Despite rules saying the UK should not export security goods to countries that might use them for internal repression, ministers have signed off more than £75m in such exports over the past five years to states rated “not free” by the NGO Freedom House.
The 17 countries include China, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, as well as the United Arab Emirates, which since 2015 has been the largest recipient of a total of £11.5 million alone.
Human rights groups said the UK has developed a reputation for not conducting proper checks on who it sold arms to, while Labour called on the government to demonstrate that it is working to prove that it complies with its own rules against armed dictators.
In addition to the 17 countries, the UK has also exported such goods to other states that are not officially rated as “not free,” but could raise eyebrows when supplying spyware.
One such beneficiary of UK exports is Hong Kong, which, despite continuing repression of pro-democracy protests, had a £2 m shipment approved last year. The Philippines, where extrajudicial killings by police are rampant, has also provided the British firms with hawking surveillance systems with steady business.
Labour’s shadow international trade secretary Emily Thornberry stated: “The government has a legal and moral duty to ensure exports from Britain are not used by other countries for the purposes of internal repression, and that risk should clearly be at the forefront of their mind when those countries have a track record of harassing political opponents and undermining democratic freedoms, and when the equipment concerned is ripe to be abused in that way.
“The government needs to show urgently how those risks were assessed in these cases, and how this equipment was ultimately used.”
A government spokesperson said: “The government takes its export responsibilities seriously and assesses all export licences in accordance with strict licensing criteria. We will not issue any export licences where to do so would be inconsistent with these criteria.”
But Oliver Feeley-Sprague, the program director for defense, protection and police relations for Amnesty International UK, said the UK did not appear to conduct adequate risk analyses while exporting these hardware and that regulations by the government were becoming “notorious” for their “faulty decision-making”
“These figures are cause for real concern, unless and until UK ministers can demonstrate that proper safeguards against repressive misuse were in place when this equipment was dispatched,” he said.
“With numerous human rights defenders arrested and jailed in countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey in the past five years, there’s a greater need than ever for the UK to be absolutely scrupulous in assessing the risk of UK telecoms technology being used unlawfully against human rights activists, journalists, and peaceful opposition figures.
“It’s just not clear that the UK is undertaking proper risk assessments when selling this equipment, and it’s not clear whether UK officials are making any effort to track how the equipment is used in one, two or three years’ time.
“With the UK’s licensing of arms exports already notorious for its faulty decision-making, these figures are yet another reminder of why we need a complete root-and-branch overhaul of the UK’s failing arms and security equipment export control system. This overhaul should include the introduction of a far more coherent and comprehensive system of reporting that clearly shows exactly what we are selling, to whom and why.”
International trade minister Liz Truss confirmed that the United Kingdom would restore weapons shipments to Saudi Arabia, although a court had previously approved their suspension. The government said it had investigated allegations that Saudi powers had infringed international humanitarian law in Yemen and that any potential infringements were “isolated incidents” because they had happened in various locations in separate forms.
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said that the selling of espionage devices posed “significant doubts and questions.”
