behaving like a rogue elephant, shredding international humanitarian law and abusing its veto powers in the UN Security Council. It is using the veto to protect itself from its own war crimes.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): I shall come on to the hon. Lady’s second point in a moment. On her first point, I agree with her. The UN Secretary general called for such a referral only yesterday The attack on the convoy marked a new low, with 18 humanitarian workers killed, food and medicines destroyed and warehouses and medical facilities seriously damaged. We should be clear about what is happening in Aleppo. The Russians are not attacking military formations. They are not engaging with militias and fighters. They are attacking hospitals and a terrified population, which is now down from 2 million to under 250,000. People are hiding in the cellars and the rubble that is Aleppo today. Last week, the M10 underground hospital was attacked by bunker-busting bombs to break through its roof and by cluster bombs aimed specifically at harming and injuring individual people. The location of that hospital was known to every combatant. There is no doubt that attacking that hospital was an international war crime.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jonathan Simon Djanogly (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly strong case. When it comes to Russia, are we not living in some kind of parallel universe? On the one hand, we see the Russians dropping bunker bombs on hospitals. On the other, we are allowing them to come and trade in our country as though nothing was going on. Do we not need a general review of our relationship with Russia?
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): The Russians are doing to the United Nations precisely what Italy and Germany did to the League of Nations in the 1930s, and they are doing to Aleppo precisely what the Nazis did to Guernica during the Spanish civil war.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is on to an extremely good point. What is needed is a concerted effort by the international community uniting to make Russia feel the cost of its support of and participation in the barbaric bombardment of Aleppo.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): That is the very point I was making We should single Russia out as a pariah. Like any bully, the Kremlin craves relevance, and it is winning as long as no one stands up to it. Russia must be confronted for its attacks on innocent civilians, both diplomatically and using hard power including sanctions and economic measures. We must seek to build support for multilateral military action to discharge our responsibility to protect. This is not about attacking Russia. It is about defending innocent civilians. It is about basic humanitarian decency and protection from the kind of barbarism and tyranny we hoped we had consigned to the last century.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady makes an extremely powerful point. We cannot do this alone. We must use Britain’s outstanding connections, not least through our diplomatic reach, our membership of NATO, our relationship with America and our centrality in the European firmament—Brexit notwithstanding.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): I think the hon. Gentleman would agree that, by having this three-hour debate today, we are moving some way in that direction I have a number of specific questions for the Foreign Secretary to address when he answers this debate. First, he has said that the UK is taking the lead on sanctions on Russia. Will he tell the House what steps the Foreign Office has taken towards increasing bilateral or EU sanctions on Russia itself? Secondly, there are plans for a new addition to the Nord Stream gas pipeline running from Russia to western Europe—Nord Stream 2—allowing Russia to bypass transit countries and, therefore, transit costs in eastern Europe. Will the Foreign Office be working with our east European allies to block the new pipeline?
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): The Foreign Secretary has recently been in Turkey. I am sure that the House will be interested in his comments My third question for the Foreign Secretary is, what work has been done to catalogue and record human rights abuses—both individual and collective—in Syria? Will he update the House on the work of the Foreign Office, which was started and commissioned by the National Security Council in 2011, to collect evidence that can be used in the future to hold human rights abusers to account no matter how long it takes Fourthly, what steps has the Foreign Secretary taken with his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to explore the feasibility of imposing and enforcing a no-fly zone over specific areas in Syria? Does he agree that, with the use of naval and air assets in the eastern Mediterranean, it is entirely possible both to monitor and enforce a no-fly zone with our allies? What steps will he take to make it clear to the international community that a no-fly zone is a matter of will and not of practicality?
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): That is extremely welcome news both inside the House and outside I have one final point on the no-fly zone. Will my right hon. Friend make a specific point of meeting the former Prime Minister John Major to explore his experiences in imposing a no-fly zone and a safe haven in northern Iraq during the 1990s?
