是否空袭ISIS?这个声音结束了十小时的英国议会辩论:我们现在必须直面这个恶魔!

星期四(12月3日)凌晨,英国国会通过对恐怖组织“伊斯兰国”(ISIS)在叙利亚占领地进行空袭的动议。随后,英国国防部派遣4架战机,对ISIS实施了首次轰炸。

英国通过这项动议,并非轻易之举,无论是在坊间还是政治人物中,对于是否应该轰炸“伊斯兰国”在叙利亚的大本营拉卡等地,都存在着很大分歧。

动议通过之前,英国议会进行了长达约10个小时的辩论,直到反对党工党影子外交大臣Hilary Benn的一席话,最终促使决议通过。他郑重的告诉所有在场议员:
“我们永远不能,也不应选择逃避”

“我们现在必须直面这个恶魔”
(We must now confront this evil)

英国议会讨论过程回顾

英国首相卡梅伦称,空袭ISIS是正确决定,将令英国更安全。并表示空袭叙利亚符合英国的国家利益,因为IS已经对全球安全造成严重威胁。

英国首相卡梅伦:“恐怖组织目前正在筹划以各种形式,对我们进行袭击。他们还用这种所谓的激进思想,给英国的青少年进行洗脑。我们的国家正在面临在安全威胁,我们国家有必要铲除ISIS。”

“英国不能坐以待毙,让恐怖组织ISIS来攻击我们!”

然而,反对党英国工党下议院议员杰瑞米,对于轰炸ISIS提出质疑。

英国工党下议院议员杰瑞米:“轰炸ISIS在叙利亚占领的领地,平民也会伤亡。”

“就算ISIS被轰炸而退场,如果ISIS地盘被7万名叙利亚反政府军占领了,又该怎么办?”

“空袭ISIS,只能让恐怖分子更仇恨英国;相反,如果英国被恐袭的可能性提高了,该怎么办?”

异议一提出,便受到同党派议员的反对。提出异议的工党议员Jeremy Bernard Corbyn,被同党派议员质疑纵容ISIS行恶。

英国首相卡梅伦称,英国已经在伊拉克对恐怖组织ISIS的占领地,进行了一年零三个月的轰炸,目前无一平民伤亡。辩论进行的如火如荼。这时,反对党工党影子外交大臣Hilary Benn则表示,
“我们永远不能,也不应选择逃避”

“我们现在必须直面这个恶魔”
(We must now confront this evil)

Hilary Benn:“现在,我们面对的不是ISIS,而是一整个法西斯主义!不只是他们残忍的暴行,他们凌驾在我们这间房子里的任何人之上。”

“他们蔑视着我们每一个人。蔑视我们的信仰,蔑视我们的价值观,蔑视我们的容忍度,蔑视我们的高尚,更蔑视了我们引以为豪的民主制度。”

“最近,我们又发现了一个大型的尸体填埋坑,里面的尸体全部都是ISIS认为年纪太老,而不能变卖的妇女。我们就更不用再提突尼西亚死去的30个英国游客、224名命丧俄国客机的乘客、在贝鲁特和安卡拉,被自杀炸弹夺取的178名冤魂,和巴黎袭击里的130个死难者了。”

“法西斯主义的残暴,我们每一个人都领教过了。这就是为什么,当年国际纵队要站起来对抗西班牙的弗朗哥。这就是为什么,当年这间房子里的每一个人都决定站起来,对抗希特勒,对抗墨索里尼。这就是为什么,我们的工党决定抵抗一切反人权,反正义的行为。这就是为什么,在我们又一次遇到了ISIS这样的法西斯的时候,我们要彻底打败他们!”

“我真切的请求我工党的每一位同胞,支持对方今晚的决定。”

“我们都已经知道ISIS是恶魔了,那么我们还不应该跟法国人一起并肩作战,对抗他们吗?”

“我们现在必须直面这个恶魔了!”

