The purpose of this Bill is to amend the criminal law so as to enable this country to accede to the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9th December, 1948. The text of the Convention is set out in full in the Schedule to the Bill.
"Genocide", as is well known, is the name given to the odious international crime which is defined in article II of the Convention. Article II reads as follows:—
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
There is no need to add to this definition or to go into the background to the adoption of the Convention, except to recall that the preamble to the Convention refers to the declaration made by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 11th December, 1946, that "genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilised world".
It will be convenient to summarise next the articles of the Convention so far as is necessary for the purpose of the Bill.
By Article I the contracting states confirm that "genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish".
Article II, which I have already quoted, defines the crime of genocide, and Article III provides that genocide, together with complicity in it and with ancillary offences such as conspiracy, shall be punishable.
By Article V the parties undertake to enact the necessary legislation to give effect to the Convention and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for offenders.
Article VI provides for the trial of offenders. Trials are to be either by the Courts of the country where the offence has been committed or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction.
Article VII, which relates to extradition for genocide, is particularly important for the purpose of the Bill. It reads as follows:—
Genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article III shall not be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition. The Contracting Parties pledge themselves in such cases to grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties in force."
The Convention came into force on 12th January, 1951, and up to now 78 countries have become parties to it including almost all the states of Western Europe.
In the Government's view it is very desirable that this country should accede to the Convention. Further delay might suggest that we are lacking in respect for the objects of the Convention. Any such idea would, of course, be utterly wrong. The only reason for the delay is that successive Governments felt difficulty about introducing the necessary legislation in order to give effect to the Convention.
There were two reasons for this. First, the very general definition of genocide in Article II lacks the precision at which our legislation aims when creating a new offence. Second, and more important, the requirement in article VII that genocide shall not be considered as a political crime for the purpose of extradition involves a departure from the strict rule in section II of the Extradition Act, 1965, which forbids extradition for a political offence.
The first difficulty, if it had stood alone, might have been avoided by not creating a new offence of genocide but relying on the offences in the existing criminal law. But owing to the requirement concerning extradition for genocide the Bill must, in any event, make special provision relating to genocide as such and, for this purpose, must include the substance of the definition of that offence in article II. However, the Government are satisfied that those possible difficulties should no longer be allowed to stand in the way of our accession to the Convention.
I shall now summarise briefly the provisions of the Bill.
Section I defines the expression "the Genocide Convention"by reference to the Schedule to the Bill, where the complete text of the Convention is set out. It will be convenient to have the complete text available in the same document as the Act.
Section 2 creates the offence of genocide as defined in article II and provides for the penalties. These will be the fixed penalty of imprisonment for life if the offence consists of the killing of any person and a maximum penalty of 14 years' imprisonment in other cases. These penalties will be high enough to accord with the obligation under article V to provide "effective penalties" for genocide. The section makes no provision as to the ancillary offences referred to in article III of the Convention, because, once genocide itself is made an offence, it will follow, in the ordinary way, that the other acts mentioned will also be offences. The section also requires the consent of the Attorney General for a prosecution for genocide and provides that trials shall be before the Central Criminal Court.
Section 3 relates to extradition. The section does not provide for liability to extradition for an offence of genocide, because this will follow from section 10 of the Extradition Act, 1965, under which offences punishable with at least one year's imprisonment are extraditable. It will, of course, be necessary, under section 8 of that Act, that an extradition agreement, or reciprocal facilites for extradition, should be in force between this country and the country seeking the extradition of the offender. Subsection (1) of section 3 provides that genocide and the ancillary offences mentioned shall not be considered as political offences for the purposes of the Extradition Act. The result will be that the prohibition in section 11 of that Act of extradition to other countries generally, and the corresponding prohibition in section 44 of endorsing a British warrant of arrest for execution in this country, if the offence is a political one will not apply to offences of genocide.
Subsection (2) of section 3 of the Bill provides that a person shall not be exempted from extradition for genocide or for an ancillary offence on the ground that, under the law in force at the time when, and in the place where, he is alleged to have committed the act in question, he could not have been punished for it. The subsection is not required, at least expressly, by any provision in the Convention, but it is included because of the possibility that a person might be wanted by a foreign country for genocide committed at a time when its government was itself pursuing a policy of genocide and therefore what he did had been made lawful by that government. Unless the subsection is included, the offender might be able to argue that extradition can be ordered only if the conduct in question was an offence at the time and place where it occurred. Section 3 also makes provision, in relation to the compulsory taking of evidence in this country for the purpose of foreign criminal proceedings, similar to the provisions as to extradition.
Sections 4 to 7 are technical. Sections 4 and 5 relate to courts-martial. Under the Defence Act, 1954, a person subject to military law who commits an offence against the ordinary criminal law is thereby guilty also of an offence against military law. Section 4 of the Bill provides that a person convicted of genocide by a court-martial shall be liable to the same punishment as in the case of a conviction before the Central Criminal Court. Section 5 excludes genocide from the jurisdiction of a limited court-martial and provides that no court-martial shall have jurisdiction to try a person for genocide unless committed on active service. Section 6 adds genocide to the serious offences in respect of which the procedure available under section 13 of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1967, where the accused pleads guilty in the District Court to an indictable offence does not apply; and section 7 of the Bill adds genocide to the serious offences in respect of which, by section 29 of the 1967 Act, a person may not be granted bail except by order of the High Court.
With this explanation I hope that the Bill will commend itself to the House.