Regarding to the Britain sold spying gear to Philippines, Labour MP says sale of surveillance tools ‘makes UK complicit in deaths of thousands of Filipinos’.
The British government sold £150,000 of hi-tech spying equipment to the Philippines.
It gives President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte the tools to hunt down and kill dealers and addicts as part of his brutal war on drugs.
The equipment purchased by Duterte’s government included IMSI-Catchers, which are used to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, and surveillance tools to monitor internet activity.
President of the Philippines has admitted authorising the wiretapping of at least two mayors whom he accused of being “narco-politicians”.
The British Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a member of the committees on arms export controls, accused the UK government of enabling Duterte’s violent hunt.
He added: “This sad case shows that our arms export control regime is broken. The government is failing in its basic legal duty.”
The exports to the Philippines appear to be a violation of UK law, which states that the government must not “issue an export licence if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression”.
The UK government has also sold spyware to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain and Egypt.
British arms exports to Saudi Arabia have faced intense scrutiny from MPs and campaigners since the start of the conflict, but the country remains the UK’s most important weapons client.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in Saudi-led coalition bombing raids and an estimated one million children are facing starvation and serious illness as a result of the conflict.
The British Army is also secretly training Saudi Arabian troops to fight in Yemen, where the country has been accused of committing crimes against humanity.
