MFAT has no conscience

RNZ reports that hot on the heels of approving weapons exports to saudi Arabia, MFAT was also approving weapons exports to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia's partner in committing war crimes in Yemen:

New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) approved export permits for military equipment that was sent to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a key partner in Saudi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen, in 2018 and 2019.

Experts say the information heightens concerns that New Zealand may have contributed to war crimes in Yemen following revelations last month that similar exports were approved for Saudi Arabia. It comes as MFAT reviews its export controls regime to ensure it's fit for purpose.

Since 2015, at least 100,000 people have died in Yemen's civil war, which has also displaced millions and pushed the country to the brink of famine. In February, a UN expert group urged states "who continue to supply arms to review their positions in line with the requirements of international law".

Despite its ongoing review, MFAT has staunchly defended the approval of export permits for weapons sent to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Which really makes you wonder what the fuck is wrong with them. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are engaged in a war and committing war crimes. Any weapons supply prolongs the war and so contributes to the crimes. Banning weapons exports to them ought to be a no-brainer, regardless of whether the exported weapons will be used in that way or not. We're supposed to be a peaceful nation committed to peace and disarmament, for fucks sake; it would be nice if MFAT actually represented that official policy, rather than a money-grubbing, sociopathic domestic weapons industry.

MFAT's blocked nose

Last week, the public was appalled to learn that our national airline had been helping saudi Arabia commit war crimes in Yemen by servicing their military equipment. Jacinda Ardern was right that this sort of deal doesn't pass the sniff test. Meanwhile, her own Ministry of Foreign Affairs was approving weapons exports to Saudi Arabia:

New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Ministry granted export permits for military equipment that was sent to Saudi Arabia's forces in 2016 and 2018, raising concerns the government may have breached its human rights obligations.

[...]

[Documents obtained under the Official Information Act] showed that in May 2016, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) approved a permit for military simulation training equipment to be sent to Saudi ground forces. In December that year, sign-off was also given for hand-held computers, radios and range-finding binoculars bound for the Saudi Navy.

The exporter, whose identity has been kept secret by MFAT, applied for an extension to its December permit after that shipment was delayed, the documents showed. This was granted in May 2018. The quantity and value of the equipment exported was also withheld.

While there are no specific international prohibitions on exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, when MFAT considers an export permit it must assess whether there are any serious violations of humanitarian law. Waikato University international law professor Al Gillespie said officials may have breached this obligation.

I guess MFAT must just have a blocked nose - probably from constantly inhaling bullshit from promoting dairy exports. But this is just as unacceptable to the public as Air New Zealand's support for war criminals. Hopefully rather than making excuses the Minister will immediately put a stop to it (and if the weapons industry doesn't like that, they're welcome to fuck off to the UK, where they'd clearly fit in much better).

Deceit or incompetence?

Former Air New Zealand CEO (and now National MP) Chris Luxon has said he doesn't remember anything about his company's war-crimes contract. Its a convenient memory loss, and strongly reminiscent of John Key's tactics when confronted with wrongdoing (first, implausibly deny knowledge; then, claim to be "relaxed" about it...), and pretty obviously we should be suspicious of such a self-serving claim, and about the integrity of the man making it. But if we take it seriously, then Luxon is in fact admitting something else: that he wasn't doing his job as CEO. Because avoiding involvement in war crimes is something any decent CEO should be keeping an eye on, and if this slipped past him, it means he simply wasn't doing his job properly. And either way, having demonstrated either deceit or incompetence, he's not someone who can ever be trusted in a Ministerial role. Or as a party leader.

Our national airline should not be complicit in war crimes

Since 2015 Saudi Arabia has been waging war on the people of Yemen. A key part of their war is a naval blockade, which has restricted food supplies, leading to the worst famine in a century. Its a war crime - and our national airline is helping them do it:

A 1 NEWS investigation has revealed that Air New Zealand's business unit, Gas Turbines, which specialises in servicing military marine engines and turbines, has been supporting the Saudi Navy.

The Saudi Navy has been blockading Yemen - stopping food and medicine getting through to the country.

[...]

Last week [Air New Zealand] finally issued a short statement saying Air New Zealand Gas Turbines had been carrying out work for the Saudi Navy through a third party contract.

