Burma
Baroness Nye Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I have just arrived here from launching the Magna Carta partnerships, which is a new FCO fund to promote the rule of law. I thank my noble friend for raising that point. I am impatient: 100 years would be too long to wait for the rule of law in Burma or elsewhere. We all, as parliamentarians, have a role to play. Our voices can ring out around the world. Let us make sure they do.
Baroness Nye
My Lords, everyone shares the Minister’s hope that the elections will be fair, credible and inclusive, but, while the military still has a veto over constitutional change as a guarantee of the 25% of parliamentary seats, is denying Aung San Suu Kyi the opportunity to stand for president, and is banning opposition parties from criticising the military or the constitution during the election campaign, is it not time for the British Government to suspend military training by the British Army until Burma stops the recruitment of child soldiers and the use of rape and sexual violence against ethnic women by the Burmese army?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, there are a lot of important points in that question, but the underlying issue is whether we should cease our training of the military. The training is education to persuade the military that constitutional reform is not only right but necessary, and necessary now. She is right to point out that the constitution as it stands prevents the ability of Aung San Suu Kyi to stand for election because she has foreign-born children. That kind of provision should be amended.
Burma
Baroness Nye Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Warsi
The noble Lord will be aware that the sanctions were first suspended, and that every member state had to agree to those sanctions remaining in that suspended state. If a single member state had agreed to those sanctions not remaining, the whole regime would have failed. We felt that we needed to put our energies into getting agreement across member states to make sure that the arms embargo remained in place.
Baroness Nye
After President Obama’s visit to Burma last year, the Burmese Government agreed to allow the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights to open an office. What representations have the British Government made on this matter to try to speed things along?
Baroness Warsi
We continue to make representations on this matter. We, too, felt hopeful when President Thein Sein said that he would allow this office to be opened. He reiterated that commitment when he met President Obama, and we continue to press him to make real that commitment.
Burma
Baroness Nye Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Nye
My Lords, I declare an interest as a board member of the Burma Campaign UK and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for arranging this timely debate and for his tour de force on the situation in Burma now.
As the recent McKinsey Global Institute report says, Burma is an unusual country in that it,
“remains an underdeveloped agrarian economy in the heart of the world’s fastest growing regional economy ... one of the few remaining largely untapped markets in the world”.
It has many potential drivers of growth and areas that foreign investors can target, but foreign investment will succeed only if there is a politically stable environment in which to do business. That means that human rights cannot be ignored in the rush to be in at the beginning of an expanding economy.
Following some initial positive steps by the Burmese Government in April 2012, the EU decided to suspend economic sanctions, which had gradually been introduced over the past 20 years. However, the EU specified four human rights benchmarks that would need to be met as a way of marking progress before it would consider lifting sanctions entirely. But two months ago the EU did lift sanctions entirely, seemingly without any regard to those benchmarks at all, as most human rights organisations report that the situation has deteriorated. I hope the Minister will agree tonight to publish any review of the benchmarks the Government have conducted which showed that they had been met, and explain why the Government did not support proportionality or a gradual suspension as and when those criteria had been met.
Take the issue of political prisoners, which is being kept under constant review by the Burma Campaign UK. The release of political prisoners has been used repeatedly by President Thein Sein to coincide with a foreign visit to show that reform is ongoing. None of those released prisoners has received any kind of medical care, compensation or acknowledgement that they should not have been in jail in the first place. They still have criminal records with their sentences suspended and no full pardons, not the unconditional release referred to in the EU benchmark statement. Those released are still subject to restrictions on their freedom, including on travel and future political activity. The repressive laws that sent them to jail in the first place are still in place so, as the already incarcerated are released, more are arrested. The UN special rapporteur, after his visit in February, highlighted not only the ongoing detention of political prisoners but the increasing reports of the use of torture.
The Burmese Government have set up a review committee but questions remain about its composition, mandate, timing and lack of independent international experts. Will the Minister update us on whether the Government have confidence that this committee will finally resolve the issue of political prisoners in Burma? I fear the families of the remaining and the newly arrested political prisoners would beg to differ.
The second benchmark was to end conflict but throughout last year, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, the conflict in Kachin deteriorated, with the Burmese army using air strikes on civilians and rape and sexual violence as weapons of terror. With the signing of the seven-point agreement in recent days, there appears to be the basis of a genuine process of reconciliation in Kachin, which is to be welcomed. However, those 75,000 displaced people in Kachin still urgently need humanitarian assistance, which brings us to the third benchmark.
Agencies are still reporting difficulties in gaining access to the IDP camps in Rakhine, and to Kachin and Shan. The situation will get worse for the people in those camps in the low-lying areas during the approaching rainy season. However, as noble Lords have said, the most disturbing development last year was the violence against the Muslim and Rohingya communities. Indeed, on the very day that sanctions were lifted due to the satisfactory progress that the EU decided had been made, Human Rights Watch issued a damning report which documented crimes against humanity and the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.
After the violence in Rahkine, the President called for the “illegal Rohingya” to be sent to third countries and transferred civilian power to the military in a state of emergency that was extended last month. The recent news that the 1994 ban on Rohingya having more than two children is being enforced again is a clear violation of their human rights. Does the Minister accept the evidence of the Human Rights Watch report that ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are happening in Burma?
Concentrating on the economic opportunities that Burma offers, without parallel regard to human rights issues, means that progress on reform can stall. The exit of Vodafone from bidding to become Burma’s first foreign mobile phone company after seeing the final licence conditions shows the perils of companies trying to do business before the country relaxes its controls on access to information and freedom of expression.
In a recent debate on Europe in this House the Minister applauded,
“the intelligent use of sanctions, which in the case of Burma have been attributed as one of the most effective levers in encouraging the regime to implement democratic change”.—[Official Report, 31/1/13; col. 1695.]
I therefore look forward to hearing from the Minister about what changed her and the Government’s mind about the effectiveness of those levers. As an editorial in the Daily Telegraph—not a newspaper I usually agree with—said, on the day that sanctions were lifted:
“Mr Hague and his EU colleagues have now cast aside all their sticks, leaving themselves with no option but to rely on the regime’s goodwill”.
In the absence of those sanctions, what is the policy of the British Government towards the achievement of human rights in Burma?
Burma: Ethnic Nationalities
Baroness Nye Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Warsi
I had a number of discussions with the Foreign Minister both at the United Nations General Assembly ministerial week in New York and thereafter when she was travelling through London. I specifically raised the concern about the Rohingya community in this country, both in the wider community and among the Bangladeshi diaspora community which is crucial to the Bangladeshi Government. I left her with no illusion about the level of our concern.
Baroness Nye
My Lords, have the Government pressed the Burmese Government to allow the High Commission for Human Rights to set up an office in Burma? It would not only provide technical assistance to the Government and civil society groups during this transitional period but also be able to monitor not only the awful situation of the Rohingya but the dreadful rapes of ethnic Kachin and Shan women by the Burmese army.
Baroness Warsi
I am not sure what representations we have made so I shall write to the noble Baroness with a specific response. However, I can assure her that our ambassador, Mr Andrew Heyn, has been to Rakhine state twice over the past four weeks, including a visit to Kyaukpyu, the area which Human Rights Watch has been monitoring through satellite imaging.