The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House agrees with the statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that the treatment of the Rohingya by the Myanmar Government amounts to a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, to my co-sponsor the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) and to the 73 Members who supported the application.

The Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar have been the subject of decades of segregation and racial discrimination. Over the past few years, they have repeatedly been indiscriminately targeted by the Burmese military, and in the past month they have witnessed human rights violations on a scale extreme even by the standards of Myanmar’s history. Following the 25 August attack on Government buildings by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, the Burmese military, led by Min Aung Hlaing, have been responsible for attacks that have led to more than 582,000 Rohingya fleeing for their lives by crossing the border into Bangladesh.

There are now almost 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh: the 582,000 joined the 400,000 who had already fled there following previous periods of targeted attacks, notably in 2012 and 2016. There is a further influx of refugees from Myanmar who are being driven out of Rakhine state because food markets in the west of the region have been shut down and crucial aid deliveries restricted. Today, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that between 10,000 and 15,000 Rohingya people have been stranded since Sunday night at the Anjuman Para border crossing point between Bangladesh and Myanmar. These border pathways are particularly dangerous; Amnesty International accuses the Myanmar Government of having laid landmines in the path of fleeing women and children only a few weeks ago.

Last week, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published its rapid response mission report from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. A team of three were deployed to Bangladesh in September following the reports of deadly violence and grave human rights abuses committed by the military from 25 August onwards. The UN team conducted 65 interviews with many refugees who had recently crossed the border. The UN’s job was to establish the facts about what was happening in northern Rakhine and its report makes uncomfortable reading.

Following the attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, the military started what it calls a “clearance operation”. Unimaginable violations of human rights have taken place during this time. According to the UN team, several victims reported the killing of close family members by random gunfire or described how the Myanmar security forces surrounded villages at some distance and then shot indiscriminately at houses and individuals alike.

The report also details witness accounts that attest to Rohingya victims, including children and elderly people, being burned to death inside their houses. As the UN mission progressed and the team spoke to more women and girls, horrific accounts of sexual violence were shared. According to the report, girls aged as young as five or seven were raped, often in front of their relatives—sometimes by three to five men all dressed in army uniforms taking turns. The report goes on to detail accounts of summary executions, cases of torture and disappearances. Alongside those horrendous human rights violations are accounts of forced displacements and the destruction of religious and cultural buildings and other items.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I have given evidence in such situations. Are these war crimes being put forward by the United Nations for prosecutions? Those should start right now.

[Rushanara Ali]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue, and I could not agree more. I hope that the Minister will take that as one of the action points of our Government, to build on the leadership that they are showing. We would like to see that item on the agenda.

The UN report backs up the comment made by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in his opening statement at the 36th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council that the situation in Myanmar is a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. That builds on the call, made by Yanghee Lee earlier this year, for a UN commission of inquiries, with which the Burmese Government refuse to co-operate.