"It is through a third party contract that work has recently been carried out on two engines and one power turbine module from vessels belonging to the Royal Saudi Navy.

"The Gas Turbines business has not contracted directly with the Royal Saudi Navy and will not be carrying out any further work of this nature."

While its good that they've stopped, this isn't good enough. It shouldn't need to be said, but: corporations should not help governments commit war crimes. And that especially goes for our part government-owned airline. We bailed them out to help them get through Covid. That's now looking like a mistake. At the least, it looks like the government should just make a formal takeover and bring Air New Zealand back under full public control. Because we clearly cannot trust the values of the private sector for our national airline.

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Contempt

Back in June, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that that country's continued arms sales to Saudi Arabia were unlawful. So you'd expect that the UK government stopped approving them, right?

Of course not:

The government has apologised for breaching a court ruling against the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia that could be used in the Yemen conflict.

International trade secretary Liz Truss admitted the government approved two licences for military equipment which could be used in Yemen.

This is despite the government freezing new arms licences for Saudi Arabia in June after the Court of Appeal ruled that it was “unlawful” for the government to license weapons exports without assessing whether there was an “historic pattern of breaches of international humanitarian law” by the Saudi-led coalition.

An apology isn't enough. The Minister has clearly acted in breach of the court ruling, and they should be prosecuted for contempt, just like anyone else would be.

Unlawful

For the past four years, Saudi Arabia has been indiscriminately bombing Yemen, attcking hospitals and other civilian targets and committing war crimes. They're doing it in part with British weapons, exported by British arms dealers with the approval of the British government. Now, the UK Court of Appeal has declared those approvals unlawful:

British arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been ruled unlawful by the court of appeal in a critical judgment that also accused ministers of ignoring whether airstrikes that killed civilians in Yemen broke humanitarian law.

Three judges said that a decision made in secret in 2016 had led them to decide that Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Liam Fox and other key ministers had illegally signed off on arms exports without properly assessing the risk to civilians.

Sir Terence Etherton, the master of the rolls, said on Tuesday that ministers had “made no concluded assessments of whether the Saudi-led coalition had committed violations of international humanitarian law in the past, during the Yemen conflict, and made no attempt to do so”.

As a result, the court said that the UK export licensing process was “wrong in law in one significant respect” and ordered Fox, the international trade secretary, to hold an immediate review of at least £4.7bn worth of arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

Significantly, the court found that the British government had consciously decided to turn a blind eye to war crimes in order to allow continued arms sales. Those sales have now been suspended, but international trade secretary Liam Fox has apparently told people that he does not expect any permits to be overturned when war crimes are considered. Which seems to be both pre-determination (and further grounds for judicial review), and a further example of the problem. Ministers obviously don't care if the arms trade is moral, but now they are no longer even pretending to care about whether it is even legal, provided their mates get to keep on profiting by selling weapons to war criminals. And that is something they need to be held responsible for.

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Unlawful

That's the view of a UK House of Lords committee on the country's arms sales to Saudi Arabia:

The UK is on “the wrong side of the law” by sanctioning arms exports to Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen and should suspend some of the export licences, an all-party Lords committee has said.

The report by the international relations select committee says ministers are not making independent checks to see if arms supplied by the UK are being used in breach of the law, but is instead relying on inadequate investigations by the Saudis, its allies in the war.

It describes the humanitarian plight of Yemenis as “unconscionable”.

Or, to put it a little more accurately: the UK is providing the weapons used to commit war crimes in Yemen, and it should stop. The problem is that the British government regards arms sales to war criminals as the country's core business, so they will probably simply ignore this, just as they have ignored blatant corruption in those sales. The solution is to charge the Ministers approving these sales as accessories to the crimes committed, and drag them in chains to The Hague.

Good riddance

Murray McCully's sordid Saudi sheep bribe is finally over:

The controversial Saudi sheep deal been shut down, which the Government says will save about $1 million.

[...]

But Trade Minister David Parker said the deal has now been axed.

"We're not spending any more money on its installation or delivery," Parker told 1 NEWS.

"We have managed to bring it to an end, saving the last million dollars or so. But I'm afraid the other $10 million that has already been spent has been flushed down the drain by the prior Government."

