Global Research

The remarkable aspiration of the British Foreign Office to only accuse the administrations of Libya and Iraq for the current state of events there, concealing their initial cause, consisting in initiation by the West and Great Britain in the first place of the recent military intervention in these states in breaking the international law.

On September 30 the British Foreign Office published updates for the annual report on the human rights in the “countries of concern”, which critically stated that “progress in abidance of human rights  Libya and Iraq  continues being very slow”.

According to British diplomats, such state of affairs in Libya is determined by the “volatile political situation, Libyan government’s ongoing difficulties in exerting full control over security, lack of government capacity, an under-developed judicial system, and limited understanding across the country of the practical application of human rights”. Serious problems are outlined in treatment of the prisoners, claims are made for the appropriate execution of rights of the convicts.

In Iraq case British analysts attribute the major problem in the sphere of human rights to “deteriorating security situation in Iraq” and mass executions of convicted accused of terrorism.

These updates of the Foreign Office cannot be overlooked not only because of the topics touched by the British experts and complexity of the inner-political processes, occurring in these recently influential and successful Arab states.

History of the Western, in the first place British manipulations of the Arab world goes far beyond the last century, although in the XX century Great Britain together with the USA actively tried to alter the map of the Middle East, overturning the undesirable regimes and getting rid of the hostile leaders.The major driving force of these policies were definitely the interests of the economic benefit, struggle for the access to the energy sources and control over the trading routes.

From the middle of the XX century the official London and Washington neglecting the rights of the people inhabiting Middle East countries organized military expeditions aiming at destabilization of the secular Arab states. Particularly, in 1956 the Suez crisis was provoked and an armed intervention in Egypt was prepared, which, however, failed. There were two attempts on Naser´s life, which also failed. There were attempts to stir up two revolutions in Syria, but these attempts weren´t successful either.

Today the recently prosperous Naser´s, Kaddafi´s and Hussein´s states are ravaged, their resources ransacked, state infrastructure ruined and children grow surrounded by gun sights. All these happened first of all because of the Western unlawful military interventions which broke the law of war prevention (jus contra bellum) and international humanitarian law (jus in bello). From the legal standpoint no armed rebels in the domestic conflict (either in Libya, Iraq, Syria or other country) cannot be looked at as civilians and NATO cannot have authority not only to lend assistance to a side of conflict, but even to its defense. To say nothing about the delivery of sophisticated weapons to opposition which is now spreading throughout the region and being used by various extremist and terrorist groups, including Al-Qaida jihadists.

Speaking of human rights violation in Libya and Iraq, Foreign Office by some “strange coincidence” didn´t point to the concern of the guilt by its authorities in the deaths of civilians in Libya during British air force attacks in Tripoli. Neither they speak about the deliberate deception of the kingdom´s nationals when the decision to intervene the British army in Iraq was made on the basis of the false data about Saddam´s Hussein´s possession of the weapons of mass destruction.

According to several competent NPOs, Great Britain attempting to keep its image of a leader in observance of the human rights standards carefully conceals many occasions of the domestic human rights violations, which British authorities are responsible for. The acute problems of Britain are predominantly coinciding with ones attributed by Foreign Office to Libya and Iraq.

Thus, criticizing Libya for serious problems in treatment of the prisoners British experts don´t want to accept the use of tortures and non-human or humiliating treatment in their own penitentiaries. The examples of these may be particularly the resonant court case on the fact of use of tortures and violence against the Kenyan businessman O. Avadh, who sued the British authorities with the request to accept the involvement of the secret services of the country to unlawful kidnapping of people suspected of terrorism.

In this context, a report of the chief inspector of the prison in England and Wales promulgated in August 2011 is demonstrative about the conditions of prisoners´ keeping in one of the UK ‘s largest prison Wandswort. It has been listed numerous violations of prisoners’ rights, including the lack of access to basic hygiene.

Perhaps we should remind who has invented concentration camps? Those were Victorian gentlemen during the Second Boer War of 1899—1902, and not Nazis. The name of the inventor is Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a British Field Marshal.

In September 2011, the Special Citizens Commission of the UK under the leadership of W. Hague completed the three-year investigation into the death of Iraqi citizen B. Musy, use of torture and severe bodily harm to another nine Iraqis detained by British troops in Basra in 2003.

In September 2011, one of the most high-profile scandals connected to the violations of the right to privacy, correspondence and telephone calls in the UK was the so -called “Newsgate” when employees of the edition of “News of the World” illegally wiretapped phone conversations of celebrities, politicians, and victims of high-profile crimes .

In April 2012, the National Black Police Association (NBPA) appealed to British Prime Minister David Cameron with a request to take control of the situation with a large-scale discrimination on grounds of race in London Police.  But there’s little surprise, according to The Telegraph David Cameron himself stated that Britain should put a limit to the flow of the work force coming from the Eastern Europe. Among the “unwanted” are  the workers from Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, the same very countries that share membership with Britain in the EU and NATO.

Such examples are multiple.

As for the relatively clear desire of the Great Britain to take the ‘watcher’ position over the countries of the “greatest menace” to democracy, we should not forget that no one has confered such authority to the Foreign Office. First of all, due to the flawed policies of London itself.