Oral Answers to Questions

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Yes, I am very happy to confirm that, but of course we need to see far more than that in Venezuela. Maduro has brought his own country to its knees. Millions of people have fled to neighbouring countries. The country has been ruined by the lunacy of one man, and we all, as the international community, need to work together to do everything we possibly can to restore the fortunes of that once great country.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

This might be my last Question Time as Foreign Secretary—or indeed it might not—but one important event that will happen before the result of the Conservative leadership election is announced is the launch of a major global campaign to protect the safety of journalists around the world. The UK has joined forces with Canada to spearhead this campaign, which I will be launching next month with Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. It will be the world’s first ever ministerial summit on media freedom, here in London. We have 700 confirmed attendees from media and civil society across 98 countries and from 45 different Governments. Together we will shine a light on abuse and raise the price for those who would harm or imprison journalists.

[Rushanara Ali]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for announcing that conference. Whether he remains Foreign Secretary or becomes Prime Minister, or takes any other post, I hope that he continues consistently to champion human rights and media freedom.

I declare an interest in that last month I was part of a delegation with Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Council for Arab-British Understanding that visited the Palestinian refugee camp of Dheisheh in the occupied west bank. There we witnessed the vital work in education, health and other areas of humanitarian relief that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency does but which is now at risk because the US has threatened to defund and delegitimise the agency. Can the Foreign Secretary confirm that the UK intends to support the renewal of UNRWA’s mandate at the General Assembly later this year so that it can continue its vital work of protecting people and giving them a sense of hope?

[Mr Hunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for her good wishes. She once bought me a cappuccino in Portcullis House, and I look forward to returning the favour in No. 10, if that is what happens. I can confirm that we will continue to support the renewal of UNRWA’s mandate and the vital work it does.

Sri Lanka

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to give my hon. Friend a personal commitment that I want to do more on this front, and also to tell him that the United Kingdom is a world leader in countering extremist disinformation online. We have developed particular expertise over the past five years or so, and we share our information widely.

My hon. Friend is right to say how coldly calculated this attack was. To co-ordinate six explosions to take place at virtually the same moment required an enormous degree of planning. Those people knew exactly what they were doing. They spent a long time planning the attacks and finding the recruits to carry them out. We have to think hard about the kind of people who would do such a thing, and I hope that will mean that we redouble our efforts to ensure that it does not happen again.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I join the Foreign Secretary, the shadow Foreign Secretary and colleagues across the House in utterly condemning these terrorist attacks. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.

Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the focus on protecting religious minorities—in this case, Christian minorities—must be redoubled? The atmosphere of intolerance towards religious minorities in different countries—whether they are Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews or Hindus—has increased, and the international community must step up to provide that protection, as well as security for minorities.

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Let me also commend her for the work that she has done in championing the rights of Rohingya Muslims in Burma; I think that my first contact with her when I became Foreign Secretary was in that connection.

It is important to understand that it is an easy first step to target and attack someone because of their religion, and that in very poor countries where many people have not had a proper education it is easy to whip up feelings in a way that can be lethal.

Rohingya Refugee Crisis

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is deeply concerned by the ongoing humanitarian crisis facing Rohingya refugees; agrees with the findings of the UN fact-finding mission that genocide and war crimes have been carried out against the Rohingya by senior Myanmar military figures; calls on the Government to pursue an ICC referral for Myanmar through the UN Security Council; and further calls on the Government to put pressure on the United Nations to prevent the repatriation of the Rohingya from Bangladesh to unsafe conditions in Myanmar and continue to provide assistance to Rohingya refugees.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and to my co-sponsor, the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), who co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group on the rights of the Rohingya. I want to also extend my gratitude to my co-chair of the APPG on democracy in Burma, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), and to all Members of Parliament who supported the application for this important debate.

We are deeply concerned about the horrific ongoing crisis affecting Rohingya people in Burma and Bangladesh. We are close to Christmas, and I know that many colleagues would have liked to be here to support this motion if not for family or constituency commitments. The proximity to Christmas should remind us all of our duty to refugees. The Christmas story reminds us of the plight of those displaced from their homes.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for getting this important topic debated in Parliament, because many people out there will think that the British public and its Parliament have forgotten the desperate plight of the Rohingya. Does my hon. Friend agree that, while we commend the Bangladeshi Government for their incredible generosity in dealing with hundreds of thousands of refugees, we must compel our own Government to do a lot more to assist them and to hold to account Aung San Suu Kyi and her regime for the crimes perpetrated against the Rohingya people?

[Rushanara Ali]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. I hope that the Minister will be able to update us on what action the Government are taking, because we depend on the Foreign Secretary and Foreign Office Ministers to take a leadership role.

Spending time in our warm homes this Christmas will remind us of the conditions in which people are living in the camps in both Burma and Bangladesh. Being with friends and family will remind us of those separated from their loved ones, some forever. At a time of peace and good will, we should recall the fate of the Rohingya people and other refugees around the world who are subject to war, rape, execution and mutilation, their villages burnt and their lives destroyed.

This is not the first time that the House has debated the Rohingya refugee crisis, and it will not be the last. This is one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time. The United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that the Burmese military were responsible for

“consistent patterns of serious human rights violations and abuses…in addition to serious violations of international humanitarian law.”

It made concrete recommendations that the Burmese military

“should be investigated and prosecuted in an international criminal tribunal for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

And yet so little has been done in practical terms to solve the crisis, provide safety and security for the Rohingya people and bring those responsible to justice.

How did we get here? We know from the history books that human beings only behave like this towards one another after a process of dehumanisation. From Cambodia to Srebrenica, massacres are carried out when communities have been isolated, demonised and presented as subhuman and worthy only of extinction. The Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma have been the subject of decades of systematic segregation and racial discrimination. Much of the forced segregation stems from the citizenship law of 1982, under which full citizenship in Burma is based on membership of one of the national races—a category awarded only to those considered to have settled in Burma prior to 1824, the date of the first occupation by the British. In Burma’s national census, the Muslim minority group was initially allowed to self-identify as Rohingya, but the Government later reversed that freedom and deemed that they could be identified only as Bengali, which they do not accept because they are not Bengali.

Over the past few years, the Rohingya have been indiscriminately targeted by the Burmese military. The August 2017 attacks were the most systematic and the largest in scale, but they were not the first. Attacks in 2012 and 2016 led to the internal displacement of more than 124,000 Rohingya people, who were forced to live in what are effectively prison camps in Rakhine state, with extremely limited access to food, healthcare and shelter. I visited those camps in Rakhine state twice, and the conditions have not got any better. People are arbitrarily deprived of liberty and forced to live in conditions described by the UN deputy relief chief as

“beyond the dignity of any people”.

There are echoes of apartheid in Rakhine, with one racial group separated, corralled and delegitimised. There are echoes too of previous genocides, with civilians sent to camps, villages burnt and human rights trampled under military boots. But this is not the 1930s, the ’40s, the ’70s or the ’90s. It is happening in this day and age, as we sit here in the Chamber this Christmas.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to condemn the violence and stand up to the military has been deeply disappointing. While power over security operations constitutionally resides with the military and her power to halt the military offensive is limited, her ability to speak out in defence of the Rohingya is not. She spoke out for democracy and human rights from house arrest and liberated her country, and yet she failed to speak out for the rights of the Rohingya people when a genocide took place.

The 2017 attacks by the Burmese military came after a lengthy campaign initiated by those in power to demonise the Rohingya people using online platforms. Hidden behind fake accounts, military officers exploited the wide reach of social media to promote their divisive rhetoric and create a culture of suspicion and anger. They created fake news and sent it into the battle against the Rohingya. Of course, incidents of mass violence have happened before, catalysed by other forms of media. In Rwanda in 1994, local radio stations incited Hutus to kill Tutsis. Within 100 days, 800,000 people were dead. While social media platforms cannot be wholly blamed, the UN fact-finding mission singled out Facebook as a tool used to disseminate hate speech and concluded that it played a “determining role” in inciting violence against the Rohingya.

Social media can also be a force for good, as it was in the Arab spring in 2010-11. It is highly influential and can play a positive role. However, it is important that we recognise its capacity to foment division and incite violence—and, in this case, murder. Social media companies have a responsibility to ensure that malicious posts and dehumanising material are removed from their sites without delay. We must ensure that there are regulations and controls to prevent these abuses from happening again.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on her outstanding advocacy of all that is best in the determination of this country to drive a human rights agenda internationally. I visited Myanmar three years ago. It was a beautiful country of immense potential, emerging—we thought—out of an era of authoritarianism, but it is now scarred and shamed by the treatment of the Rohingya. Does she agree that an unambiguous message needs to be sent today that the Government of Myanmar will forever be a pariah state until they end the shameful war crimes against this noble people, the Rohingya?

[Rushanara Ali]

I share my hon. Friend’s concerns. The Government need to make it absolutely clear to the Burmese military and the Burmese Government that if they continue to carry on like this without progress on this very important issue, they will continue to be seen in a very negative light and as a pariah state. They will face difficulty doing trade, quite rightly, and challenges from the wider international community. If they want to make the transition towards democracy, and want to make sure that human rights are protected, they have to take action to get their country in order to protect people’s rights, including the rights of the Rohingya minority—and other minorities, because the military have been attacking others too.

There are now over 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Over half the refugees are children, 160,000 of whom are under the age of four. Following the 2017 attacks orchestrated by the Burmese military, some 700,000 Rohingya refugees joined hundreds of thousands who had already fled there following previous periods of targeted attacks, notably in 2012 and 2016. The border pathways are particularly dangerous. Last year, Amnesty International accused the Burmese Government of having laid landmines in the path of fleeing women and children.

