Andrew Feinstein | This House Believes The British Arms Industry Should Be Taken to the Hague

[Music] [Music] um thank you so much to everyone who spoke in that round of floor speeches so if you do have any more ideas or thoughts that you'd like to share with the chamber we'll do another round of flaw speeches again in proposition exstension and opposition of the motion um after our next round of paper speakers so do kind of keep your thoughts um until then unless you want to ask a point of information um but speaking second um in proposition tonight is Mr Andrew Feinstein um Mr Feinstein is a former member of the South African Parliament having served as member of thec from 1994 to 2001 in 2001 he resigned from his seat as a sign of protest against the anc's refusal to investigate a 5 billion pound armed steel that was accused of large scale corruption he is currently the executive director of Shadow wild investigations and is also challenging s stama in his constituency of hobin and St panras Mr Feinstein you have the [Applause] floor thank you very much much and may I congratulate you on your incoming presidency while congratulating Nick on the term that you have just served which by all accounts has been remarkably successful for the union I stand Here proudly today as an Alum of King's College Cambridge where Not only was I educated in economics and politics but where I also married my Bangladeshi wife in The King's College Chapel to this day we Remain the only couple in the entire history of the Chapel to be married there when neither the bride nor groom were Christian I as a South African with respect to Ambassador Bolton am going to start my input with a quote from another American with whose politics I never agreed his name was Henry Ford he knew a thing or two about mating Motor Vehicles he also knew a thing or two about money and he said quite wisely in my opinion show me who profits from war and I will show you how to stop War the reality of the global arms trade about which I have written extensively and I must apologize for those who might want to intervene with points of information or order my book The Shadow world inside the global arms trade contains almost 3,000 footnotes and most of what I am going to say in the next few minutes is referenced in those footnotes and I would ask you to consult them if you wanted to see the source of the information the reality is that the British government claims that British arms companies are independent of it often privately owned entities over which they have little or no control or authority except through our arms export control regulations and laws now in the Consolidated criteria that form the basis of those laws it states that the United Kingdom shall not export arms where the export of that material is likely to increase the likelihood of Civilian casualties in Conflict I would suggest that a significant proportion of British arms exports violate not just the international rule of law for the reasons that the first Speaker for the proposition gave but actually violate British law how is that possible because there is absolutely no scrutiny of British arms export controls in the British Parliament or by the international rules-based order and here astonishingly I agree with Ambassador Bolton there is no International rules-based order how could there be when at least 20,000 innocent civilians have been killed in Yemen since March of 2015 primarily by the Saudi and UAE Le Coalition which is armed and weaponized primarily by the United States of America Britain and the European Union sorry I I I didn't hear thatan di tragedy yes but the Saudi Coalition was fighting against the Hy movement the hoofy movement that uses child solders the massan so where is the point of information murder Millions more if they were given the chance to would you prefer that British arms were diverted from preventing further Hy control over Yemen or would you prefer thousands more yenis to die I would prefer a situation I would prefer a situation where Britain was a force for peace in the Middle East and not War I would prefer I would prefer a situation where in the Middle East rather than flooding the region with weapons from which both our companies and our political parties and politicians profit that we would try and remove as many weapons from the Middle East as possible because I believe that the pursuit of peace is aided by removing the weapons that are used in Warfare and how do I argue this where I was about to agree with the Ambassador is that I believe that there is no functioning rules based International order at the moment but the reason is not just because of the houthis not just because of Vladimir Putin not just because of North Korea and other despotic regimes it is as much because of the United States of America the United Kingdom and countries of the European Union who allow our allies Prim merily Saudi Arabia the United Arab Emirates and Israel to kill indiscriminately civilians and others who should not be targeted in Warfare now the reason I argue that is I come from a country South Africa which a leader that Ambassador Bolton served under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher prime minister who some of you might have heard of both called my former boss Nelson Mandela a terrorist for wanting to free 83% of South Africa's population from the Yoke of a racist oligarchic system of apartate and what we experienced in South Africa was not a cold war but a very hot War where the United States of America and Britain continued to fight its battles against the Soviet Union using the South African Defense Force using Southwest Africa and Namibia engaging in a conflict with Angola which was supported by Cuba and Russia and we still bear the scars of that incredibly hot war in my country today once we had emerged from that hot War BAE Systems emerged during our negotiations for a democratic constitutional settlement to suggest to our new Democratic leaders that a great way to fund their political party the ANC of which I was a member was by doing a massive arms deal because the arms industry is the most corrupt of all Industries in the world accounting for 40% of all corruption in all World Trade so our second Democratic president Tabo eki spent 10 billion on weapons that we neither needed nor have used since because $350 million of bribes were paid to the senior cabinet ministers who made the decisions to the senior officials and military leaders and this meant that according to President mbei we did not have the financial resources to provide anti-retroviral medication for 6 million South Africans living with HIV o AIDS at the time resulting in the avoidable deaths of 365,000 South Africans over the next 5 years and the birth of 32,000 babies HIV positive a year because our politicians wanted to make money for from arms deals and what we have today because of this lack of an international rules-based order that our Western governments refuse to uphold when it relates to our own military actions and to those of our allies is we have the reality that over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed using our weapons in the Gaza Strip that over 20,000 innocent civilians have died in Yemen since March 2015 using our weapons and who has profited from that our arms companies our political parties because it is those defense contractors who have been the single biggest contributors to political parties in the western world since the second world war certainly um unfortunately unfortunately as someone who was a member of thec from the age of 18 your information is slightly incorrect that in fact the vast majority of ANC people were educated and trained in Sweden which made the vast majority of donations to thec until we became a political party in 1991 so let me conclude by saying that unless the West commits to an international rules-based order and demands that the international criminal court in the heg upholds its responsibilities in terms of the Rome statutes that unless the ICC starts to prosecute the executives of the world's major arms companies who place such a devastating role in conflicts around the world and in our domestic political system that the trade in weapons will continue to corrode our democracies to exponentially increase corruption around the world and to make both Britain and the world most ironically of all much less safe thank [Applause] [Music] you for

Channel: Cambridge Union

Views: 489

Keywords: Cambridge Union, Cambridge University, Speech, Debate, Cambridge, British Arms Industry, Hague

Id: i_M2wx_rrDU

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024