UN Special Rapporteur Albanese calls UKs Lammy genocide denier

UN Special Rapporteur Albanese calls UK's Lammy 'genocide denier'

The United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories has accused British Foreign Secretary David Lammy of being a "genocide denier" and said the UK has done "nothing" to prevent atrocities in Gaza.

In an interview with Middle East Eye in London on Wednesday, Francesca Albanese took aim at Lammy in response to comments he made in late October denying that Israel is committing genocide.

"I hadn't realised that Mr. Lammy was a lawyer," she said, referring to Lammy's legal background.

"As a politician, you might say that for political convenience," she suggested, adding that would still make someone "a genocide denier".

However, she saw such remarks from someone familiar with law surprising. "Because excuse me? What are you saying?"

On 29 October, Lammy suggested that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza because millions of people have not been killed.

Terms like genocide, Lammy told parliament, "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".

Albandese told MEE: "He's referring to cases where genocide has resulted in industrial scale of killing, of mass extermination, like in Rwanda and during the Holocaust.

"But it's not the numbers of those killed that determines whether or not there is genocide, and any lawyer would know that."

Albanese noted that "certain jurispudence might have inclined Mr Lammy to conclude what he said".

"But by doing so, he's denying that genocide occurred in the case of Australia or Canada or the United States, where the genocide was carried out primarily not through mass killing but through cutting the bloodline of the Aboriginals so that they could disappear in the white European coloniser's society."

source: tehrantimes.com