Burma: Rohingya

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, for initiating this timely debate. As the debate has indicated beyond doubt, we are very fortunate to have in the House a wealth of expertise on Burma, and I am indebted to colleagues for their valuable contributions.

Indeed, there are Members of this Chamber who have done much over many years to encourage the political transition to democracy in Burma. We welcomed the election last year of a Government who are more accountable and democratic and have less military influence than has been the case in many years. However, we should be under no illusions. Members have consistently referred to the anxiety about this, and political transition in Burma still has a long way to go before it can be regarded as being completed.

Let me make it clear to Members who expressed justifiable concerns about events in Rakhine state that this Government share the deep concerns that have been articulated about the situation in that area. It is a region with a long history of intercommunal violence. Both the Rakhine and Rohingya communities have been marginalised, but the Rohingya have suffered particularly bad discrimination and periodic waves of violence. British Ministers have raised this issue many times, both in this House and in direct discussions with the Government of Burma. We fully support the Burmese/international Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which aims to provide independent advice on resolving intercommunal tensions.

I turn to the recent escalation, which has naturally featured prominently this afternoon. We condemned the attacks on police posts in October that triggered the latest wave of violence, and we also have grave concerns about the security response to them. The media blackout means that it has been hard to ascertain exactly what has been happening. Nevertheless, a substantial body of reporting from credible sources, including human rights organisations, witness testimonies and satellite images, suggests the military is carrying out serious human rights violations, including arson, sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrest. The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, quite rightly and very eloquently referred to these concerns.

The latest assessment from our embassy in Rangoon is that some areas outside the main area of security operations have received limited and partial humanitarian assistance, with improvements in December. Within the area of operations in Maungdaw township, some localised humanitarian access has been resumed since December, but this remains patchy and changeable, and the majority continues to be denied.

We are deeply concerned about the lack of humanitarian access to the 160,000 Rohingya who remain dependent on food aid. We are especially concerned for the 5,000 children and the pregnant women who were being treated for severe and acute malnutrition before the latest wave of violence. Organisations working on the ground estimate that more than 27,000 refugees have fled to Bangladesh since October. We are grateful to the Government of Bangladesh for giving them sanctuary. The UK is also the largest provider of food aid to the 34,000 Rohingya refugees already living in official camps in Bangladesh. Since 2014 we have provided nearly £8 million to address the humanitarian suffering of Rohingya refugees and the vulnerable Bangladeshi communities that host them. UK-funded humanitarian programmes have benefited 82,000 people in the south-east of Bangladesh.

The noble Lord, Lord Williams, raised the question of United Kingdom Government action and our particular response to Rakhine state. I reassure the noble Lord that the UK has long been one of the biggest bilateral humanitarian donors to Burma and to Rakhine state. Since 2012, we have provided over £23 million in humanitarian assistance, including food and sanitation for over 126,000 people.

Over the last three months, this Government have intensified work behind the scenes to respond to the escalating crisis. I understand and sympathise with the sentiment almost universally expressed across the Chamber about who is doing what, who is saying what and what is happening. I reassure noble Lords that the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my noble friend, Lady Anelay of St Johns, visited Burma in November and raised our concerns directly with the Minister of Defence and the military-appointed Minister of Home Affairs. She met Rohingya leaders and called explicitly on the Government of Burma to allow full and immediate humanitarian access to the affected areas in northern Rakhine. She also pressed for a thorough and independent investigation into all reports of human rights violations. I emphasise that these messages have been reiterated by our ambassador in Burma to State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and five different Cabinet-level Ministers. The messages were repeated by our Ministers in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development to the Burmese Minister of Commerce when he visited London in November. We also expressed our concerns in the UN Security Council. I noted the call by my noble friend Baroness Berridge for a meeting between my noble friends Baroness Anelay and Lord Bates, and her view that an invitation might be extended to Mr Kofi Annan. I am sure that these interesting suggestions will be reflected upon. I reassure noble Lords that there is already a liaison between my noble friends Baroness Anelay and Lord Bates—a “liaison” in the most respectable sense, I hasten to add.

