Myanmar

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, I will also start by saying how grateful I am to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for giving us an opportunity to say the things which are in our hearts.

I went to Burma some years ago. My visit was arranged by the Burmese ambassador at the time, who had been here for some years. When I arrived in Yangon, I was met by a captain, so I thought, “Ah! I will be put under close scrutiny—that’s why they’ve sent a captain to receive me”. It was very interesting, because when we got to the hotel, he said, “Here is my telephone number and my office number. If you need any help, just call me, but I will only come when you need me”. I thought, “My goodness! This bodes well”. I have to say that I had a wonderful visit. What I want to share with your Lordships is my feeling about Aung San Suu Kyi.

Even at that time, many people in Burma felt that she had polarised opinions against Burma, because everybody adored Aung San Suu Kyi so they hated everyone else. That is not entirely true. However, I know that at that time there was no trade with Burma—it had all stopped—and no airlines were coming in except for Biman from Bangladesh. It was isolated. My view was that if we wanted them to change, we should start making contacts, but nobody wanted to do that because Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest and, “Oh, she was the most wonderful person of all”.

Your Lordships may have got the feeling that I am not totally enamoured of Aung San Suu Kyi, nor have I ever been. She thought she was going to do good, and I am sure she intended to, but she has no opportunity. There is no possibility of doing things that the generals do not want, no matter what kind of position they accord you. In 1995, she was offered the prime ministership, but she refused because she said that they would not give her the power. No, they will not give her the power. Why would they ever part with the slightest amount of power? This is what we have to remember. We can say, “Oh, how wonderful—democracy and all that!” but there is no democracy. “How wonderful—human rights!” but there will be no human rights. I am fully convinced that the generals are in power and will stay in power unless something cataclysmic happens, and Aung San Suu Kyi is not a cataclysm.

In addition, all the people who used to support Aung San Suu Kyi in the early days, when she won the first election, have got too old or have died, so there is a new lot of people supporting her. It appeared that there was a chink of light, but I do not think she is up to it, because you have to be very strong to stand up to the sort of pressure she is under. It is not her fault entirely, but she is not a strong person. A lot has been made of the fact that she was not allowed to go and see her dying husband and so on. That may be so, but she lived in great luxury, in a beautiful house, with lots of people looking after her. I met a lot of people there, but one of the boys I met was her houseboy, who said that she took one to two hours to get dressed in the morning before she met the people who had come to see her in her home. I also met Professor Taylor, who said that she applied to do a doctorate at SOAS. He said that he looked at everything she had done and written, and that she was not up to a doctorate. So she is not a brilliant lady with a brilliant past, and possibly she will not have a brilliant future.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, the first few speakers in this debate made the Commonwealth sound like motherhood and apple pie—everything was perfect and cosy. It was left to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, to tell us something about the realities of the Commonwealth. I am sorry that he is not in his place because I think he brought us back to reality with his speech. Before I start my speech I want to say what a pleasure it was to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Geidt. I had the good fortune of working with him earlier on the memorial, so I was very pleased to see him here.

Anyway, back to the Commonwealth. All the things that are going on are all very well, but I remind noble Lords that the last CHOGM was the first time that there was a women’s forum. Everybody said how wonderful it was to have a women’s forum. But women form half the population of the Commonwealth and of the world. I do not think it is such a great thing that it took such a long time to have a women’s forum. In fact, do we need a women’s forum? Women’s issues should be discussed and thought about in the mainstream of CHOGM, not in a separate women’s forum. I have never believed in separateness because the people with the power to take decisions are not usually at those forums. Now we will have another one. That is good; we will keep having them.

What are the real problems of, say, Africa? We face the huge issue of climate change and lack of water. We also face children dying because either they are drinking dirty water or there is no water. But we do not have family planning. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, is not in his place. He says that we must bring religion back, but religion is not always beneficial to women. It may be beneficial to men but it is not beneficial to women. Certainly, his religion is not beneficial to women. The Catholic Archbishop of Uganda declared that there should be no family planning and that any woman who uses contraception will go straight to hell. The population of Italy is falling—how is that possible when they do not believe in contraception?—but the population of Africa is increasing. They keep having children and then some of them just die because they are sick or there is no water or there are too many of them and they cannot be managed. So we cannot always rely on religion to give us the best that we need. I do not think that Catholicism does, and nor does Islam. There is a very beautiful temple in Neasden which noble Lords may have visited. The priests there do not allow women in their presence because they would be contaminated by the women. I do not go to that temple; I would never go anywhere where they believed that. I do not think that noble Lords know that when they go there.

I have been reading about the issues on which the CHOGM will be focusing. One is a more sustainable future. Would not half the population of the Commonwealth be helpful in that? They will add to the economy and to whatever is needed to be done. Another is a fairer future. Women certainly have not got a fairer future. We have to realise that the Commonwealth is a two-tier entity. We cannot really now count the original Dominions as the Commonwealth because they are fully developed countries.

India, which is supposed to be such a vibrant economy, has the largest number of poor people, and we can imagine that the poorest of the poor people are going to be the women. It is not only that; there are hundreds of thousands of bonded labourers in India. They borrowed money and could not pay it back so they are bonded to the person they borrowed from. It goes on not only in that generation but in the next generation, so they live in slavery not for one generation but on and on. These are things that we must not forget when we think of India as being rich and such a vibrant economy. Money is not going down as fast as it should.

Another issue is a more secure future. We would all like a more secure future. Women get raped and abused. We know that in Nigeria girls have been taken away and have not been found. So women need a more secure future in the whole world, not just in the Commonwealth. Statistics show that 130 million girls are not in school. Whether their lives would be changed by going to school, we do not know—but if they do not go to school their lives certainly will not change. Forty-three percent—getting on for half—of women are married before the age of 18, and of course they are going to have children and are going to have problems. The noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, talked about abortion. If we get working on family planning and make it easily available to women, we may not need to have so many abortions or to think about it. It is just a terrible world for women. Whatever we do at CHOGM, a bit of focus on women is needed. The only way things can improve is if we have a non-political judiciary. The present Secretary-General is a lawyer and I hope that she will work on the legal side of the work in Commonwealth countries. If you have the rule of law, you will get all the rest. If you do not, you get nothing.