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a good point, but those S-300 missiles do not affect the viability of imposing a no-fly zone. My final question for the Foreign Secretary is, what steps are he and his Department taking to support and enhance the work of the International Syria Support Group? Staffan de Mistura has said that the suspension of bilateral negotiations between the two chairs, US and Russia, "should not and will not" affect the existence of the group. What steps is Britain taking to provide financial, diplomatic and political support to the International Syria Support Group? This group includes all of the five permanent members, Italy, Turkey, Japan, Iran, and the key Arab countries. It represents the UN, the EU and the Arab League. It needs to be greatly expanded. There should be an office, for example, working with and adjacent to the Geneva talks. It should carry out work on the key ingredients for a peace whenever that may come, and we should give very strong support to it.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. I hope that when he is considering sanctions, both economic and otherwise, the Foreign Secretary will have a view on that The international community faces a choice. Are we so cowed and so poleaxed by recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan that we are incapable now of taking action? Was all the international handwringing after Rwanda, Bosnia and Srebrenica when we said "never again" just hot air? Is all the work on the responsibility to protect—RtoP—which was unanimously adopted by the United Nations Security Council and agreed by the entire international community just so many words? Let us at least be clear here among ourselves. We have a choice: we can turn away from the misery and suffering of children and humanity in Aleppo; we can once again, on our watch, appease today’s international law breaker, Russia, and continue to find eloquent excuses for inaction; or we can be seen to take a lead to explore the situation energetically and with determination with our allies in NATO, Europe, America, and the United Nations and refuse to take no for an answer. We can look at every possible way of ending this barbarism and this tyranny, which is threatening the international rules-based system, destroying international order and engulfing the Syrian people.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Alistair James Hendrie Burt (Conservative, Centre-right): The point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield and myself, and the point of the hon. Gentleman’s question, is that Syria demonstrates the failure of these international mechanisms now. If a veto is continually used on the UN Security Council, what can we do? My right hon. Friend rightly argued—this was recognised on both sides of the House—that the League of Nations was damaged by the stripping of its authority. That is the point that we have reached, and if we cannot rely on these mechanisms, what are we now going to do?
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Alistair James Hendrie Burt (Conservative, Centre-right): There may be international mechanisms that involve talk, but perhaps there are other things that we can do, and I think that that will be the mood of the House A little bit of history will provide a pointer forward; we need not review it all. Assad knew exactly what he was doing when the revolt started in 2011. Syria was not beset by radical Islam, but he released prisoners from his prisons to join radical Islamic bands because he wanted to create the narrative of his providing stability against terrorism. The narrative has succeeded. It gave him the excuse to attack his own people. That reached a nadir in 2013, with chemical weapons attack on his people. That was a fundamental point. I am not going to rehearse what was said in the House—there are reasons for colleagues to make the decisions that they did—but by stepping back at that moment, the moment not to destroy Assad but to get him back to the negotiating table by convincing him that something would stand in his way was lost.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Alistair James Hendrie Burt (Conservative, Centre-right): They are; we learned that intervention has consequences, but so does non-intervention. We talk about non-intervention, but Syria has had intervention from Russia, from Hezbollah and from the Iranians. I remember briefings in the House, talking to colleagues and saying that, if the ultimate answer to Syria is a victory for Assad, for Russia, for Iran and for Hezbollah, and if we think that that will be in the United Kingdom’s best interests, I think we ought to think again. So we move on, and it is all very well to hear the history The involvement of Russia, which the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury bravely mentioned, is a crucial part. Russia needs to understand that savagery stokes terrorism; it does not end it. Russia is rightly concerned about the possibility of radicalism in Chechnya and all that, but its efforts to deal with it are failing. Part of this discussion is being very clear that what is happening and what Russia is doing will fuel the terrorism of the future and will do nothing to prevent it.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Alistair James Hendrie Burt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Anyone who thought that Russia had any other agenda was fooling themselves. Russia’s agenda in the area is very mixed. First, it is to provide a bulwark against radical Islam in its own country. Secondly, it is to demonstrate to people in the region that it is now a power, as it has seen the United States retreat. Thirdly, it is to consolidate its own interests, which do indeed go very deep. But that vacuum is now being seized, so what do we do I turn to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield said towards the end of his remarks. This is about an effort of will. The fundamental failure in Syria in the past couple of years has been to give an impression that no one would stand up against the attacks on people in Syria because we have lost the will, not to advance an ideological agenda, but to defend and protect people. That is what R2P is about. The calculation is whether trying to enforce a no-fly zone, trying to protect the people on the ground, would be challenged by the powers of Syria and Russia, or whether that would be the point at which they would say, "No more killing," and proceed on the way of negotiation and peace. That is actually the point that we have now reached.