The detention of former British diplomat Ian Proud after attending the Valdai Conference raises troubling questions about the use of counter-terrorism and border powers against people advocating dialogue rather than escalation.
Former senior British diplomat Ian Proud was detained on Friday evening as he landed at Heathrow airport after attending the annual Valdai Conference in Moscow. A squad of plain-clothes counter-terrorism police intercepted him as he exited the plane and interrogated him until the small hours of Saturday morning. He had DNA and fingerprint samples taken, had his computer, phone and data stick confiscated, and was warned of the consequences of failing to comply with questioning under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act.
Ian, the author of A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed: 2014-2019, has become a powerful voice advocating for a return to diplomacy to solve international crises.
In my recent article ‘Non-diplomacy and its consequences’ I quoted Ian a couple of times, including his valuable insight: “Diplomacy is tough, it’s not about friendship. Diplomacy is about settling differences and finding ways to coexist.” Ian also told me during a discussion a few months ago: “Diplomacy is not about going to summits where you meet lots of people who already agree with you. That’s not diplomacy, that is theatre.”
Like many, I reached out to Ian to extend solidarity. He told me he felt the British intelligence services were doing more than intimidating him personally.
“I can cope with the stress of things like this happening to me, but part of the intent is to cause my family so much anxiety that it makes it harder for me to pay visits to such events as Valdai in the future.”
Ian noted, with a little bitter irony, that he was also detained by the FSB (Russia’s counter-intelligence agency) when he landed in Moscow. He said, as a former UK diplomat, this did not surprise him. The treatment at Heathrow was what hurt, especially as he communicated his travel plans to the Foreign Office in advance.
“I explained to them that I had been invited and I wasn’t being paid. The organisers paid for my flights and the accommodation while I was there, and the food, but I received no money. I reassured the Foreign Office that I would continue to abide by my commitments under the Official Secrets Act, which I take very seriously, having had access to top secret intelligence material throughout my diplomatic career,” Ian said.
The day after his UK detention he told his audience on The Peacemonger: “We need peace. We need diplomacy. We need everybody to get on board with pushing our ridiculous globalist governments to look under the hood and see how much they failed the people of Ukraine, the people of Europe, and also the people of Russia.”
So what did Ian Proud, a man who committed 24 years of his life to serving the UK, do to trigger such a dramatic event that left him and his family stressed and wounded? Proud believes his attendance at a conference in Russia and his public advocacy for engagement with Russia prompted the examination.
Valdai is an annual international conference bringing together foreign and Russian policy experts, particularly academics, to discuss geopolitics. Typically, at the end of the conference President Putin will deliver an address and engage in an extended Q&A, as happened this year. Several of the geopolitical analysts I greatly admire – such as Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute, Professors Richard Sakwa, Geoff Roberts, Glenn Diesen and John Mearsheimer, and the late Stephen Cohen, all experts on Russia – have attended Valdai. I would personally leap at the opportunity to attend the conference, sometimes dubbed the Russian Davos.
Last year when I went to the UK with my wife, we agreed on a protocol as to what she would do if I was detained at Heathrow airport. I had just written an article ‘Vive la resistance! The heroes who oppose genocide’ about the Palestine Action activists arrested in the UK for direct action against the Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems and other targets associated with the genocide of the Palestinian people. Palestine Action is a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act (the Israel Defense Forces is not). Under the UK Labour Party, which has done so much to support Israel’s killing of countless women, children and men, people like me are increasingly targeted under the Act. The drift of many countries in the West towards fascist repression is real.
More than 3,600 UK citizens have been arrested for simply holding cardboard signs that say “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” Amongst their number recently was Margaret Owen OBE, a 94-year-old human rights lawyer and Jewish person, arrested under the Terrorism Act for holding such a sign. Meanwhile real terrorist Benjamin Netanyahu, the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, was free to address the UN General Assembly (dozens of delegates walked out, while pro-Israel, pro-genocide states like my own and the UK remained).
Another of my heroes, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, has been heavily sanctioned by the US. Albanese had to use cash to pay for a medical procedure last year because of sanctions applied to her by the US for her criticism of Israel. Unlike Netanyahu’s freedom, Albanese was unable to present her annual report on the Occupied Palestinian Territories in person to the United Nations last year because the US withdrew her visa.
Western governments are increasingly using counter-terrorism, border and sanctions powers against diplomats, international legal officials, academics, journalists and activists whilst investing heavily in wars of aggression and endless crimes against humanity. It paints a very depressing picture of a West in moral decay.
What gives me a glimmer of hope are people like Ian Proud, Francesca Albanese, my friends Ray McGovern, John Whitbeck and Chas Freeman, and so many other people who get up every day and fight for a return to dialogue, a dialling down of tensions, and a stepping away from wars of aggression. These are the people who might save us all because we live in a world that seems oblivious to the risk of calamitous escalation. Ian said the trip to Valdai reinforced in him a feeling that we are headed towards a European war with Russia.
“We’re just assuming that Russia won’t use nuclear weapons. I worry because all of our assessments were wrong about Russia and we could end up with lots of us dying,” Proud says. “We need diplomacy, and we need it now. We need our police to stop repressing people like me who are promoting that.”
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.