In July 2018, I visited Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh with the International Rescue Committee to see for myself the situation of the Rohingya refugees, and to hear about their lives in the camps and how they got there. The overwhelming, immediate impression is the scale of the disaster. Almost 1 million people are now packed densely into only five square miles. During my visit, I heard terrifying stories of the brutal violence and persecution that the Rohingya faced at the hands of the military during last year’s attacks. The people I met were traumatised, unable to sleep or eat. Daughters were raped in front of their mothers; children were burnt to death in front of their parents. Women and men were separated into different rooms and slaughtered. A father painfully told me of his son and how he had been burnt to death in front of him. As I left, he added, “We want justice.”

I met non-governmental organisation relief workers. Local and international agencies are doing incredible work in very difficult circumstances. Some 30,000 NGO workers of Bangladeshi nationality are working in camps with international NGOs. But the NGOs tell me that the lack of long-term funding is making it very difficult for them to plan ahead and scale up their work, not to mention the restricted access and bureaucracy in trying to work in the camps. Although the situation is marginally better than in Rakhine, there are major challenges, and only two thirds of the UN appeal for funding has been fulfilled. That is not enough, and our Government need to do more to ensure that the outstanding funding is committed by the international community.

Last year, the response from the authorities and the people of Bangladesh was incredible. They demonstrated immense generosity to the refugees, despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, with millions of people living below the poverty line and facing the greatest risks from climate change. Over recent years, when thousands were killed by the Burmese military and hundreds of thousands sought refuge, Bangladesh kept its borders open and provided them with sanctuary. But the international community and other neighbouring states must do more to support that country in the humanitarian crisis. We know from our experience in Europe that absorbing so many people is a massive challenge even for this continent, which is among the wealthiest in the world. The end result must be the peaceful return of the Rohingya to their homes, but that must happen only when it is safe and when the Rohingya believe that the danger has passed.

These are particularly turbulent times for the Rohingya people, as only a few weeks ago, in the run-up to the planned repatriation date, there were reports of an increased military presence in the camps. This, according to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, has caused a state of terror and panic. All the families placed on the list for repatriation refused to return to Burma as they were too afraid of the current conditions. It is imperative that any return is safe, dignified, and, crucially, voluntary. It is vital that we keep up international pressure on the Burmese Government. They need to know that the world is watching.

I welcome the contributions by Nobel peace prize winners Tawakkol Karman, Shirin Ebadi and Mairead Maguire, who implored Aung San Suu Kyi to “wake up” to the atrocities after they visited Cox’s Bazar. Nobel laureates such as Malala Yusufzai, Muhammad Yunus and Desmond Tutu, among others, have also spoken out. I welcome the legal voices who have spoken out in favour of human rights and justice—Amal Clooney and Ben Emmerson QC, among others. I welcome the interventions made by Cate Blanchett, who visited the camps in her role as a UN good will ambassador, and by Angelina Jolie as a special envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Others have supported the humanitarian fundraising effort by visiting the camps to raise awareness and keep the media interested and engaged in what is happening. They include Ashley Judd, Mindy Kaling, Freida Pinto, Priyanka Chopra, and many others.

Most of all, I am incredibly grateful to, and commend, my colleagues in this House and the other House who have visited Burma and Bangladesh and publicly campaigned and voiced their concerns. The fact is that the more attention we generate, the brighter the light we shine, and the more noise we make, the less likely that further murders and atrocities will occur. Scrutiny and activism from campaigners, the media and the wider international community is literally the only line of defence for the Rohingya people against the Burmese military and its might.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend my hon. Friend for the fantastic campaigning that she personally has done, as well as all the other people she listed. One of the main difficulties is that at the United Nations, there are two Governments, one in the Security Council and one in the General Assembly—China and India—who have been supporting the Government in Myanmar. The Chinese, in particular, have massive investments in Rakhine province, and, as a result, they have not been prepared to take the action that should be required internationally. Does she agree?

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more. I will come on to that. I very much hope that the Government will build the alliance that is needed to get support at the United Nations.

The United Kingdom has a unique responsibility towards Burma. We must use all our relationships, forged over many centuries, to argue for a peaceful settlement to the crisis. We are also the penholder in the United Nations for Burma. We must apply all the pressure that we can. However, as hon. Friends and others have pointed out, it is not just about our humanitarian response to the 1 million refugees, nor the prevention of future violence, nor even the return of the Rohingya to their homes; ultimately, it is about justice.

Here in the UK, many Members of Parliament have consistently campaigned against the persecution of Rohingya people. On many occasions, we have pleaded with the Prime Minister and successive Foreign Secretaries. We have held parliamentary debates. We have used our platforms publicly to denounce the atrocities. While there have been welcome changes in tone from the Foreign Secretary, and a more critical and proactive stance is being taken, including by his Ministers, this has yet to translate into a stronger policy.

Over the years, there has been little concrete action from the UK Government to solve this issue. In 2017, we warned the Government of increasing tensions in Rakhine state weeks before the brutal military campaign, but little was done to prevent it. When asked in a parliamentary debate last year, the Minister said that if the United Nations determined genocide, then

“of course the UK Government will be the first to be supportive of taking these matters to the International Criminal Court.”—[Official Report, 17 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 780.]

Twelve months later, there has still been very little progress. Last November, the Prime Minister called explicitly for more action and said that the humanitarian crisis

“is something for which the Burmese authorities—and especially the military—must take full responsibility.”

She went on to pledge that Britain would

“continue to play a leading role in bringing the international community together…to do everything possible to stop this appalling and inhuman destruction of the Rohingya people.”

The sad reality is that our Government, while strong on providing humanitarian assistance, have not come close to putting real pressure on the Burmese Government and their military leaders. It should not have taken more deaths and displacement to make the international community take notice. This crisis happened on our watch. The UK Government should publicly press the Burmese Government to immediately stop all abuses, remove restrictions on freedom of movement, improve conditions for all Rohingya in Rakhine state, and grant unfettered access to Rakhine state to humanitarian agencies and rights monitors. The UK Government should insist that no repatriation of Rohingya refugees takes place until it is safe to do so. The UK and concerned Governments should call on the Bangladeshi Government to halt their plans to relocate refugees to Bhasan Char and encourage them, instead, to consider alternative, safer and more feasible options for relocating those who are vulnerable in the current camps.

The UK Government must press the Burmese authorities to take steps to address the culture of marginalisation and discrimination of the Rohingya community in Burma and to reform the 1982 citizenship law, which renders the Rohingya stateless and denies them basic human rights. The UK Government must accept the full findings and recommendations of the United Nations fact-finding mission, and they should play a leadership role in pressing the United Nation Security Council to urgently refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court so that all crimes, not just the crimes of deportation, can be considered.

The international community must not allow the Burmese military to get away with the slaughter, rape, torture and displacement of the Rohingya people on such a scale that it constitutes genocide. I ask the Minister to address head on the issues of getting the International Criminal Court to bring the criminals to justice. That is vital not only in this instance of genocide but in the prevention of future genocides.

After the holocaust we said “never again.” After the killing fields of Cambodia we said “never again.” After Srebrenica we said “never again.” And after 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days in Rwanda we said “never again.” It is time we pledged to end genocide, to work for peace and to bring perpetrators to justice, because genocide continues to occur. This time let us say “never again” and mean it. Let us bring the war criminals to court and give the Rohingya people the justice they deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

We have made it clear that we do not feel it is an appropriate place, for the reasons my hon. Friend rightly sets out. Out of sight is out of mind. There is a sense of it being almost like an Alcatraz or near enough some sort of holding pen, rather than a viable place for the longer term.

On my hon. Friend’s previous point about the joint response plan, which goes to the issue of the overall humanitarian response, I am afraid to say that at the moment, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby will know, it is only partially funded. The current figure is 68.9%, which is $654 million out of a $950 million expectation. The UK is, mainly through the international community in Geneva rather than New York, actively encouraging others to step up to do their share in fully funding the plan, including through DFID’s relationships with other donors and donor agencies.

Ultimately, we all know that the solution to the Rohingya crisis lies in Rakhine and in Burma more widely. The UN fact-finding mission—we are supportive of it and its evidence—uncovered evidence of a series of horrendous crimes. Its report makes for chilling reading. However, as I have said previously in this House, the Government believe that any judgment on whether genocide has occurred is not a political judgment but a matter for judicial decision. It is therefore critical that we work to ensure that a credible judicial process is put in place. The Burmese authorities want to demonstrate that there is no need for an international justice mechanism. They must show that their commission of inquiry will lead to an effective judicial process. I share many of the concerns expressed on the Opposition Benches about that process. What I would say is that the commission of inquiry does have high-ranking international observers. We therefore continue to maintain some hope, but it can work only if it properly holds to account those responsible for crimes, whether they are civilian or in the military.

[Rushanara Ali]

I have a great deal of time for the Minister, but I find it utterly shocking that, after everything he has heard and all that he knows—he knows a lot more than many others, because he is the Minister—he believes we should be even recognising the internal commission of inquiry. The Burmese military uses commission after commission to distract the international community. In the past, when his predecessors in government used similar lines, we would subsequently look away and thousands of people would have been killed and hundreds of thousands forced out of their country. The same mistake is happening again. He should not have any hope for that internal inquiry. He should answer the question in the motion about the ICC and what we will do.

[Mark Field]

I think the hon. Lady has slightly misinterpreted what I said. I have very little faith in the commission of inquiry, other than the fact that within it there are international individuals who will hopefully be able to keep some lines of communication open. She is absolutely right that the Burmese authorities have given very little evidence in the past year to suggest that this will be anything more than a whitewash. As I say, there are individuals involved who I hope can keep lines of communication open. [Interruption.] In fairness, the Annan report was commissioned in part by the Burmese military. It provides a fantastic template, if only it were properly enforced.

