Burma

Chris Law Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

My right hon. Friend makes an entirely fair point, which was alluded to by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. He is right. The issues around minority communities are not restricted to the Rohingya. The Rohingya are the largest single community to be treated in an appalling way by the Burmese authorities, but there are other minorities, Christian and others, who are being persecuted. We will continue to keep the pressure on the Burmese authorities.

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement. It goes without saying in this House that this humanitarian tragedy has reached an unthinkable scale and the atrocities are almost unspeakable. As he knows, only last week, I visited the mega-camp in Bangladesh with the International Development Committee. The enormity of what we saw, with almost 1 million people in three or four square miles, was unbelievable. I am lost for words in trying to explain just how big this humanitarian emergency is. Five hundred people are still coming across the border every week from Burma to Bangladesh and their stories are the same—of atrocities, loss, murder, rape, and the rest, as we have been hearing in previous months.

Right now, we face an imminent challenge and we are running out of time, weeks away from a monsoon impending and a potential cyclone. I want to hear more from the Minister about what specifically is being done on that. Flooding and imminent landslides could both lead to further devastating loss of life. The reckoning is that more than 200,000 will be affected, and obviously, there could be subsequent waterborne diseases. The UK Government plan to work towards returning refugees to Burma. I know that needs to be slow and considered, but we in the Scottish National party are cautious and share the view of the UN and aid groups that this could thrust the refugees back into danger. Last week, we even heard from a Bangladeshi Minister that it is unsafe for the Rohingya to return.

We welcome the report by the UN fact-finding mission in Burma, which adds to the overwhelming evidence that what has taken place is a human rights violation of the most serious kind, likely amounting to crimes under international law. Earlier, we heard the UN special rapporteur state that the conflict had the “hallmarks of genocide”. As I speak today, my city of Dundee is considering the withdrawal of the freedom of the city that was given to Aung San Suu Kyi for human rights and democracy and for upholding international law. For my constituents, that is profoundly important.

The Minister said that he does not agree with the conclusion of the Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry that the UK failed to see this crisis coming. However, this conclusion is backed by overwhelming evidence. The unchecked hate speech, lack of Government control over security forces, the presence of non-state and pseudo-non-state armed groups, growing nationalist support of the military and increased incidents of identity-based attacks were all serious indicators of the escalating violence against the Rohingya. The UK does not currently integrate an index of risk factors for identity-based violence, even though that would help to predict incidents of violent extremism, mass atrocities and institutional violence. I urge that the work on this index starts immediately, and I urge the Minister to announce today that he will begin the work on it.

Finally, will the Minister set out today what lessons have been learned from these events regarding atrocity prevention? How will these lessons be applied in Burma and elsewhere in future?

[Mark Field]

I thank the Scottish National party spokesman for his kind words about the work we are trying to do together across Parliament. On cyclone preparedness, the UK is working with a number of partners in Bangladesh on strengthening infrastructure and ensuring that at-risk households are provided with shelter materials. Part and parcel of the process is trying to persuade the Bangladeshi authorities. I will do that in the meeting this afternoon and express the strength of feeling that we need to open up more space, so that the confinement that the refugees are under, which could be calamitous if a cyclone hits part of that area, is restricted as far as possible.

I did not want to be in any way critical of what the Foreign Affairs Committee concluded, not least with its Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), sitting on the Benches behind me. We have not been quiet about this issue in Burma and the fact that the Rohingya were continually going to be under pressure. We would contend that it is not the case that this notion came out of blue sky.

Being candid, I think everyone had a sense of wishful thinking. My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), who spoke earlier, had a DFID role and was a Minister at one time—I am not in any way blaming him, but the whole international community was so hopeful that after decades of military rule in Burma, going back to 1962 and, arguably, to the creation of the state in 1947-48, we would suddenly have a big surge towards democracy. The constitution that we in the international community were all party to seeing set up, I am afraid, provided massive difficulties almost from day one, when Aung San Suu Kyi became State Councillor. The power that was still in the hands of the military meant that we overlooked, for example, the Rohingya’s rights. They were not included in the census and were not allowed to vote in the first elections. In many ways, we recognise with hindsight that that gave succour to the Burmese military in thinking that they could get away with what they have now got away with. There was a lot of wishful thinking. With the best motivation in the world, we wanted to see some progress. After decades of the darkness of being a military dictatorship—almost a closed state—we looked upon any advancement as something that we should grasp hold of. That is a lesson we shall learn for the future.

I want to work with many non-governmental organisations —Protection Approaches is a good example —to work towards having a set of policies with which we can look at conflict prevention for the future. However, many hundreds of lives have been blighted and tens of thousands of lives have been ended by this dreadful event, and we know that this is still an ongoing situation. The best legacy that we can give to the Rohingya is not just to get a better life for them and ensure that they have citizenship and a stake in longer-term Burmese society, but to ensure that the sacrifices and hardship that they have gone through can be used as an example to make sure that the rest of the world makes those changes. Ultimately, that is a partly academic, practical exercise, and we need to work within the international community to bring that to pass.