Myanmar (Sanctions) Regulations 2021

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and, like others, fear that for many in Myanmar this comes too late; they have been slaughtered by the junta. Along with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, I welcome the clear speech from the Minister.

I recall hearing Aung San Suu Kyi when she spoke to both our Houses here in Westminster Hall on 21 June 2012, as the first citizen of Asia with a long history of courage and resistance to a regime. Not one of us would have believed we would now be seeing the way that events have unfolded. We heard then of the history of unimaginable brutality in that country and of fear running through the veins of every citizen in Myanmar. We had cautious optimism then that under her leadership the people of Burma would be released from its history of violence.

Alas, that was not to be. Despite a landslide victory in the general election on 8 November 2020, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party rejected the results and, as has been said, on 1 February this year the coup happened with an imposed state of emergency. Since then, the brutality of the Tatmadaw has known no bounds. To do nothing and say nothing would be to endorse its actions.

The Minister has outlined much of what we know and described the need for sanctions targeted on the military regime. I suggest that these regulations need strengthening and that the complex politics of the region—it has close links with its neighbouring countries—needs clarification to best target the sanctions against Myanmar and particularly the military regime.

Anyone protesting, calling for the democracy that had begun to emerge a few years earlier, is a target for the regime. Medical professionals have been systematically targeted. Unable to treat patients in hospitals, they are trying to provide care in makeshift clinics, despite the threat to their own lives in trying to help others. Healthcare workers have been killed, and the regime is in breach of the First Geneva Convention relating to medical neutrality in conflict. In Yangon province alone, at least 100 medical students have been arbitrarily arrested. This is also a gross violation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was ratified by Myanmar in 2017.

Despite the internet being closed down, reports have come out from Myanmar of people who are listed on the television then being taken from their homes at night, and the following morning their mutilated bodies are returned to their families. They have undergone torture. Some have been split open and their bodies roughly sewn closed, and the family is instructed to cremate them immediately. The poet Khet Thi and his wife were both arrested. When she was told to go to the hospital the following day, she found that his body had been split open and his internal organs were missing. There are reports of young protesters in the streets being shot in the head and then, groaning and wounded, thrown into the back of army trucks, never to be seen alive again. Small children have been shot, some in their own homes.

According to witnesses to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Myanmar crisis inquiry, 52% of the military hardware is supplied to the military regime by China, and the remainder mostly by India and Russia. As Britain holds the presidencies of both the G7 and the United Nations Security Council, as well as having a close relationship with Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states and others in the region, I ask the Government how we are using the leverage of these important positions to cut off the financial incentives to the junta’s regime of intimidation and terror.