[Rushanara Ali]

The Minister is right. We recognise the contribution of the late Kofi Annan, and we recognise that the commission’s recommendations would be significant if only they were implemented. The Burmese military’s answer to those recommendations was the 2017 attacks that brought about this crisis, with thousands of people killed and 700,000 forced out. That is their answer to people like Kofi Annan and others—independent- minded figures engaging and trying to help the Burmese Government. Their answer is further slaughter and genocide.

[Mark Field]

I very much respect what the hon. Lady has said, and, as she will know, I share her concerns. We will do all that we can.

If I may, in the time allotted to me, I will say a little more about what else we are doing in the international community. The Foreign Secretary is the Minister who visited Burma most recently, back in September. He made our expectations very clear to Aung San Suu Kyi, and repeated that message in a letter written jointly with the French Foreign Minister. He made it clear that if the commission of inquiry was to have any credibility, it must be transparent and independent, and must take full account of the international evidence brought to it. If it is not and does not, the Burmese authorities and their supporters at the United Nations will, in our view, have no grounds whatsoever for rejecting moves towards an international mechanism to secure that accountability.

Let me now say something about the UK’s international action. We are, in the meantime, building on our success at the September session of the Human Rights Council, where we secured a regulation mandating the creation of a “collect and preserve” mechanism. That will support the preparation of case files for use in future prosecutions. I fear that some of the leading lights of the Burmese military will be there for some time to come, but that unique mechanism will enable evidence to be in place for those future prosecutions.

We have been clear with fellow members that the Security Council should take further action, and we have tried to build consensus on what that might be. I know that many Members would like the Security Council to refer the situation in Burma to the International Criminal Court, but a referral would be extremely difficult to achieve, because veto-wielding members of the Security Council would vote against it. I must say to the hon. Members for Tooting and for Bradford East and others that there is a risk that a vetoed resolution would be counterproductive to our aims, because it would reduce pressure on the Burmese military, and would also undermine the very credibility of the United Nations.

I know that some look back at China’s decision to abstain rather than vetoing the UN Security Resolution in 2005 referring the Darfur situation to the International Criminal Court. I believe that we should test what China is prepared to accept in this situation, but I also think we need to recognise that the way in which that nation behaved in 2005 in relation to a crisis in Africa may not be the way in which a China that is rather more assertive on the international stage behaves in relation to a crisis in its own neighbourhood.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

Let me start by expressing my gratitude to my hon. Friends and other Members, especially my co-sponsor the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), for taking time to contribute to this debate ahead of Christmas. Everybody has spoken passionately and with conviction and courage about the importance of the need for the British Government to act, and we have highlighted our own experiences of why we need to act. I am grateful to the Minister for the work he has been doing and for what he has said.

Let me sum up and reiterate some of the points made by my hon. Friends and Members in all parts the Chamber. The first is the importance of the reform of citizenship laws and the protection of all minorities—especially the Rohingya population, given the scale of the disaster, but also other minorities, including Christian minorities. There are conflicts throughout Burma that affect humanitarian access for other minorities, such as the Kachin.

Along with its humanitarian dimension, the particular focus of the motion is the need to seek an International Criminal Court referral through the United Nations. The Minister highlighted very well the complexities of getting such a referral, and we understand them, but we need to remind ourselves of some of the remarks that have been made, including “If not now, when?” If the Minister is not prepared to say when, for the reasons that he has explained—we fully appreciate the complexity and difficulty of international diplomacy—will he please make the commitment that he, and perhaps even the Foreign Secretary, will regularly report to the House, without our having to spend months trying to secure a Backbench debate that then gets delayed because of the wider crises that we face in this country, particularly given the uncertainties of Brexit and a potential no-deal situation?

The point about the referral and accountability and justice is well made and important. We are particularly passionate and determined that this foreign affairs team—the current Foreign Secretary, with the Minister and his colleagues—take action, because they have shown the greatest commitment so far. That includes the Foreign Secretary’s recent visit to Burma and his discussions with some of us before and after that. I am grateful for the time that has been given to involve Members of the House. This team has shown the most commitment to trying to get results, so we need to seize that opportunity, because we have had a lot of change, with a number of Ministers having moved. Although we have the Government’s commitment and understanding, we need action. Otherwise, we will keep coming back here to remind and re-educate subsequent Ministers, not because they do not care, but because they are having to learn fast, as this Minister had to do when, as a new Minister, he stood in this Chamber to respond to an urgent question when this crisis began. That is why we are absolutely determined to ensure that the Government take much stronger action and report back—every few months, I hope—with some results, rather than have us go round in circles.

The points on the issues relating to protection, particularly of women and children, are well made. I urge the Minister to make sure that DFID does more and that we do more to ensure that the outstanding funding is provided for the appeal, because without medium to long-term funding, the hand-to-mouth existence is going to cause further devastation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) mentioned the Jordan compact as a way of learning what else could be done and supporting host populations, as has been the case in Jordan in respect of Syrian refugees. It is important that DFID and the Foreign Office explore those options. On the conditions in the camps, the International Development Committee highlighted the 200,000 people who would have been at risk if landslides had taken place as a result of flooding and cyclones. There is a real risk that that could happen next year. I know from spending the first seven years of my life in Bangladesh that the climate is very difficult, so I hope the Minister will do more with the Department to ensure that more support is provided.

I want to thank all the international and domestic non-governmental organisations that have supported the efforts, both in Rakhine and in Bangladesh. I particularly thank the Burma Campaign UK and Refugees International, which first took me to Burma when I was a newly elected MP, in very challenging circumstances. I also thank the faith organisations—the mosques, synagogues and churches—which have raised so much money; British nationals have raised so much money and shown so much generosity. I echo the appeal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) for people to donate ahead of this Christmas to support people who are struggling to survive. I thank all of my colleagues for giving their time and sticking with this very important issue, because genocide cannot be taken lightly. That is why we must act.

I wish to thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for indulging us, and me in particular, in allowing me to speak for a bit longer than two minutes. I wish you a very happy Christmas, and I wish all colleagues, especially my co-sponsor, a very happy Christmas and new year.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her good wishes. I have allowed speeches to take rather longer than they ought to have this afternoon because this is a very difficult subject, and some powerful and impassioned speeches have been made. It breaks my heart to think of the way in which this Chamber and this Parliament are criticised for what happens for half an hour a week, given that for the other 40 hours of the week that we sit here in this Chamber and this Parliament we do some very good and important work. I am grateful to everybody who has taken part in this debate this afternoon, and I only wish that those who observe us would look now and see how positive and beneficial this Parliament is to the nation and indeed to the world.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House is deeply concerned by the ongoing humanitarian crisis facing Rohingya refugees; agrees with the findings of the UN fact-finding mission that genocide and war crimes have been carried out against the Rohingya by senior Myanmar military figures; calls on the Government to pursue an ICC referral for Myanmar through the UN Security Council; and further calls on the Government to put pressure on the United Nations to prevent the repatriation of the Rohingya from Bangladesh to unsafe conditions in Myanmar and continue to provide assistance to Rohingya refugees.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy to do that. It is extremely important that there is a clear red line: the use of chemical weapons, of which nerve agents are one, is totally unacceptable. The price will always be too high. The EU has already agreed to a chemical weapons sanctions regime, and we will press it to implement that regime as soon as possible.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

T5. The recent UN independent fact-finding mission on Myanmar called for the country’s top general, Min Aung Hlaing, to be investigated and prosecuted for crimes against humanity and genocide in northern Rakhine. Other Members have already referred to the situation there. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that if the UK does not use its leadership role as the UN Security Council’s official penholder, there is a real risk that those Rohingya people who remain in Myanmar will face the same consequences as others have and that the genocide will continue? We have warned the Government about this issue, and action needs to be taken now.

[Mr Hunt]

I do agree with the hon. Lady. A referral to the International Criminal Court would need Security Council consensus, and we need to discuss with our Security Council colleagues whether that is achievable. We will not stop making sure that justice is done in this situation.

Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris]

I know that my hon. Friend has visited the west bank and has seen some of the actions of the Israeli security forces. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that. The UK must press for an independent inquiry and ensure that its abstention at the Human Rights Council does not send the message that grave violations of international humanitarian law will be tolerated.

In 2012, the UN warned that Gaza would be unliveable by 2020. In July 2017, the then UN co-ordinator for humanitarian aid and development activities, Robert Piper, revised that projection, saying that

“that unlivability threshold has been passed quite a long time ago.”

I share that view. Chronic needs and injustices must be addressed now. Many right hon. and hon. Members present have actually seen the conditions there with their own eyes. The people of Gaza cannot wait for a successful peace process. The blockade must be lifted and the suffering relieved.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the former Conservative Prime Minister described Gaza as the world’s biggest open-air prison. That narrative has changed, as has the policy of the Government, who seem increasingly apologetic about the Israeli Government’s actions. I welcome the Government’s reference to an international inquiry, but they are shirking responsibility given our history in that country and region. I call on the Minister and his Department to work in the spirit he has always shown and make sure that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary start to show some leadership on this issue, rather than ducking and diving, as has happened over the past few years.

[Grahame Morris]

I absolutely agree. I hope that we will hear some positive responses from the Minister. Until Israel ensures effective and independent investigations that result in the criminal prosecutions of those responsible, the International Criminal Court must open a formal investigation into these killings and serious injuries as possible war crimes and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

The debate relates to the work of DFID, and the protests, attacks and deaths merely shadow a wider issue, which is that many Palestinians live a miserable life because of the Gaza blockade. It has now been 11 years since the closure of Gaza, which was intensified by Israel’s imposition of a land, sea and air blockade.

