Myanmar (Sanctions) Regulations 2021

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend for opening the debate so clearly and with such conviction. I also refer to my interests in the register and, in particular, to my practice at the Bar involving cases to do with international human rights and sanctions law, as well as my recent appointment to the Taskforce on a Transatlantic Response to Illicit Finance, launched by the Royal United Services Institute only today.

These regulations are further evidence of a much-needed new approach to how the United Kingdom deals with regimes abroad whose activities offend the most basic of human rights and rule of law obligations. In permitting the Government to designate particular individuals, as opposed to countries or Governments, and to have a direct impact on their personal finances and ability to travel, they will have a direct effect on the people who lead the Governments or regimes through which and in whose name the abusive and criminal behaviour is carried out.

These regulations also reflect what the United States is doing. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, is adding regulations to implement a Burma-related executive order introduced on 10 February 2021. OFAC intends to supplement these regulations with a more comprehensive set, which may include additional interpretive and definitional guidance, general licences, and other regulatory provisions.

Clearly, sanctions regimes work better if conducted multilaterally and not just by one country, no matter if that one country is the United States, but it would have been unthinkable to do nothing in the face of the widespread evidence of serious human rights violations perpetrated by the Myanmar security forces following the recent military coup. Prior to the coup in February, the UN independent international fact-finding mission had established consistent patterns of serious human rights violations and abuses in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan states and attributed responsibility to the Myanmar security forces, particularly the military. Atrocities committed by the Myanmar security forces include systematic burning of Rohingya villages, massacre, torture, arbitrary detention and targeted sexual violence.

These regulations give the Government the authority to designate particular individuals and to subject them to the restrictions listed in them; they do not identify the designated people. The sooner that the Government put into the public domain the names of the generals or other government leaders in Myanmar who have been found to have been responsible for the human rights and other abuses, the more effective the sanctions will be. I hope that my noble friend will shortly list the individuals caught by these sanctions so that the people of Myanmar, as well as those outside it, know what we have done and against whom the sanctions will bite. It would also be useful to specify the targeted assets and their value so that we can all see that these people are not only murderers and torturers but kleptocrats as well.

Myanmar is a relatively small country, and its leaders are an easy target. Hitting its generals may cause them some inconvenience—although, like the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, I should be interested to know whether any of them actually has assets or bank accounts in London. However, until China and Russia and a number of other larger countries are persuaded that supporting corrupt and cruel anti-democratic kleptocracies in Asia, eastern Europe, the Middle East or Africa is not good for their economies or the personal fortunes of their leaders, we will make very little progress, welcome as this small step may be. While congratulating the Government on these regulations, I therefore encourage them to do more.