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Alistair James Hendrie Burt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, because what she says is exactly right. Those who are killing civilians in Aleppo are relying on the fact that we fear escalation and we worry. People therefore do nothing. We did not know what the consequences of 2013 would be, and we worried about intervention. However, we know now, and accordingly, we know what will happen in Aleppo over the next few months if nothing is done. That is the point that we have reached. Ultimately, we are talking about an act of will. If a force determined to do the unspeakable is met with moral argument but little else, the determined force will win. We have reached the stage at which we have to declare—I look forward to the Foreign Secretary making this clear—that that is a point beyond which we are no longer prepared to go.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Robert Alexander Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): On the International Criminal Court, I am worried that any action would be hamstrung by Russia in the Security Council, which in some way controls the ICC. I speak as someone who has given evidence in five trials there.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Crabb (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right to express those concerns. The ICC has not proved itself effective in many respects in upholding international law, but we have a new opportunity. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) said, a lot of this boils down to an effort of will on the part of the international community. I shall come on to address that point.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Desmond Angus Swayne (Conservative, Centre-right): There have been suggestions that the International Development Secretary is disinclined to allow officials to shovel money out of the door towards the year end to meet a 0.7% target if those projects are not up to scratch. She is quite right to say so, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that, given the state of need, there is no shortage of very effective ways of spending that money?
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Desmond Angus Swayne (Conservative, Centre-right): We must be absolutely clear as a House precisely what we mean by this demand for a no-fly zone. The right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) pointed out how that worked in Iraq, where we had to take down Iraqi planes. This would require the will to take down Russian planes. Perhaps that is the right answer, but we must be aware of what we are contemplating.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Georg John Tugendhat (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is making some very powerful points. This is a fight not only for the people and the children of Aleppo—a point made so powerfully by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell)—but very much for ourselves: the international order we all rely on, the migrant crisis we all see and the expansion of Russia we all feel. NATO, the west and the UK demand action.
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is understandably painting a heart-rending picture of what is happening in Syria. It seems to me, having listened to two speeches, that the SNP’s position is to equate our military intervention with that of Vladimir Putin, and to argue that we should step aside from this carnage and hope that a unilateral act of disarmament on our part will somehow instil in Bashar al-Assad a spirit of generosity towards his own people that he has not yet shown. Does the hon. Lady not realise how absurd the SNP’s position is? Does she not recognise that it is only through both military engagement and humanitarian work that we will be able to bring relief to the suffering people of that country?
Aleppo and Syria — House of Commons, 2016-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) on securing this valuable debate and commend him for the power of his speech. I also thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting the debate. We have heard speeches or interventions from 43 right hon. and hon. Members, and I think that every one has made clear the horror of the House at the suffering being endured by the people of Aleppo, where rebel-held districts have come under furious attack from the Assad regime and from Russia, with the help of Iranian-backed militias Let me spell out some of the consequences. At this moment, the 275,000 inhabitants of eastern Aleppo are under siege. They are isolated from the outside world, subjected to constant bombardment, and prevented from receiving humanitarian aid. Their power and water supplies have been cut off in what has become a signature tactic of the Assad killing machine: the besieging of civilian populations. What we are now seeing in eastern Aleppo is the biggest and, potentially, the deadliest siege since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war more than five years ago Last week the United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, warned that eastern Aleppo might be "totally destroyed" by the end of the year. In the past two weeks, at least 376 people—half of them children—have been killed, and another 1,266 have been injured. Every hospital in eastern Aleppo is believed to have been bombed, some more than once, and several have been put out of action. Hospitals have been targeted with such frequency and precision that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this must be deliberate policy. As the House will know, intentionally attacking a hospital amounts to a war crime It is time, I think, for all these incidents to be properly and fully investigated with a view to assembling the necessary evidence and ensuring that justice is done—and, yes, I say in answer to questions that have been raised by several Members today that we do think that there could be advantage in the procedures of the International Criminal Court. I remind the House that in recent history, war criminals have been successfully prosecuted decades after their offences.