Despite Israel’s removal of its settlements in Gaza in 2005, it retains effective control over both the territory and its population. It therefore remains the occupying power, with all the humanitarian and legal responsibilities resulting from the fourth Geneva convention, including for the Gaza population’s access to adequate healthcare, the provision of medical supplies and the functioning of medical establishments. Hospitals in Gaza are suffering a drastic deficit in medical disposable equipment and vital drugs. The World Health Organisation warned that the health system in Gaza is

“on the brink of collapse”,

with more than 40% of essential medicines completely depleted, as well as shortages of electricity and fuel for generators.

Permit approval is needed from Israel for patients seeking urgent treatment outside Gaza. Last year saw the lowest rate of permit approvals for Palestinian patients since records began, causing the avoidable tragedy of the deaths of at least 54 people after the denial or delay of their permits.

Gaza: UN Human Rights Council Vote

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The hard truth of what my hon. Friend said stands for itself, and illustrates the degree of difficulty the Human Rights Council now has in relation to Israel in demonstrating its independence and therefore being a credible body. That was one of the influences on the United Kingdom, besides the unbalanced resolution, that a number of our European allies supported.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

The Minister has stated that the UK decided to abstain because the UK Government accept that the process is likely to be biased. Given the UK’s position that the Israeli Government should lead the inquiry, how can we continue to play the role of honest broker, which has been a very important role for our Government historically, given our unique historical relationship with that region? Can the Minister explain how that is possible?

[Alistair Burt]

I will endeavour to do so; that is a perfectly understandable and fair question. I draw attention to what we said in terms of the explanation of the vote:

“The loss of life, casualties and volume of live fire presents a depressingly familiar and unacceptable pattern. This cannot be ignored.”

We called on Israel directly to

“carry out what must be a transparent inquiry into the IDF’s conduct at the border fence and to demonstrate how this will achieve a sufficient level of independence.”

Difficult as it is, the UK taking a more balanced position on this than some enables us to remain in an impartial position in relation to this, which would be lost completely if we jumped one side or the other.

Gaza Border Violence

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Colleagues are delightfully incorrigible. A number are now developing a little technique of signalling to me that they intend to be very short, therefore trying to persuade me to call them earlier than some other colleague.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Since 30 March, 97 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,000 injured. I have heard words of concern expressed by the Minister, whom I greatly admire, but I implore him to use the word “condemn” and stop the trend of those in the Foreign Office to be mealy-mouthed when these killings happen. I implore our Government to take a leadership role and condemn the attacks.

[Alistair Burt]

There is much to condemn all round. We have heard from colleagues on both sides of the House about activities that are rightly to be condemned. As I indicated earlier, deaths that have resulted from breaches of international humanitarian law, whether perpetrated by the IDF or anyone else, would rightly be condemned.

Myanmar: Rohingya Minority

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 200224 and 200371, and public petitions P002061, P002064, P002078 and P002104, relating to Myanmar’s Rohingya minority.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya from Burma is a tragedy that shames all of us. Their current situation stands as a reproach to the international community, which has proved either unable or unwilling to act as the Burmese Government have violated every international norm of right behaviour. It has tarnished for ever the name of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was once a beacon for those who believe in democracy and human rights. It has led to Bangladesh, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, having to take in a huge number of refugees. Bangladesh accepted more refugees in three weeks than the whole of mainland Europe took from the Mediterranean in a year. That perhaps puts some of our problems into perspective.

Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have fled their homes, but the roots of the tragedy were there for a long time for anyone who wished to see. For years, violence has been growing in Rakhine state. By 2013, Human Rights Watch was warning of what it called the “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya. In 2015, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Early Warning Project listed the Rohingya as being at risk of genocide, yet it seems that various Governments of the world continue to give the wrong signal to the Burmese Government and military.

We relied too much on the influence of Aung San Suu Kyi. We indicated through our actions, if not our words, that the plight of the Rohingya and their human rights were not something we were terribly concerned about. To give one example, the UK Government funded the 2014 census in Burma to the tune of £10 million. The then Select Committee on International Development expressed its concerns that the Rohingya would not be allowed to take part.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend also note that, although representations were made to the UK Government and the United Nations about the census, they accepted the requirement to define Rohingya people as Bengali as part of the census? Our Government failed to take action and withdraw funding from that census.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend brings me on to my next point, which is that the UK Government continued funding even when the Burmese Government were not allowing the Rohingya to be defined as citizens of their own country.

We provided training for the Burmese military in democracy and human rights. Opinions differ on whether that was a good thing, but when I see that 67% of that funding came from the aid budget—money that should go to the poorest people in the poorest countries—it gives me pause. That training continued even as villages were being burned and looted and people were being killed in Rakhine. In fact, it did not cease until September last year. That told the Burmese military and the Burmese Government that we were not that concerned about human rights in their country and that we would do nothing to enforce those rights.

We were not the only ones at fault. In fact, while those villages were being attacked, the head of the Burmese military came to Brussels to give a speech. He toured arms factories in Europe, which again sent the wrong signal. It should have come as no surprise to anyone that, when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked police outposts and killed 12 soldiers in August last year, the reprisals were swift and brutal. The estimate of the number killed varies between 9,000 and more than 13,000, but there can be no true figures because there is no real humanitarian access to the area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing the debate, and on her powerful advocacy, which I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated. She went through so many of the important aspects of this terrible situation.

It is a shame that more people are not here today— I know they would have been ordinarily, because every time this subject is raised in Westminster Hall or in the Chamber lots of people want to speak, get involved, share their views and keep the pressure on the Burmese Government. However, we all understand the situation in Syria at the moment. It is absolutely right that that terrible situation is being debated in the Chamber.

The situation faced by the Rohingya has been going on for many years. Kutupalong camp is the biggest camp in Bangladesh. It is now effectively Bangladesh’s fourth biggest city, because of how the camps have come together and how many people are there. It has been there for 30 years. My first question when I was elected to this place was about the Rohingya community. At that point, they were being pushed out into the sea and were making terrible boat trips.

In September last year, after the latest escalation, I was one of the first Members to go to the Kutupalong camp. I remember coming back and wanting to share the voices of the people I had met, and tell their stories, because I knew that world events would overtake what is going on in a part of the world that is relatively unknown to the west. I remember thinking at the time that something else was bound to happen in Syria that would take the world’s attention away from Burma and the Rohingya community, and indeed that is exactly what we risk letting happen. This is therefore a really opportune, important debate. Despite the fact that few of us are here, I know that the contributions will be well received by those who have been campaigning for so long for those people whose voices we cannot hear—the 680,000 people who are languishing in terrible conditions in Bangladesh, and the few who are left in Burma.

I have spoken in this place about what I saw in September 2017. The Burmese Government have called these people terrorists, but I have spoken at length about the 60-year-old woman I met who was dead behind the eyes after telling me about how her son-in-law had been stabbed and dragged away. Her 12-year-old grandson had been beheaded in front of her. Others had their genitals chopped off and their villages burned. People had gun wounds in the backs of their legs. People were describing how helicopters had been chasing them, and firing just behind them to push them across the border.

The hon. Member for Warrington North mentioned landmines. We saw videos of the landmines that had been planted, and we could track exactly where they were, because in the video that was shown to us we could see where we were standing. A lady had had her leg blown off just four days before. This is really gruesome stuff and one of the toughest things I have had to see, listen to and speak about. These people have suffered in ways that I, frankly, cannot imagine, but I must press on, as we all must, to share these stories.

As the hon. Lady said, in Kutupalong camp the people have found the one part of Bangladesh that has some hills. Bangladesh is a low-lying country, but because of its forestland the camp is on sloping ground. It has all been deforested. Effectively, a population the size of Liverpool is on an area 5 km by 5 km. The trees that were there have all been taken away; the land is just a series of mudbanks. When I was there, we spent an hour and a half walking through the camp, but we did not get anywhere near the end of it. We could not see the end, the camp is that big.

The rainy season is nearly upon us again, so we have gone full cycle. When I was in the camp recently with the International Development Committee, things had improved. There is now a registration camp with proper UN canvas tents where people can settle in, register, tell their story, be documented and get the vaccinations that they need. However, they then move over to the bigger camp, where there is still plastic sheeting, bamboo sheets and such things. The risk is of further landslides that will take their homes away from them.

Roads had also been built. Bricks had been broken up and hardcore laid. What had taken me 20 or 30 minutes to walk through now took me only five minutes, because the roads had improved that much. However, again, the person who was in charge of building the roads told us at length that when the rain comes it will all be washed away. All the work that has happened over the last six months is at risk of being undone by just one or two monsoons. That is before we even get to the cyclones. If the cyclones come, there will be severe devastation. Save the Children reckons that about 120,000 to 200,000 people will be affected. Many lives will be lost, and it is not a matter of if lives will be lost, but of when and how many. Unfortunately, this is now about mitigation, not elimination.

I am full of admiration for the Bangladeshi Government for what they have taken on. This is a country of 180 million people. During the Bangladeshi war of independence, just 47 years ago, so many of them were in refugee camps. It was Bangladeshi independence day just a few weeks ago. I could see how raw the emotion was for them as they told the story of their war of independence and the suffering that they went through. It is no surprise that they are so welcoming and so open to people going through the same process.

We need to work with the Bangladeshi Government to do more. The area that the Rohingya are in at the moment is far too small. We need to work out how we can encourage the Bangladeshi Government to disperse people. As the hon. Member for Warrington North said, if the Rohingya were treated as refugees they would have a right to stay and would be able to disperse through the country. The Bangladeshi Government are not too keen on that, because they expect to come to an agreement with the Rohingya people, and for them to move back to their homeland.