Good riddance. The sheep deal was dodgy on so many levels - a Minister lied to Cabinet and the New Zealand public, fearmongering over a lawsuit which didn't exist in order to pay a bribe in the hope of influencing a foreign government. That's not how our government is supposed to work, and its not how we're supposed to do business. And it makes me very glad that its architect, Murray McCully, a deceitful micro-managing control-freak, is out of our politics for good.

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Justice for Yemen?

In 2015, Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen. In the three years since, they've bombed hospitals, used banned cluster bombs and white phosphorus, and indiscriminately slaughtered civilians. The architect of the invasion is crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (yes, the man who ordered journalist Jamal Khashoggi killed). He is currently visiting Argentina for a G20 meeting. And Argentina has just begun a war crimes investigation against him:

An Argentinian prosecutor has agreed to pursue a case against Saudi Arabia‘s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, over possible war crimes in Yemen, according to Human Rights Watch.

HRW petitioned Argentina's judiciary on Monday to use a clause in its constitution to prosecute Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, who arrived in the country to attend the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division, announced on Twitter that a prosecutor has agreed to take up the case, and asked a judge to request information from Yemeni and Saudi authorities regarding alleged war crimes, and had also asked Argentina's foreign ministry whether the crown prince's diplomatic status might allow a legal proceeding to go forward.

“The Argentine judiciary, by taking steps towards a formal investigation, is sending a clear message that even powerful officials like Mohammed bin Salman are not above the law and will be scrutinised if implicated in grave international crimes," Ms Whitson said in an emailed statement to The Independent.

But we need more than scrutiny - if the evidence is there, we need arrest and prosecution. And we need bin Salman to be facing that threat not just from Argentina, but the entire world.

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Reminder: Saudi Arabia kidnapped people from New Zealand

Earlier this month, journalist Jamal Khashoggi visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He was then beaten, drugged, and dismembered - apparently while still alive - by a 15-man Saudi kill team who had been specially flown in for the purpose. Its a horrific act, and one which should make Saudi Arabia an international pariah. But Khashoggi is not the only victim of the Saudi regime. As Stuff reminds us, in 2014 they apparently kidnapped a refugee from New Zealand:

Friends of Khalid Muidh Alzahrani, who they called Daniel, know what the Saudi regime is capable of.

Four years ago, the refugee disappeared from his sparse flat in Redwood, Christchurch, and they haven't spoken to him since. They fear he's been executed.

Daniel had converted to Christianity - a crime in Saudi Arabia - and his friends believe he was forcibly repatriated, possibly with his family's help.

The original media stories are here and here. And as this story makes clear, Alzahrani wasn't the only one: in May 2013 an unnamed Saudi refugee was apparently snatched off the street in Auckland and rendered to Saudi Arabia, where he was reportedly tortured.

The New Zealand government owes a duty of care to those we have granted refugee status, and we have an obligation to protect them from this sort of shit. The Stuff article argues that we should be demanding "proof of life" of these snatched refugees from the Saudis, and they're right. And if they don't provide it, we should cut ties with that tyrannical monarchy.

The gift that keeps on giving

Remember sheepgate? Murray McCully's amazing plan to avoid a nonexistent lawsuit by bribing a Saudi businessman with $10 million of public money? McCully may be gone, but his legacy lives on: now, MFAT is being sued over his corrupt deal, by an NZ company angry they didn't get their cut:

An Auckland-based company has started legal proceedings against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) in the High Court, the Herald can reveal.

That raises the possibility of more costs related to the controversial, and still unfinished, project.

The company, Laurium Asset Management, helped put the Saudi businessman who now owns the agrihub, Hmood Al Khalaf, in touch with the National Government.

However, it was left out of the eventual deal, and later wrote to Mfat asking why its intellectual property had been used as the basis for the tender.

It's "intellectual property" presumably being the idea of paying a bribe. But I'm not sure you can claim IP over a crime (OTOH, I'm sure the US Patent Office would grant a patent for it - they do for everything else).

Being sued by National's bottom-feeders adds insult to injury, and hopefully it'll be thrown out of court. If its not, MFAT should dump the liability where it truly belongs: with its corrupt former minister.

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