UK could face legal action for 'genocide complicity', argues Scottish politician
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has been warned that the UK as a state, "alongside individual ministers and government officials as individuals", is at "significant risk of future legal action for complicity in acts of genocide".
In a letter to Lammy on Monday, seen by Middle East Eye, Scottish National Party MP Chris Law accused the foreign secretary of failing to "demonstrate any responsibility of the UK government to prevent genocide".
"Do you accept that the UK's obligations [under the Genocide Convention] should have been triggered from the moment the government became aware of a serious and imminent risk that genocide could be perpetrated," Law asks in the letter.
The Scottish politician goes on to accuse the foreign secretary of appearing to "diminish the very definition of genocide", after Lammy suggested last month in parliament that Israel's actions in Gaza do not constitute genocide because fewer than millions of people have been killed.
Lammy said that terms like genocide "were largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the way that they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term."
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Law went on to accuse the British government of "inconsistency" over its official interpretation of the Genocide Convention, given that it filed a joint declaration against Myanmar to the International Court Justice (ICJ) last November.
Supporting Gambia's allegations to the ICJ that Myanmar committed "genocidal acts" against its Rohingya minority, the UK argued that "the targeting of children provides an indication of the intention to destroy a group".
Law noted in his letter that "the number of children killed in Gaza over this last year surpasses the total number of men, women and children killed in Myanmar over a six year period.
"Has the UK Government dismissed the interpretation of the Genocide Convention laid out in the intervention in the Myanmar case?"
At the end of last week, senior Palestinian and British journalists blasted the foreign secretary for saying "there are no journalists in Gaza".
More than 190 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli strikes since October 2023, according to the Gaza government media office, the highest number in any year since data was first collected three decades ago.
The death toll in Gaza since October 2023 is over 44,000, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The UN has said that nearly 70 percent of the victims are children and women.
Accusation of inconsistency
Law also took aim at Prime Minister Keir Starmer in his letter.
Earlier this month, Starmer was asked in parliament to share his definition of genocide and to outline what action he was taking to save the lives of people in Gaza.
In response, he said he was "well aware of the definition of genocide" and that this explains why he has "never described or referred to [the situation in Gaza] as genocide".
But as a human rights lawyer in 2014, Starmer was part of the legal team representing Croatia before the ICJ, in a case where he argued that Serbia had committed genocide in Croatia.
The total death toll in the Serbia-Croatia conflict of 1991-1995 was 20,000 people, mostly Croatians.
Law asked: "Is there one understanding of genocide for most victim groups and most suspects, and a totally opposite position when the victims are Palestinians and the suspects are Israeli?"
Arguing that the UK has failed to fulfil its obligations to prevent genocide, he concluded that "the United Kingdom as a state, alongside individual ministers and government officials as individuals", is "at significant risk of future legal action for complicity in acts of genocide".
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