Originally, that is what many of the Rohingya I met wanted to do. However, the second time I went, I got a sense that there was a hardening of opinion among the people in the camps. Previously, they were really hoping that the world was coming to their aid, and that we might be able to reach a solution. As long as it was safe, they would go back to Myanmar and build a new life for themselves. I got that sense from the people I spoke to the second time around of a hardening of opinion, and, unfortunately, they do not see a light at the end of the tunnel.

The Burmese Government have started to change and make some moves under public pressure, but that is clearly nowhere near enough and they are failing to tackle the underlying issues. The Rohingya need surety; they must have the sense that they can stay. When they get back to Myanmar, they need freedom of movement, access to work and the ability to make a livelihood. Bear in mind that their villages and homes have all been destroyed, and I dare say that there has also been some land grabbing—other people have moved in and taken the best of what was theirs. The personal safety of the Rohingya must absolutely be guaranteed, but I get the sense that they feel it is drifting further away. To get all those things, they need a pathway to citizenship.

When I first went to Burma in February 2016, I went through the country, including states other than Rakhine, talking about religious freedom and ethnic conflict. Many of the people I met had been in prison—it was a self-selecting audience, I suppose—and it seemed that there was a flat rate of 14 years for political sentencing. The shortest sentence I came across was seven years, and the only reason that woman—an amazing lady called Wai Wai Nu—had been in prison for seven years was that she was only 29. She is a Rohingya, and her father had been a Member of Parliament in Burma.

Imagine that—we are all Members of Parliament in this place, but within just a few years, that man was not only not a Member of Parliament, but was not able to stand for election. He cannot even vote or secure the basic rights to health and education for his family. His whole family was put in prison. What a change in a country in which we had—and I hope still have, although this is in the far distance at the moment—such high hopes. I have talked many times in this place about my Burmese heritage. My father was born there, so I am half-Burmese, and it absolutely breaks my heart to see what is going on in that wonderful country.

Will the Minister talk about his sense of what the Burmese Government are doing, even if it is in name only, to open up the visits that are allowed at the moment? In a recent speech, the new President, U Win Myint, talked about the rule of law and ethnic conflict, but he did not get anywhere near getting to grips with this situation.

I know this is a controversial issue; I talk about it here and in many other places. The week before last, I was lecturing at the Britain-Burma Society, an institution made up of expat Burmese—the Burmese diaspora here—including a lot of experts and academics. The issue is controversial with the Burmese diaspora here, never mind the people who are living to the parochial, closed news cycle in Burma, which transmits the hate speech of Wirathu, the nationalist Buddhist monk who heads Ma Ba Tha—a particularly pernicious group of Buddhists, which started a popular uprising.

People in Burma are largely behind pushing the Rohingya out, and as far as they are concerned, the Rohingya are not Burmese; they are Bangladeshis or Bengalis. People use disparaging names, calling them Bengalis and refusing to accept the fact that the Rohingya are a discrete community. I do not believe for a minute that they appreciate, know about or accept our description of the violence, mutilations, rapes and killings or the burning of villages that we report on. They say it is just western propaganda, but it is well documented. The Minister has been to Cox’s Bazar and spoken to people, and I have seen and smelled the smoke of the burning villages.

[Rushanara Ali]

Is the hon. Gentleman also concerned about how social media has been used for years, but especially last year? A recent report in The Guardian, based on analysis by Raymond Serrato, showed that the level of incitement to violence and hate on platforms such as Facebook is unprecedented.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that our Government need to take a broader international approach to how we monitor the activities of social media platforms, both in the UK and elsewhere, to prevent extremist groups from promoting acts of genocide and violence?

[Paul Scully]

I totally agree with the hon. Lady about the use of social media, which whips things up so quickly. I will leave it to the Minister to comment on what more the Government can do about the wider issue she raises. I am fortunate that I do not get anywhere near the level of abuse that other Members get on social media—especially female MPs—but I do get it every now and again from Burmese nationalists, and from Sri Lankans when I talk about Sri Lankan human rights. It is interesting that we get it from the other side of the world. As the hon. Lady says, the speed with which these things flow on social media is incredible, so it is difficult to tackle them.

I talked earlier about what the Burmese Government are doing. Also, seven Burmese soldiers were found guilty of murdering 10 Rohingya and got 10 years’ hard labour, but that is an imperfect approach. The two Reuters journalists who discovered the massacre that relates to the sentence have themselves been arrested. They have been in custody for four months so far and they face a full trial, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. How can it be that while the Burmese Government are carrying out show trials and putting a few people in prison—we are all desperate for them to open up transparency—two people who are just doing their job incredibly well and bravely are held up to the Burmese people as enemies of the state? That cannot be right. Effectively, the crime of those 10 soldiers was not murdering people; it was getting caught.

One of the petitions talks about the need to have hard-hitting financial sanctions. I must declare an interest: I am trade envoy to Burma. I think we need targeted sanctions. We must look at the military, because the commander-in-chief could stop this tomorrow if he so decided—if he called off the dogs and appreciated that the Rohingya are human beings with a right to stay in the place they have called home for decades, if not hundreds of years. We must target our sanctions carefully on the military and military-owned organisations, but an overall sanctions regime targeted on Burma would risk impoverishing people in other parts of the country, such as Kachin state and northern Shan state, where there is the risk of ethnic conflict opening up again. There have recently been air strikes in those states, so other people are suffering. None the less, the international community must come down as a whole on the escalation in violence in Rakhine state.

I am also trade envoy to Thailand and Brunei. I can go to those countries to further economic interests, and we can talk about what we can sell and buy, but there is no way we can do that in Burma at the moment. We need to talk about economic development, which is one of the pathways to showing Burma what it means to be a true part of the international community. Let us not have that country yet again close in on itself and go back to being reliant on China for its economy. In 2016, when I spoke to members of the Government and to civil society, they knew that relying on the Chinese economy was a very short-term view: it is soft loans, it is all about the money and there is no lasting interest in the country. Britain and other countries tend to have a lasting legacy: knowledge transfer and the building of secondary industries, which create jobs and prosperity. Hopefully, such moves can help the country—it is about the carrot, not the stick.

[Rushanara Ali]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that our Government need to be very clear about who we trade with? By all means, our businesses can trade, but they need to trade in an environment that respects human rights and is ethical, and they must not do business with the military. The military has huge interests in companies in that country. Does he agree that the Minister should look at whether there is such trade going on with our businesses in Burma and that, where there is, we need to take action to make sure that we are not complicit? For too long, our Government have bent over backwards, been willing to relinquish sanctions and did not use our leverage when we had those sanctions back in 2012. We need to make sure that that does not happen again.

[Paul Scully]

I could not agree with the hon. Lady more about the need to target properly and to make sure that those businesses are not trading with military-owned companies. That is the big difference between economic development and trade. A Burmese trade delegation came here—funnily enough, on the day that I returned from Bangladesh. I went to see them and I said to them, “This is what I have just seen.” The people in this country who might want to invest over in Burma know only two things about Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi and Rohingya Muslims. That is all they ever hear about in the press. There is no diaspora of any size over here that will champion Burmese interests, to tell them the other side of the story. Burmese businesspeople and Burmese Ministers—be they the Minister for commerce, construction or whatever—all have a vested interest in human rights in the rebuilding of their country, way before we even get to the point of asking, “Are you human yourself? Are you complicit in the suffering of 680,000 people who have been driven across the border into Bangladesh?” There are lots of practical reasons—it comes back to the carrot and the stick.

We need to take an holistic view of Burma, looking at each ethnic state and its economic development. We need to call upon the international community to do everything it can and make sure that the Burmese Government are continuingly put under pressure. I get the idea that they are starting to realise who will be held responsible when the rainy season starts and we start getting reports of deaths. Now is the time for us to redouble our efforts and make sure that they are doing something about it.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for opening the debate and for comprehensively summarising the issues faced by the Rohingya people and what our Government need to do. I thank the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on democracy in Burma, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), for his contribution. We have been working closely together to make sure that our Government provide support in the refugee crisis and to make representations at international level for more concerted action.

The Minister started his brief within days of the attacks that led to the displacement of more than 600,000 people. I am grateful to him for his time and effort in making sure that our Government’s response is stepped up. No disrespect to his predecessors, but since he has been in post, he has taken much more time in the House to report to and work with us, and to continue to highlight the plight of the Rohingya people who have been displaced internally and into Bangladesh.

As the co-chair of the all-party group, for years I have been aware of the systematic mistreatment and discrimination that the Rohingya people have endured for decades. One of the first things I came across when I was elected in 2010 was a representation from a campaign group in my constituency highlighting the persecution of the Rohingya population in Rakhine state. Many campaigning organisations, from Burma Campaign to Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, Oxfam and others have campaigned for years to highlight the treatment of the Rohingya population and of other minorities in Myanmar, ahead of the transition towards democracy. In the rush to the transition towards democracy that we all wanted, they warned our Government and the international community not to remove all sanctions outright and end up with little leverage over what we all knew would be a Government in which the Burmese military still had a dominant hand. Sadly, that warning went unheeded.

As campaigners across the House working together, we found that our Government and other Governments took too long to take the issue seriously and to make representations to prevent what happened both in 2013 and last year. In total, 1 million people have been displaced and have sought refuge in Bangladesh. It is not that our Government and other Governments could not see what was coming, but that they were too slow to see the warning signs and to listen to organisations working on the ground, trying to ensure that the warnings were taken seriously.

