The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Debate between Fiona Onasanya and Yasmin Qureshi

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

But there has been systematic abuse of the Rohingya people for years. The fact is that Governments around the world—not just ours—and also the UN have been approached about this issue, but nobody has taken any notice.

More recently, things have gone to the extreme. More than half a million people are now in Bangladesh. The situation in Myanmar is such that those people will not be able to come back. We have heard real, cogent evidence of children being raped and murdered in front of their mothers’ eyes. I do not know what proof the world needs that genocide and ethnic cleansing are taking place right now. I am afraid that the international community seems not to have done enough, if anything, to deal with the issue.

It is all very well people saying, “We’ll give you more money,” or, “We’re going to provide money for the people in Bangladesh,” but that is not enough. Loads more money is needed, but the Rohingya people still in Burma now need to be looked after, and what is happening to them needs to be stopped. The powerful nations of the world need to get together and tell the Burmese to stop. Only when they do so will the Burmese actually do that.

I remember the Libya debate in this House. There were fears then that people might get killed. The world came together: we were able to get a UN Security Council resolution and bomb the place. I am not necessarily saying that we should start bombing, but there seems to be a complete lack of action compared with what happened in Libya, although the Foreign Affairs Committee found that the threat there had perhaps not been as imminent as everybody had suggested. Over there, we did not even know who the good guys and the bad guys were; in Burma, it is clear who is carrying out the ethnic cleansing: the Myanmar Government, the army and the military junta. One general clearly said, “This is unfinished business,” so we know what they want. They want to prevent the Rohingya from going back to Burma, where they belong and have lived for centuries.

[Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that because actions speak louder than words, we need to do more now? This has been going on for years, yet we sit back and do nothing, which is the opposite of what we should be doing. Does she agree we should do more now, make a stand, and do all we can to stop this genocide?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I agree entirely, which was why I said at the start of my speech something that I think no one else has said today. I said, with respect, that our Government have not done enough. We saw what we could achieve when we invaded Iraq and when we intervened in Libya, and I am not even asking for military intervention. We could do more to stop the situation in Burma. Myanmar is not a rich country. I refuse to believe that if members of the international community put their heads together they could not stop what is happening—the ethnic cleansing, systematic genocide and rape.