Burma: Rohingya

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the current treatment of the Rohingya in Burma.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a board member of the Burma Campaign UK and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy in Burma.

In November 2015, Burma had its first free and fair elections, after over two decades of remorselessly oppressive military rule. Supporters of liberty across the world, including many in this House, rejoiced. It seemed that the resilient bravery of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy had triumphed and another cruel dictatorship had been ended.

Thirteen months after that election result, the reality in Burma is, I am afraid, tragically different—so different that two weeks ago 14 of Aung San Suu Kyi’s fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates and nine other distinguished internationalists issued an open letter to the UN Security Council, saying that,

“a human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing … is unfolding in Myanmar”.

They went on to detail the well-documented reality, supported by satellite images, of multiple killings, huge mass displacements of people, destruction of villages, torture, arbitrary arrests and murder of children in the Rohingya communities of Rakhine state.

These atrocities were ostensibly an armed response to the killing of nine Burmese policemen in October. As the laureates have clearly said:

“The truth about who carried out the attack … is yet to be established, but the Myanmar military accuse”,

Rohingya groups. They continue:

“Even if that is true, the … response has been grossly disproportionate”.

The laureates say that it is,

“one thing to round up suspects, interrogate them and put them on trial. It is quite another to unleash helicopter gunships on thousands of ordinary civilians and to rape women and throw babies into a fire”.

Together with denial of access of humanitarian aid to areas that have been devastatingly poor for many years, these atrocities have created an appalling humanitarian tragedy. UNHCR estimates that more than 43,000 have fled to Bangladesh, only to be sent back. Some international experts are warning that there is a real potential for genocide. The Bangladesh head of UNHCR has accused Myanmar’s Government of ethnic cleansing, saying:

“It has all the hallmarks of recent past tragedies - Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Kosovo”.

In an unprecedented passage that conveyed their deep concern and sense of urgency, the laureates said:

“Despite repeated appeals to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi we are frustrated that she has not taken any initiative to ensure full and equal citizenship rights of the Rohingyas”.

Daw Suu Kyi, they say, is surely the leader who has the,

“primary responsibility to lead … with courage, humanity and compassion”.

Instead of such leadership, the Myanmar Government’s response to the outrages taking place in Rakhine has been to establish a manifestly sham presidential commission of inquiry. It simply sustained the deceitful propaganda of “no human rights violations”, “no malnutrition” and “free access” for the media. All of it is, so far as we know, endorsed by Aung San Suu Kyi. Last week, Anna Roberts of the Burma Campaign UK called the commission’s report a “farce” and said that,

“it is time for the UK to support the establishment of a genuinely independent UN Commission of Inquiry to look into the totality of the situation in Rakhine State”.

It is also essential that the UN Secretary-General leads in negotiating access for humanitarian aid.

Those demands echo the concluding paragraphs of the powerful letter of the Nobel laureates, who want the UN Secretary-General to visit Myanmar within weeks:

“It is time for the international community as a whole to speak out … more strongly. After Rwanda, world leaders said ‘never again’. If we fail to take action, people may starve to death if they are not killed with bullets, and we may end up being the passive observers of crimes against humanity”,

wringing our hands “belatedly”,

“and say ‘never again’ all over again”.

In November, in an Answer following evidence of malnutrition among Rohingya children and reports that the Burmese forces were restricting humanitarian aid to Rakhine state, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, listed the detail of UK assistance to Burma and Rakhine and said:

“We will continue to monitor and support the delivery”,

of the Burmese Government’s commitment “to restoring humanitarian access”. I ask the Minister first for the results of the monitoring and any action taken, especially when the presidential commission makes the derisory claim that access to Rakhine for media has been unimpeded. Secondly, will the Government give urgent and insistent support to the calls for strong action by the UN Security Council and the Secretary-General made by the Nobel laureates?

When the UNHCR speaks of “ethnic cleansing”, and Prime Minister Razak of Malaysia, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Dr Azeem Ibrahim of the US Center for Global Policy all speak in measured, well-informed terms of impending genocide of the Rohingya people, there is surely a grave reason for sounding the alarm. We act now to safeguard those whose ethnicity makes them victims of this most terrible persecution.