It is deeply saddening that it takes genocide and the ethnic cleansing of the scale that we have seen before our Government step up to the plate and take an international leadership role. Although I am grateful, like my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North, that our Government have given international aid to help those who have been displaced internally and into Bangladesh, we need to do much more. We need to make sure that this crisis is not forgotten in the context of the refugee crises faced by millions of people around the world, not least the Syrian crisis—there are more than a million people in Lebanon, more than a million people in Turkey and also in Jordan, which I have visited.

The international community is under huge pressure. Historically, our Government have had a proud record of leading the way and making sure that we support the efforts of countries that have to host refugees. Bangladesh is an emerging economy with some of the highest poverty levels in the world, which requires support from our aid project, and has to host a million refugees. That is of an unimaginable scale that our country would struggle to cope with—Europe struggled to cope with it—yet countries such as Bangladesh, Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan have to.

It is right that we continue to support our aid budget. If we do not resist the temptation to succumb to certain wings of the British media that are trying to undermine our aid efforts, our capacity to help those countries to cope with the refugee crises would be even more limited.

[The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady on the aid budget. It is important that we recognise that not all projects we give aid to will necessarily provide full value, whatever that may or may not mean. There is inevitably risk involved in any aid package. Aid is not a business, but we need to recognise that aspects of the business world apply to it. In other words, politicians sometimes need to take risks. I have no problem standing here or in the main Chamber and saying that we will take risks and that some aid money will not derive the benefits we hoped for at the outset. That should not dissuade us from doing the right thing.

[Rushanara Ali]

I am grateful for the Minister’s intervention. I hope that other Ministers, particularly in the Department for International Development, are absolutely confident and resolute in defending the aid budget, because it saves lives. Our contributions have saved millions of lives, lifted millions of people out of poverty and helped post-conflict societies to grow into thriving economies.

[Afzal Khan]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, but I find it troubling that developing countries carry more than 80% of the burden of the world’s refugees. Does she agree that, never mind what we are doing, we should think about what more we can do?

[Rushanara Ali]

Of course—I will come to that and the role our Government can continue to play. Although our Government have made generous contributions, we need other countries to do the same. In total, around $1 billion is required to support just the 1 million affected people in Bangladesh. We cannot expect a developing country to cope with that huge cost. There needs to be international support, and I hope Britain continues to play an international leadership role to ensure that that happens.

Others spoke about the important role that the people and the Government of Bangladesh have played in hosting close to 1 million people who have been forced out of Myanmar into Bangladesh in appalling circumstances. More than 600,000 were displaced last September, and hundreds of thousands were displaced following previous attacks led by the Burmese military. I echo the point that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam made about the response of the Bangladeshi population. I am of Bangladeshi heritage. I am acutely aware that the Bangladeshi public’s reaction has been positive because they have direct experience of seeking refuge in India during the 1971 war of independence. Many have experience of being internally displaced. Many of my constituents, and people across the country in other Members’ constituencies, also raise money to help, because that connection is well felt. However, this is not a sustainable situation for an emerging economy that itself has a high level of poverty, which is why it is so important that we step up and take urgent humanitarian action.

As Members have pointed out, the monsoon season is imminent. Leaving aside the refugee crisis, Bangladesh often faces huge floods, during which half and sometimes two thirds of the country is underwater. It copes relatively well, but it is not able to cope with 1 million refugees who are not in decent accommodation. Its systems are not geared up to cope. The international community therefore must work hard to ensure that the Government of Bangladesh is open to help from international non-governmental organisations as well as domestic ones to scale up support, which is urgently required, and that in return Bangladesh gets the humanitarian assistance and funding that it requires. The situation is urgent. Lives will be lost—there will be a double catastrophe—if we do not act quickly to ensure that the Government of Bangladesh, with the support of international partners, are prepared for the monsoon season.

This week we host the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Although Burma is not a member of the Commonwealth, Bangladesh is, and other countries in the region have a vested interest in solving this crisis and ensuring that the situation does not get worse. I therefore hope the Minister can explain what representations our Government will make and what they will do to facilitate discussion not just with the Prime Minister of Bangladesh but with other Commonwealth Governments that can help to achieve a more positive result than the one we have now.

[Paul Scully]

The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is important, but does the hon. Lady agree that members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—Burma’s direct neighbours—could also play a key role in trying to unlock the situation?

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more. I hope the Minister will tell us what discussions he has had—and what discussions the Foreign Secretary has had, if he has had any—and the outcomes of those discussions. I hope the Minister will also explain what practical outcomes he and fellow Ministers have got from the European Council. He reported back to the all-party group, but some of the things that were reported were disappointing. I hope that he has persevered since that discussion, and that he has something more positive to tell us, particularly in relation to the arms embargo.

Although we have an EU arms embargo, our Government have not pushed for an international UN-mandated embargo. Will the Minister explain why not, and what he will do to try to get an international agreement? A number of countries—China, Russia, India, Ukraine and, until the end of last year, Israel—continue to sell arms to the Burmese Government, and there are reports that they did so even during the period of the attacks that displaced so many people. I hope the Minister recognises the urgent need to prevent the sale of arms, given that the military does not respect human rights despite Burma’s transition, albeit imperfect, to democracy. The international community continues to allow arms to be sold.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights described what is happening to the Rohingya people as a military campaign in which

“you cannot rule out the possibility that acts of genocide have been committed”.

The UN team stated:

“Brutal attacks against Rohingya…have been well-organised, coordinated and systematic”.

It added that the violence by the Burmese military has been perpetrated

“with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar but preventing them from returning to their homes”.

A February 2017 report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights detailed the serious human rights violations committed by Burma’s security forces, including mass gang rape, killings, including of babies and young children, and brutal beatings and disappearances. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said:

“The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable—what kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother’s milk. And for the mother to witness this murder while she is being gang-raped by the very security forces who should be protecting her”.

We must arrest and prosecute not just those who perpetrated that horrific violence but those who gave the orders.

It is encouraging that Fatou Bensouda, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, has asked for a ruling on whether the mass deportations constitute a crime against humanity. The International Criminal Court should rule in favour of an investigation and begin proceedings. I call on the UK Government to do all they can for that to happen.

I hope the Minister addresses the recent development of the forced exclusion—deportation—of the Rohingya population into Bangladesh. As I stated earlier, we must ensure that the Burmese military Government are put under significant pressure, with both sanctions on the military and targeted economic sanctions on their interests as well as a UN-mandated arms embargo.

I hope the Minister heeds the warnings of over 100 parliamentarians who wrote to the Foreign Secretary calling on the UK Government to make a referral to the International Criminal Court. I recognise what he said on the act of making a referral, as other countries have done—because Burma is not a signatory, it needs to self-refer—but given the UK’s position and historical and unique responsibility to Myanmar as a former colonial power, we have a leadership role to play and we should hold the Burmese military to account for committing crimes against humanity, and certainly for committing ethnic cleansing and genocide, according to the United Nations.

I appeal to the Minister to continue the effort to ensure that the Burmese military are held to account and that the International Criminal Court referral takes place in whichever way is possible. Frankly, it is not good enough to revert to saying, “It is not possible for these reasons.” I want to know how he will make it possible. When the Burmese military are put under pressure —to ensure that action was taken, we put them under pressure through that correspondence with our Foreign Secretary, the Government and other Governments on the referral, and they had negative publicity—they finally feel the heat and start to pay attention.

I hope the Government start to take action on those grounds to hold the Burmese military to account. Otherwise, once again, the international community, including our Government, will have allowed them to get away with ethnic cleansing and genocide, and that is not acceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

I think that is what the Government are doing, but given that we have the resource, we should deploy it on a much greater scale.

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) spoke about the CHOGM conference this week. CHOGM is an opportunity for Ministers to do two things: encourage our Commonwealth partners to put money toward the $951 million and build support for stronger action in the UN. I would like to know what is going to happen at CHOGM this week to strengthen that process.

Last week, the shadow Foreign Secretary and I went to New York and had some meetings at the UN. We saw the person on the Myanmar desk, and I understood from her that the UN Security Council itself intends a visit to the region. That should be useful, because it should be an opportunity to build, among a wider group of nations, some sense of the enormity and seriousness of the crisis and the reasons we want it to go up the UN agenda. The UN secretariat also explained to us that the UN is trying to appoint a special envoy.

One block to progress has been the fact that the Chinese have regarded this as an internal matter in Myanmar, not an international crisis. That seems somewhat incredible to me, when almost 1 million people have been forced over the border into Bangladesh. I hope the British Government are challenging the Chinese at both ministerial and official level on that interpretation of what is going on. It is not really a credible posture.

[Phil Wilson in the Chair]

Another opportunity for multilateral action is represented by the European Union. My understanding is that, while we are having this debate, there is a meeting of European Union Foreign Ministers in Brussels. I do not know which of the Minister’s colleagues is in Brussels, but it would be interesting to know whether this matter is on the agenda and what progress he anticipates in strengthening the will to take action among European colleagues. Of course, Europe has imposed sanctions, but we need the support of our European colleagues in the United Nations to raise this to a new level.

Turning to what else we can do multilaterally with our colleagues, we have debated the use of sanctions. My hon. Friend the Member for Tower Hamlets—

[Rushanara Ali]

Bethnal Green and Bow.

[Helen Goodman]

I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon. How could I make that mistake?

My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) has been pressing the case for stronger sanctions for some time. There are three elements to this, which I hope the Foreign Office will carry forward. The first is the Magnitsky sanctions, which are sanctions on individuals for gross human rights abuses. We debated them before Easter when considering the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill. When we began considering that Bill, the Government’s position was that they did not want to go down the Magnitsky route. After consideration in Committee, I had fruitful discussions with the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Europe and the Americas, and the Prime Minister later said that Magnitsky-style sanctions will be implemented through the Bill. The Americans already have such sanctions available, which has enabled them to sanction Maung Maung Soe, who is one of the people in Myanmar responsible for those gross human rights abuses.