Hilary Benn的部分发言视频:

英国议会最终以397对223票通过了对恐怖组织ISIS展开空袭的动议。几小时后,4架旋风式战机(Tornado)便从英国空军位于塞浦路斯的阿克洛迪瑞(Akrotiri)基地起飞,飞往叙利亚进行轰炸任务。经国防部发言人证实,这些战机已经完成对ISIS进行的第一次轰炸任务并返航。

Hilary Benn发言完整视频及文字全文如下:


Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Before I respond to the debate, I would like to say this directly to the Prime Minister: Although my right honourable friend the Leader of the Opposition and I will walk into different division lobbies tonight, I am proud to speak from the same Despatch Box as him. My right honourable friend is not a terrorist sympathiser, he is an honest, a principled, a decent and a good man and I think the Prime Minister must now regret what he said yesterday and his failure to do what he should have done today, which is simply to say ‘I am sorry’.

Now Mr Speaker, we have had an intense and impassioned debate and rightly so, given the clear and present threat from Daesh, the gravity of the decision that rests upon the shoulders and the conscience of every single one of us and the lives we hold in our hands tonight. And whatever we decision we reach, I hope we will treat one another with respect.

Now we have heard a number of outstanding speeches and sadly time will prevent me from acknowledging them all. But I would just like to single out the contributions both for and against the motion from my honourable and right honourable friends the members for Derby South, Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, Barnsley Central, Wakefield, Wolverhampton South East, Brent North, Liverpool, West Derby, Wirral West, Stoke-on-Trent North, Birmingham Ladywood and the honourable members for Reigate, South West Wiltshire, Tonbridge and Malling, Chichester and Wells.

The question which confronts us in a very, very complex conflict is at its heart very simple. What should we do with others to confront this threat to our citizens, our nation, other nations and the people who suffer under the yoke, the cruel yoke, of Daesh? The carnage in Paris brought home to us the clear and present danger we face from them. It could have just as easily been London, or Glasgow, or Leeds or Birmingham and it could still be. And I believe that we have a moral and a practical duty to extend the action we are already taking in Iraq to Syria. And I am also clear, and I say this to my colleagues, that the conditions set out in the emergency resolution passed at the Labour party conference in September have been met.

We now have a clear and unambiguous UN Security Council Resolution 2249, paragraph 5 of which specifically calls on member states to take all necessary measures to redouble and co-ordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by Isil, and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria.

So the United Nations is asking us to do something. It is asking us to do something now. It is asking us to act in Syria as well as in Iraq. And it was a Labour government that helped to found the United Nations at the end of the Second World War. And why did we do so? Because we wanted the nations of the world, working together, to deal with threats to international peace and security – and Daesh is unquestionably that.

So given that the United Nations has passed this resolution, given that such action would be lawful under Article 51 of the UN Charter – because every state has the right to defend itself – why would we not uphold the settled will of the United Nations, particularly when there is such support from within the region including from Iraq. We are part of a coalition of over 60 countries, standing together shoulder-to-shoulder to oppose their ideology and their brutality.

Now Mr Speaker, all of us understand the importance of bringing an end to the Syrian civil war and there is now some progress on a peace plan because of the Vienna talks. They are the best hope we have of achieving a cease-fire. That would bring an end to Assad’s bombing, leading to a transitional government and elections. And why is that vital? Both because it will help in the defeat of Daesh, and because it would enable millions of Syrians, who have been forced to flee, to do what every refugee dreams of: they just want to be able to go home.

Now Mr Speaker, no-one in this debate doubts the deadly serious threat we face from Daesh and what they do, although sometimes we find it hard to live with the reality. We know that in June four gay men were thrown off the fifth storey of a building in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. We know that in August the 82-year-old guardian of the antiquities of Palmyra, Professor Khaled al-Assad, was beheaded, and his headless body was hung from a traffic light. And we know that in recent weeks there has been the discovery of mass graves in Sinjar, one said to contain the bodies of older Yazidi women murdered by Daesh because they were judged too old to be sold for sex.