The Government of Burma have responded by committing to resume humanitarian access and to conduct an investigation into allegations of human rights violations. Some aid has begun to return. As of 27 December, the United Nations World Food Programme reported that it was able to reach 28,000 beneficiaries in 169 villages in northern Rakhine state. However, much of the aid is still being blocked by local authorities reporting to the military, especially in the area where security operations continue.

As noble Lords have indicated, the Burmese Government have established a Rakhine Investigation Commission headed by the military-appointed Vice-President Myint Swe to investigate both the October police post attacks and the subsequent security response. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred specifically to this. However, the commission’s interim report largely denies the accusations of human rights violations. We do not find this assessment credible. The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, articulated such concerns in a very cogent manner. We urge the commission, when it issues its final report at the end of January, to abide by its stated mandate to conduct an independent investigation. That is the key: it should be independent.

I will try to cover some of the issues raised by noble Lords in the course of the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, raised the role of the United Nations and to some extent I have covered what has been happening there. The new United Nations Secretary-General has been in office for only a few days, but as the noble Lord, Lord Williams, rightly pointed out, this is a person with impressive experience and he will have a definite desire to use his office to good effect. The United Nations is already actively engaged on Burma.

My noble friend Lady Berridge raised the matter of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. This is a multilateral negotiation with concerned international partners and Ministers are currently considering our position and how we should engage with that. She also brought up the issue of support to the nascent Parliament in Burma. We are proud to be supporting that Parliament in putting through the secondment of two members of staff of the House of Commons. Making this support dependent on the actions of the military could perhaps impede Burma’s legitimate democratic development. This is a very delicate situation, to which some noble Lords alluded, and I will deal with that in further detail in a moment.

An issue that particularly exercised my noble friend Lady Berridge and the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, was the ambassador’s statement on 9 December. I would not want any confusion or misunderstanding to arise about that. Well before that statement was issued, the British Government, through the diplomatic reach of our Ministers and our ambassadorial presence in Rangoon, had been engaging with all levels of the Government of Burma to urge an immediate resumption of humanitarian aid and access. We have also discussed the issue in the United Nations Security Council. On 12 October our embassy made a very clear statement about its views on what had been happening. We have not only expressed our views on the record, but have been trying to engage with diplomatic initiatives and endeavours that will produce a tangible consequence. That is why we have proceeded as we have.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans reflected with great sensitivity and wisdom on the delicate political balance in Burma. That is at the heart of how the international community responds. This is a nascent democracy, and though others may have their individual views on how that democracy is functioning, in my opinion it is immeasurably better than the regime that has ruled Burma for decades. We have to be very careful and recognise that under international law Burma is an independent state. The international community wants to support, provide help where it can or, indeed, challenge when events seem to be taking place that raise huge concerns, but at the same time we must be respectful of the status of that embryonic and very young democracy. Nevertheless, Her Majesty’s Government are pressing for openness and respect for human rights.

A number of other matters were raised, but I am running out of time to deal with them. There were some specific questions: the noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised the case of a journalist, but I will have to write to him because I do not have the information that he requires. My noble friend Lord Collins raised a number of issues, but I hope that I have been able to deal with those in my general remarks.

In conclusion, it is clear that a solution must be found to the enduring problem of intercommunal tension in Rakhine. In order to reach that solution, all parties must work constructively with the democratically elected Government to de-escalate tensions and identify ways to build intercommunal harmony. More immediately, this Government are deeply concerned about the current situation in Rakhine. We continue to express our concern to the Government of Burma at every possible opportunity. We continue to impress upon them the urgent need to facilitate humanitarian access and to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. We will continue to do all we can, working with our key international partners, to encourage progress and to alleviate humanitarian suffering.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, for bringing this very important debate to the Chamber.