In fact, the Criminal Finances Act 2017 already gives us the power to impose sanctions on individuals for gross human rights abuses, by freezing their assets and preventing them from putting money through London. Ministers could do that, and I really do not know why they have not been doing it for some of the people we have heard about. Min Aung Hlaing is another candidate for these financial sanctions.

If we had the sanctions available that we want to have in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill, we could put travel bans on those people as well. I do not know why, having agreed between those on the two Front Benches to implement the sanction powers, Ministers did not come back and get consideration on Report done before Easter. We could have done it. We are ready to do it. We are ready to help the Government. We want to crack on with this, but we still do not know when we will consider the Bill on Report. Those measures would be an important additional tool in our box.

The second element, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow said, is extending the financial sanctions to that part of the economy controlled by the military. That has been the Opposition’s position for some time now, and Ministers should look at it. The third is extending the arms embargo from Europe to the rest of the world.

Ministers might say that they could not get such a resolution through the UN Security Council. I do not know whether that is true, but in the past week we have seen Ministers supporting other draft Security Council resolutions that had a much lower chance of getting through than that resolution would have, so I cannot see that the risk of it not working is a good reason not to support it. Britain is the penholder on Myanmar, and as soon as the UN Security Council permanent representatives come back would be an opportune moment for the British Government to give a new push to this piece of work and to get something more to happen. I urge the Minister to do that.

One thing the petitioners want is to stop the genocide. We all understand that we do not want to validate the exodus of the Rohingya; we want their safe, dignified and voluntary return to Rakhine state. That means UN oversight, but it also means, as other hon. Members have said, the implementation of the recommendations on citizenship that were put forward in the Annan commission report. That must be the basis for the long- term settlement.

Finally, I will talk about the International Criminal Court and what might happen there. The ICC is important in bringing these people to book, but also important in deterring future such crimes in other places and in other conflicts. I understand that Myanmar has not signed up to the ICC, but I note that, last Monday, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda asked the Court’s judges to rule on whether the ICC could exercise jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of the Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh.

This is essentially an attempt to assert jurisdiction over deportation, which is one of the well-documented crimes, as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) pointed out. It is based on the ICC’s ability to assert jurisdiction if the “conduct in question” for a deportation was committed in the territory of a member state. It looks as if the ICC is beefing up its approach. I would like to hear the Minister’s interpretation of what is going on there and also how he is going to support that important measure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

We do not expect Burma to agree. I am just trying to go through the process. Bangladesh has ratified the Rome statute and, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said, that could be the trigger for the ICC prosecutor asking the court to rule on whether it would therefore have jurisdiction over the forced displacement of Rohingya into Bangladesh which, if proven, would constitute crimes against humanity. We await the International Criminal Court’s ruling with keen interest and are very supportive of that move. Ultimately, it is a legal matter until we know. The UK stands ready actively to support the ICC should it decide that it has that jurisdiction.

Last week, the Burmese military announced the conviction of seven of its soldiers, who were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. I do not regard that as a show trial. That is an important lesson, not necessarily just in this theatre but elsewhere. I will come on to the plight of the journalists in a moment. We know that the Burmese military have not had a particularly good record of prosecuting and convicting their own soldiers, so I believe that that is a sign, albeit small, that the international pressure for accountability is having some effect.

We have been clear with the Burmese authorities that they must do much more. The international community needs to see a full, independent and transparent investigation into all the human rights violations in Rakhine. The UK will play its part in trying to amass that evidence, but ultimately it will be more powerful if it has UN and international community support. In the meantime, we will continue to support those efforts to collect and collate evidence that may be useful in any future prosecution. I have continued to press at umpteen meetings across the region for the immediate release of the two Burmese Reuters journalists facing trial for investigation into the Inn Din massacre. We will also try to make the case to our counterparts elsewhere that they should raise pressure internationally and whenever they have any dealings with Burma.

Ultimately, we want the Rohingya to return to their homes in the voluntary, safe and dignified manner to which I have referred. The Foreign Secretary raised that issue strongly with the State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, when he visited Burma in February. He subsequently wrote a personal note to set out what needed to happen for the international community to sit up and listen. He called on Burma to allow the involvement of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in this important process.

I can report further progress since then. The Burmese Government have proposed a memorandum of understanding to agree how the UNHCR will be involved. The UNHCR is preparing its response. If and when that is finalised, the UK will push for transparency of the full form of that agreement. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow was rightly concerned that we would like to see exactly what the memorandum of understanding contains. More importantly, we would like to see the swift implementation of any practical agreement once it has been finalised.

[Rushanara Ali]

Can the Minister explain how the UNHCR’s oversight of any form of so-called safe and voluntary repatriation will prevent the kind of treatment that he has witnessed in Rakhine state in the internally displaced persons’ camps? He and others have mentioned that the Burmese Government are trying to construct new camps. How can he believe that the people in those camps will be treated any differently from the people who have been internally displaced over recent years, who are living in appalling conditions?

[Mark Field]

I accept those deep concerns. Again, many people from the UN will watch this. This has been an episode, over recent years—from 2012, and indeed before that, when large numbers of Rohingya were being put into camps—that the world did not know very much about. I hope that the conditions will be made apparent and therefore the UNHCR will be in a position, if a memorandum of understanding is agreed, to insist at the outset on much higher standards for the individuals concerned. If we can keep a lot of this work under the auspices of the UN and other non-governmental organisations, as opposed to it simply being for the Burmese authorities—the Burmese military—to control any future returnees, we can push for much higher standards. However, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow makes a valid point. It is not enough for there to be a memorandum, and for the memorandum to be agreed. It is important that this is properly policed for many years to come.

We will be examining in detail how we can support the longer-term change in Burma that the Rohingya and other persecuted minorities so desperately need. The hon. Member for Dundee West rightly pointed out that although the Rohingya are, by a long way, the largest and most long-standing of the persecuted minorities, other groups have equally fallen foul of the Burmese military and their existence has been perilous.

I am overseeing a review of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s conflict, stability and security fund for Burma. We are preparing to launch new pilot projects this year to help to catalyse the democratic transition and strengthen the laws and protections that the Rohingya and other minorities in Burma so urgently require. That work is in progress, as I am sure the House understands. We will, no doubt, speak more about it in future statements.

The issue of sanctions was raised in several of the e-petitions. To date, we have not advocated sanctions on particular sectors or entities in the Burmese economy and its financial system. It can be difficult to predict or control the effect of financial sanctions on other parts of the economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam made some wise points. There is a danger that the targeting of companies and sectors will lead to a greater isolation of the Burmese economy. Doing so would strengthen the relative power of the military and, potentially, of its one reliable world neighbour, China. I think that would be counterproductive, in the circumstances. Although I understand the concerns that have been expressed, the notion rests uneasy with me. I know that in his trade role, my hon. Friend has focused more attention on Thailand and Brunei than on Burma. I cannot imagine that many existing international companies in Burma see it as a market that they wish to exploit to any greater extent at the moment. We will continue to work in that regard.

[Rushanara Ali]

Has the Foreign Office done any work to find out how many British businesses operate in Myanmar and which ones have a direct relationship with the military and military interests? We need to know the answer to that question.

[Mark Field]

I understand that. I do not think that a huge amount of work has been on done on that yet. We have been looking at the targeting of military figures and at sanctions in that regard. I should perhaps report that EU sanctions are under way, and we hope that they will be adopted within the next couple of months. The UK has led that work. In so far as it is a relatively straightforward process, I undertake that we will try to glean some more detail along the lines of what the hon. Lady has said. That will be a valuable next step, and I suspect that we can make some practical difference, working with our EU partners. As a number of people have mentioned, it is probably going to be difficult. Although in an ideal world we would like a global sanctions regime, we will need to do that at an EU level first and then make the moral and ethical case.

At the heart of the question of sanctions is the fact that we want to avoid inadvertently making the lives of ordinary Burmese people ever more difficult. They have a terrible enough time as it is. That is not to suggest that we will rule out sanctions. Far from it—we have been, and will continue to be, proactive in advocating sanctions that restrict the finances and freedom of movement of senior military commanders who were directly involved in atrocities in Rakhine last August and September. We have secured agreement on that from all other EU member states, and we expect full implementation in the next month or two.

We should remember that this crisis is, above all, a human catastrophe. I commend the generosity of the Government and people of Bangladesh in providing refuge for so many people who are in desperate need, as several Members mentioned. The UK is, and will remain, a leading donor to the humanitarian effort in Bangladesh. We have already discussed the £59 million that has been committed, including the £5 million of match funding for public donations—individuals making small donations at a personal level—to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal.

As virtually every Member in this Chamber has made clear, the monsoon and cyclone season is almost upon us. We are doing everything we can practically do to support Bangladesh’s efforts to improve its disaster preparedness and to protect the refugees. Last month, my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and for International Development wrote to Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, to reiterate the UK’s offer to help, and to call on her, as a matter of urgency, to prioritise the release of more land for refugees.

The UK alone is supplying reinforced shelter and sandbags for 158,000 people, safe water for a quarter of a million people and 5,000 toilets. Obviously, one hopes that other members of the international community are contributing as well. We continue to have an active dialogue with the Bangladeshi authorities to ensure that aid can get through during the rainy season. We have already made efforts to improve drainage, maintain access to roads and reinforce embankments and walkways. I recognise the deep concern that a severe monsoon season will potentially make this catastrophe far worse. We continue to work with a range of UN and other agencies to make site improvements to the refugee camps in preparation for the heavy rainfall that we all anticipate.