We know they have killed 30 British tourists in Tunisia, 224 Russian holidaymakers on a plane, 178 people in suicide bombings in Beirut, Ankara and Suruc. 130 people in Paris including those young people in the Bataclan whom Daesh – in trying to justify their bloody slaughter – called ‘apostates engaged in prostitution and vice’. If it had happened here, they could have been our children. And we know that they are plotting more attacks.

So the question for each of us – and for our national security – is this: given that we know what they are doing, can we really stand aside and refuse to act fully in our self-defence against those who are planning these attacks? Can we really leave to others the responsibility for defending our national security when it is our responsibility? And if we do not act, what message would that send about our solidarity with those countries that have suffered so much – including Iraq and our ally, France.

Now, France wants us to stand with them and President Hollande – the leader of our sister socialist party – has asked for our assistance and help. And as we are undertaking airstrikes in Iraq where Daesh’s hold has been reduced and we are already doing everything but engage in airstrikes in Syria – should we not play our full part?

It has been argued in the debate that airstrikes achieve nothing. Not so. Look at how Daesh’s forward march has been halted in Iraq. The House will remember that, 14 months ago, people were saying: ‘they are almost at the gates of Baghdad’. And that is why we voted to respond to the Iraqi government’s request for help to defeat them. Look at how their military capacity and their freedom of movement has been put under pressure. Ask the Kurds about Sinjar and Kobani. Now of course, air strikes alone will not defeat Daesh – but they make a difference. Because they are giving them a hard time – and it is making it more difficult for them to expand their territory.

Now, I share the concerns that have been expressed this evening about potential civilian casualties. However, unlike Daesh, none of us today act with the intent to harm civilians. Rather, we act to protect civilians from Daesh – who target innocent people.

Now on the subject of ground troops to defeat Daesh, there’s been much debate about the figure of 70,000 and the government must, I think, better explain that. But we know that most of them are currently engaged in fighting President Assad. But I’ll tell you what else we know, is whatever the number – 70,000, 40,000, 80,000 – the current size of the opposition forces mean the longer we leave taking action, the longer Daesh will have to decrease that number. And so to suggest, Mr Speaker, that airstrikes should not take place until the Syrian civil war has come to an end is, I think, to miss the urgency of the terrorist threat that Daesh poses to us and others, and I think misunderstands the nature and objectives of the extension to airstrikes that is being proposed. And of course we should take action. It is not a contradiction between the two to cut off Daesh’s support in the form of money and fighters and weapons, and of course we should give humanitarian aid, and of course we should offer shelter to more refugees including in this country and yes we should commit to play our full part in helping to rebuild Syria when the war is over.

Now I accept that there are legitimate arguments, and we have heard them in the debate, for not taking this form of action now. And it is also clear that many members have wrestled, and who knows, in the time that is left, may still be wrestling, with what the right thing to do is. But I say the threat is now, and there are rarely, if ever, perfect circumstances in which to deploy military forces. Now we heard very powerful testimony from the honorable member for Eddisbury earlier when she quoted that passage, and I just want to read what Karwan Jamal Tahir, the Kurdistan regional government high representative in London, said last week and I quote: ‘Last June, Daesh captured one third of Iraq over night and a few months later attacked the Kurdistan region. Swift airstrikes by Britain, America and France, and the actions of our own Peshmerga, saved us. We now have a border of 650 miles with Daesh. We’ve pushed them back, and recently captured Sinjar. Again, Western airstrikes were vital. But the old border between Iraq and Syria does not exist. Daesh fighters come and go across this fictional boundary.’ And that is the argument Mr Speaker, for treating the two countries as one, if we are serious about defeating Daesh.

Now Mr Speaker, I hope the house will bear with me if I direct my closing remarks to my Labour friends and colleagues on this side of the House. As a party we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility one to another. We never have – and we never should – walk by on the other side of the road.

And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight, and all of the people that we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated. And it is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists and trade unionists and others joined the International Brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice. And my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria. And that is why I ask my colleagues to vote for the motion tonight.

新唐人加拿大编辑部

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