Rohingya: Monsoon Season

Debate between Anne Main and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh.

This is an enormously important debate. We have heard the statistics about the amount of rainfall, so I shall not rehearse them, save that the north-eastern part of Bangladesh receives the greatest average precipitation of some 4,000 mm per year. By the end of the monsoon season, as the Minister knows because he has been there so often, a third of the country is under water. As other right hon. and hon. Members have seen, and as I saw when flying down from Dhaka to Cox’s Bazar in September, the landscape is vast and watery, barely above sea level. Many areas of Bangladesh are treacherous and cut off in the monsoon season, which was absolutely visible. There are already huge pressures on the population as a whole—not just the Rohingya—as a result of global warming and the rains. When those rains come, communities can be accessed only by boat, houses are damaged, crops and livestock are lost and, importantly, the rice harvest is often lost, which impacts the population’s future.

In the pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons, there are access constraints on the mud roads to which the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) referred. They become impassable, footpaths become slippery, and earthen stairs and slopes become dangerous and may collapse. Members who have been to the camps will know that they are like something from Mars or the moon, and will have seen the deforestation that has gone on to create mounds of earth. Where hills and mountains were covered in greenery, there are now barren, muddy landscapes with little to hold the soil together. Shelters and facilities will be flooded and damaged, prompting displacement and overcrowding in even more of the camp.

This issue is not new—as the Minister knows, it goes back 20 years—but Rohingya camps have never existed on such a scale, and never before have so many people been confined in such a small, cramped and inhospitable place, so there is no direct experience to indicate how that number of people will survive the monsoon. They have withstood monsoons in the past, but not in such numbers.

When I visited in September, I saw vast deforestation. An elephant rampaged through the camp, killed someone and was shot. People thought that was terrible, but to be fair to the elephants, every single bit of their habitat is gone. As far as the eye could see, the landscape was totally barren and vulnerable to landslips and shelter collapse. We were there for several days, and we actually witnessed 100 small, pitiful homes of the sort the hon. Lady described that had been washed away overnight. I felt utterly guilty to be listening to the heavy rain in my hotel in Cox’s Bazar. As we have all seen, many of the Rohingya in camps do not have shelters at all—some simply shelter under plastic bags and other small pieces of plastic, which they hold over their heads. It is pitiful. After several nights of heavy rain, the gullies that people had been easily fording turned into death traps, and we saw an individual who had drowned while trying to access food for his family being pulled out of a flooded gully.

I am appalled that, to resolve the overcrowding that no doubt exists in the camps, 100,000 individuals from that very camp may be relocated to Bhasan Char island, which the hon. Lady mentioned. That island—a misnomer if ever there was one—is basically a large mudflat. It is a shifting bank of sand that did not even exist 20 years ago. It is not an island but an accumulation of sediment formed by the Meghna river. It changes shape radically. If anyone has not looked at it, it is possible to go online and see its changing contours. Sometimes it is totally submerged under floodwater. It is not a suitable place to create a haven for the Rohingya.

I wrote to the Secretary of State and pointed out that the topography of the island makes it extremely vulnerable to flooding and cyclones, and that it regularly disappears underwater. I also mentioned the increasing concerns about the adequacy of resources such as food, water and additional facilities, and about humanitarian access to the island. I wrote that I am worried that the planned settlement—the media are trying to look at what is going on on Bhasan Char island, but it is being planned in quite a secretive manner—would, in effect, act as a prison camp. It would allow the refugees to be resettled, but I am concerned that the island would not be a safe haven for the Rohingya.

The Minister has stated that the Government have

“concerns that the island may not provide safe accommodation for Rohingya refugees and we have shared these concerns with the Government of Bangladesh.”

Given that building is going on apace, and that plans are going on apace to relocate 100,000 people to Bhasan Char island, I want to know what progress if any has been made with stopping that relocation. A huge amount of building is going on. The designs for the island show that there will be cyclone shelters, which look amazingly like prison blocks. They are absolutely tiny. The Rohingya who are there are already traumatised. I question what the value of those cyclone shelters will be, if they are imprisoned on a featureless mudflat in the bay of Bengal, cut off from the current aid groups that are in the camps on the mainland.