We also actively engage in vaccination campaigns against cholera, measles and diphtheria, and UK aid is training healthcare workers to vaccinate as many children as possible before the rainy season. As everyone knows, if there is going to be an inoculation programme, it needs to be a full one. It is pointless to do it for 20% or 30%, because the problem becomes fairly acute.

I want to touch on two points made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development is considering the UK’s response on humanitarian funding. We will remain the leading single donor to the relief effort. There has not been a clamour for another pledging conference—I wish I could give the hon. Lady more reason why—like the one in Geneva in November that I attended on behalf of the Government. That large pledging conference got us through, more or less, to this time. From my conversations with my right hon. Friend, I know that she recognises that the UK stands ready to donate a considerably larger sum in the coming year than we already have done.

On Bhasan Char, we have made it clear to Bangladesh that any alternative accommodation of refugees has to be safe. We share many of the concerns that have been raised. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam rightly pointed out, it was a sandbank. It also has all the makings of an Alcatraz-type situation—an imprisonment camp on an island that is quite a way away from the mainland. The other issue is that it does not have the necessary capacity—we are talking about a capacity of only around 200,000—so it does not solve any of the major problems. We share a lot of those concerns, as do many in the international community. It is by no means just the UK; others are deeply concerned.

I appreciate that I am spending a long time speaking, and I know that Members want to go off and do other things. We could talk a lot about social media, which is worthy of a major debate. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow asked whether we would take the issue up with Facebook and others. I am sure that there is ongoing debate, and that it is not restricted to the way in which social media is abused to whip up passions. That by no means exclusively relates to Burma, Bangladesh and the Rohingya. On one level, like a lot of us here, I am very wary of having legislation. I am not saying that there are not aspects where one should legislate, but one would hope that the global internet service providers would have a sense of responsibility. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady shakes her head; I have also been fairly sceptical, and I have written a number of things about the issue. I do not think the appearance of Facebook’s chief executive in front of the US Congress last week gave us a lot of succour, although I wonder whether attitudes are beginning to change to a degree.

The single most worrying thing is how atomised everything is. If one felt that individuals were engaging with social media across the board to get a balanced view, that would be one thing, but the actual situation is the worst of all worlds. Young people, in particular, are getting very active on social media, but they are reading only one set of websites to get one totally partisan view. However, I think we should tread very carefully when it comes to legislating to try to prevent that.

[Rushanara Ali]

To put things into context, the Rwandan genocide was, in part, instigated by propaganda that was spread through the use of radio. It is important to recognise that although social media can play an incredibly important and positive role across societies, the negatives need to be understood and addressed, because social media is much more powerful. Often people are breaking the law, whether in our country or other countries. It is about enforcing the law online, as well as looking at what needs to be done pre-emptively to prevent very powerful media from being misused to create unrest in societies and leading to the atomisation of which the Minister speaks. That is why it is important that he speaks to his counterpart in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport about how we can ensure that social media is used properly and appropriately for benefit, rather than harm.

[Mark Field]

I understand that. In a way, the issue is worthy of a much broader debate. We will need collectively, as a Parliament, to debate the issues and look at whether we need legislation or global protocols. I am also very aware that it is easy for us to criticise fake news, but when our Russian counterparts or President Trump do so, people are derisive. One person’s fake news is another person’s valuable contribution to public debate. I am not trying to trivialise the issue; it is much more important than we can recognise in this debate. Even in a developing country such as Burma, the malicious use of social media has made a massive difference. Social media has accentuated not only the problem, but a lot of the terrible divisions that have been laid bare within Burmese society.

To conclude, the petitions that we are debating have demonstrated the depth and strength of the British people’s feelings about the plight of the Rohingya. I hope that the debate and my response provide some reassurance to the petitioners that their MPs, their Parliament and this Government feel equally strongly about these matters. We are doing all we can to keep refugees safe in the camps, but in the longer term—I do not dismiss the humanitarian aspect—the important thing is to keep up the pressure on the Burmese authorities to hold the perpetrators to account and to enable a safe and dignified return of the Rohingya to their home. I cannot deny that the progress we have made is much, much slower than any of us would like, but the British public and the Burmese authorities should be in no doubt about our determination to stay the course.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am delighted to tell my hon. Friend that to the best of my knowledge we have, just in the past 18 months, opened three new trade missions in North America. I cannot comment about Canada specifically, but we are certainly beefing up our presence in the United States in advance of doing a great free trade deal.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights described what is happening to the Rohingya people as a military campaign in which

“you cannot rule out the possibility that acts of genocide have been committed”.

Having met the victims in Bangladesh and Myanmar, the Foreign Secretary said earlier to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) that a Security Council referral is too difficult. Will he show some leadership and work with our EU partners next week at the Foreign Affairs Council to build support for a referral? The act of a referral will make a difference.

[Boris Johnson]

As I am sure the hon. Lady knows, Myanmar is not signed up to the International Criminal Court, but there must be no doubt about the gravity of what has taken place. Anybody who flies over northern Rakhine, as I did last week, will see literally hundreds of villages that have been burned or destroyed. Some 680,000 people have been displaced. This has been ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale and it may also have been genocide. It is vital that the evidence is acquired to determine whether any future prosecution can be mounted.

Rohingya Crisis

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. I will ask the Minister how we can apply international pressure, particularly on the military in Myanmar, to ensure that that is achieved.

The horrific violence over the summer in Rakhine state, in which more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims were killed by the Burmese security forces and other militia groups, was described by the UN as

“a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Reading reports of mass executions, gang rapes, the burning of villages and the killing of children is harrowing, but it does not compare with hearing first-hand reports of violence from people in the camps. As if that violence were not enough, the Rohingya face horrific journeys when fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh. They must trek for days through the countryside in Rakhine state to reach the border crossing, which has been planted with landmines. Some have paid fisherman to take them across the Naf river in fishing boats, but many have drowned trying to make it across.

Despite the deal signed on 23 November between Myanmar and Bangladesh to return the Rohingya to Myanmar, there is understandably widespread aversion among the displaced Rohingya to returning to their home state at present.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the supposed agreement between the Bangladeshis and the Burmese about return is deeply problematic, given the state of camps in Rakhine and the way the Rohingya are being treated? I visited Burma twice. Our Government need to ensure that security arrangements are in place and that the Rohingyas’ protection is guaranteed before any such process takes place.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely pertinent point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing the debate.

It is imperative that we all make the effort to continue raising the plight of the Rohingyan people—those displaced and those still living in Myanmar—who face the continued threat of persecution and violence. That includes a woman having her unborn baby cut out from her and killed, babies snatched from their mothers and thrown into fires and burned alive, children beaten to death with shovels, children forced to watch as family members are tortured, raped and killed and mass rape of girls as young as five.

If we stop to contemplate those atrocities even for a moment, we can be in no doubt that what has taken place is ethnic cleansing and genocide. The US and the UN have both said that. The British Government are yet to recognise it. I have said it before and I will say it again: 640,000 people have been deliberately driven from their homes, with many killed or tortured. I fear that the international community is failing these people, who are stateless within their own country and do not have the necessary level of aid and support as refugees.

The thing I want to focus on and that I am deeply concerned about, like my colleagues, is the Rohingyan refugees’ potential return to Myanmar. A proposed return without secured political and human rights may create a perception of progress while in reality abandoning the Rohingya people to a life of normalised terror. With the current situation and the animosity, this is no time to be talking about simply returning the Rohingya to Myanmar. If return is on the table, what exactly are they returning to? Without rights and acceptance, what difference will it make? How can we expect people to return when they are dehumanised and persecuted daily?

It is far too early to be returning people to uncertainty. Early surveys indicate that only 10% would wish to return at this point anyway. The 1951 UN refugee convention is absolutely clear about the forced return of refugees and the conditions of safe return that would be required. That is an absolute principle within international law, and any forcible repatriation must be rejected by the entire international community.

Last time I spoke on this subject, I pleaded with the Government to look seriously at more targeted sanctions against the Burmese military and to convince the Burmese military—not just the leadership—to accept what is going on and change the status quo. So far, all we have done within Europe and the UN is to stop our military training and deny visas to military personnel. That is simply not enough.

[Rushanara Ali]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the UK Government should look at the business interests of the Burmese generals who have been prosecuting these acts of violence and terror and sanction them? Will the Minister address that point today?

[Naz Shah]

I absolutely agree. I said it previously, but it must be reiterated: unless we sanction the military and carry out these investigations, we are not telling the world that we are serious about this issue.

The Myanmar military and leadership need to understand that actions have consequences and repercussions, and that we as an international community will not stand by and allow this to continue. They need to understand that Great Britain and those who have spoken today have been heard and listened to and that these people’s stories are reaching our shores. They are the stories of tears that my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) spoke about, of women who are homeless and of children who will know no certainty for years to come and have no future. They have come out of the chip pan and into the fire, and they are still burning—literally. This is not something we can accept or stand by and watch. We must be doing more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

Perhaps the Minister will allude to this shortly, but will there be an international presence? Will we be pushing for an independent security presence to protect them, because otherwise we are expecting the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing to be the ones managing this process?

[Mark Field]

Absolutely. We will. I am also wary of the idea of having a long-term presence there, rather like what has happened in the middle east where one has an unsustainable position for the longer term, but in the short term we need to have an independent international presence to police this matter.

The UK Government have concluded that the inexcusable violence perpetrated on the Rohingya by the Burmese military and ethnic Rakhine militia appears to be ethnic cleansing—or is ethnic cleansing. The UK has been leading the international response diplomatically, politically and in terms of humanitarian support.