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15 APRIL 1983
way, which has now found prosperity as a staging post the way to the Falkland Islands. The rest of the population, according to the French consul as quoted in The Times live upon the
"pleasures of fornication and intoxication."
Mr. Roger Moate (Faversham): I thought that the two were mutually exclusive.
Mr. Stanbrook: I would not know, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Sir Bernard Braine: I am the only Member of the House present who has visited St. Helena. That is a gross libel on a most charming, delightful and extremely hard- working people. I hope to show the House later that the island is neglected.
Mr. Stanbrook: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's vigorous rebuttal of the suggestion that the people of St. Helena are anything but hard-working. However, it is a sign of the regard in which St. Helena is held overseas. The governor, Mr. Massingham, according to the same article in The Times, went so far as to say:
"The British don't give a tuppenny damn. They hardly even know where it is."
That governor must be near retirement, but he may well be speaking the truth. If so, it sounds typical of the laissez- faire attitude that we adopted towards our colonies before the war. Financially, they were expected to fend for themselves, and the result in most cases was economic stagnation. We should not wait for a calamity to happen before investing in, and formulating a positive policy for our dependencies, as we did for the Falkland Islands. We must act now.
10.13 am
Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian): The House at least is indebted to the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) for giving us the opportunity to raise matters in relation to the Falkland Islands, Ascencion Island and Gibraltar, which cannot be raised in parliamentary questions. The Lords can ask anything that they wish, but the history rule imposed by the Table Office and by Mr. Speaker excludes much of the Falklands conlict and we have no other opportunity to raise these matters.
First, I wish to ask the Minister of State an emollient question. On the Pitcairn issue, I went with Glynn Christian- -a great grandson of Fletcher Christian-and Lord McNair to see Lord Belstead at the Foreign Office on 23 March. both the Minister and his officials were extremely helpful and I wonder whether statement will be made following that delegation. My view, for what it is worth, is that Henderson Island should be kept in its pristine state and the ecosystem recognised as being as valuable as that of Aldabra. We should retain the ecological integrity of Henderson Island.
The first issue that I wish to raise concerns the conduct of the Gurkhas during the final advance on Stanley. The New English Library has had the intiative to publish a translation in English of Daniel Kon's “Los Chicos de la Guerra", subtitled "The Argentine Conscripts' Own Moving Accounts of their Falklands War". I quote briefly from page 85, which is the account of Santiago:
"There were eight of them in a trench set back a bit behind a ridge. At one point, a group of eight or nine Gurkhas had approached them, laughing and screaming. They threw grenades at them and fired their Fals and downed five or six and those left alive screamed as if laughing at what had happened and finished their wounded their mates off themselves. They jumped up and
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down, laughed and shot them all at the same time. The boys also killed them in the end. They finally ran out of ammo and saw that the Argentines in positions further forward were beginning to surrender. They stayed hidden in their trench and from there they watched a Gurkha make an Argentine who had surrendered strip naked and walk across the field while they kicked him and hit him with their rifles. A bit later they saw a sergeant come out of his trench. He had run out of ammo and he threw away his helmet, his belt, his rifle, everything and surrendered. But the Gurkhas grabbed him by the hair, pushed him down on to his knees and cut his throat. They did the same with four or five boys from his position. Some of them wept, begged them not to kill them, but they slit their throats anyway. These eight stayed in their trench further back."
That is either true, or it is untrue and false. If it is untrue and false, and as the New English Library first edition is already out of print and widely circulated, it must be vehemently denied. Apart from anything else, it would be tantamount to allowing the grossest libel on the people of Nepal if such allegations were untrue and went unchallenged by the British Government.
Mr. Stanbrook: Why repeat them?
Mr. Dalyell: Because there must be a denial one way or another. The account is either substantiated, or it is not. This account has been widely circulated and we must have an answer to it.
If the description approximates to the truth, there must be an investigation under the Geneva convention. The Government should know whether those allegations not, incidentally, new and not confined to "Los Chicos"
are true or false. It was not only the boy Santiago from a humble family who referred to the Gurkhas. Carlos, the lay preacher at the parish church of La Consolacion on Canning Avenue — the name has been changed as a result of the Falkland Islands-describes the Gurkhas thus:
"I think if someone said the Gurkhas were apes, the poor apes would be scandalised. They'd hold a demonstration to say Gurkhas aren't apes. On the fourteenth, my whole company assembled in the Town Hall and from there we were taken to a prison camp near the airport."
There has been much talk about those matters, and they must be commented upon.
As the Gurkhas are our mercenaries, the House is responsible. The Gurkhas, either by the reality or the mythology of their behaviour, have blackened Britain's name throughout Latin America. In his reply, I ask the Minister to answer the question, “Did the Gurkhas behave in the way alleged?” If he cannot or will not answer today, there must be a considered statement.
Mr. Stanbrook: The hon. Gentleman casts a slur upon a fine body of British troops. What he says is either true, in which case he must substantiate it, or it is not true. If it were true, would not the Argentine Government have made an official complaint, through international channels, under the terms of the Geneva convention, and would not the best way to test the truth of those allegations be for the matter to be considered by such an international tribunal?
Mr. Dalyell: Maybe, but these allegations, so-called, are now in print. The circulation has been wide and I think that it is right to ask first of all in this House whether they are true or untrue. That is what I am doing.
The second issue that I wish to raise, which cannot be tackled by parliamentary question, is the interception of radio transmissions during the Falklands war, and the breaking of codes, which among other things made it
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