The flooding of contaminated water has already been referred to. Camp sanitation is bleak—I know because I have used it. I am not surprised that there are outbreaks of E. coli and other faecal matter diseases, given the overflowing latrines. We do not know what facilities will be on Bhasan Char island. I would like to know if the Minister plans to visit Bhasan Char island to reassure us.

The UK has just generously pledged £70 million more. That is £129 million pledged on behalf of the British taxpayer. Many of my constituents are fundraising for the Rohingya. I do not think many of them are aware that there is a potential Alcatraz—as I refer to it—in the bay of Bengal. I would like to know whether the British Government plan to visit given the amount of development that has already happened there.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

When the International Development Committee visited, we were told that NGOs had identified significant amounts of other land that would be safe for the Rohingya to be put into. Does the hon. Lady agree that the British Government need to use all their powers to get the Bangladeshis to release the land that the aid agencies have identified, and focus less on putting them on to an island?

Refugees and Human Rights

Debate between Anne Main and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Given my role as chair of the all-party group on Bangladesh, I will confine my remarks in this short time to the experience of those fleeing persecution in Burma and living in Cox’s Bazar. The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) seemed to imply that the Government needed to get their finger out, as if this were something that had just happened. I think the House needs a little history lesson. The first major push against the Rohingya was in 1978. Then the Burma Citizenship Act of 1982 left them out of the list of 135 ethnic minority communities, thus denying them their state—so this has been going on for a very long time. In 1992, their political party was also outlawed. I understand that by that point 47 individuals—four of them women—from the Rohingya community had served as MPs in the Burmese Parliament.

This process has, then, been going on for an extremely long time. Those of us who have visited the sites and camps—right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House—have seen the atrocious conditions these people are being forced to live in. We would all accept that a basic human right is the freedom to worship as we see fit. The one thing that joins the Rohingya in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Bangladesh is their religion. Unfortunately—it is a sad story to tell—the Buddhist community is complicit in and accepting of the driving out of the Muslim population that are the Rohingya. Yes, some Hindus have been forced out as well, but overwhelmingly it is the Rohingya, who are Muslims, who are being driven out. It is that link—of humanity and religion—that opens the arms of Bangladesh.

I am pleased that repatriation is no longer being considered, because the memorandum of understanding did not mention the word “Rohingya”. How can there be no voice for the Rohingya at the negotiating table? It is totally unacceptable that the oppressors, who are land-mining the border and driving people out with machine guns, and who have denied these people their rights since 1982, should be divvying up the role of the Rohingya and their future. It is no surprise that there have been marches and resistance on the camps to any talk of repatriation. How can anyone accept being asked to go back to a country where their existence has been denied since 1982? That needs to be dealt with as much as anything.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Lady share my concern at the British Government’s involvement in the last census in Burma, which we paid for but which made no mention of the Rohingya? We should be exercising our duty as the census payer to make sure the Rohingya are included.

[Mrs Main]

It was an international effort, I believe, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is unacceptable that they are not on that census. This is not a simple problem, however. I mentioned that there were 135 ethnic communities. That is part of the issue: Burma is a fractured country. It is not a case of just getting our finger out. This could be a very dangerous situation for some of the other groups in the country. I am concerned that this be dealt with appropriately. My plea, given that they have been shattered for so long, is that somehow the Rohingya be given a voice. I understand that Ata Ullah is not an acceptable voice, as he is leading a resistance group, but there must be someone who can speak up for the Rohingya. They are a “talked about” and “done to” group, and that cannot be right.

I encourage the UNHCR to do all it can, but the reality is that Burma is blocking, and while I can understand Bangladesh’s need to solve this crisis, it is not a signatory to the 1952 convention; it is acting out of humanity and love for its fellow Muslims. That said, it is a poor country. It is in receipt of a lot of international aid, but it cannot continue with this on its shoulders. We must keep driving forward to find someone who will sit at the table and say what the Rohingya want to happen, otherwise the rioting and unrest in the camps will continue. The worst thing we can do is insist that people go back to a country where they are denied even their existence.