Burma

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that clear and comprehensive update on the situation of the Rohingya, and for giving me advance sight of his statement. No one can doubt the effort and commitment that he and his officials in the Foreign Office and on the ground are putting into resolving this issue.

I also welcome several specific aspects of the Minister’s update. First, the interim report of the UN fact-finding mission—both in its level of detail about the atrocities suffered by the Rohingya and in the unflinching language it uses to describe those genocidal acts—is a vital first step in building a case against the individuals responsible. Secondly, I welcome the public’s generosity, and the Government’s continued commitment to providing humanitarian relief to the Rohingya refugees trapped in Cox’s Bazar and elsewhere. I applaud the tireless work of British medical professionals seeking to stop the spread of disease in the camps.

Thirdly, I welcome the Minister’s words on the role of UNHCR in ensuring a safe, dignified and voluntary return, and a sustainable future for those refugees. The international community must continue to put pressure on the Government in Myanmar to allow UNHCR to dictate when and how it will be appropriate to begin that repatriation process. Fourthly, I welcome the Minister’s continued support for the Kofi Annan report, and the vital long-term reforms it sets out to give full rights and lasting protection to the Rohingya community in Myanmar. Democratic and civil society development did not improve as we hoped two years ago, and only this week I heard also about 100,000 displaced people in Kachin state.

I welcome the progress that the Minister mentioned on agreeing EU-wide sanctions against leading Myanmar generals. Only two weeks ago, Foreign Office Ministers were avoiding a debate and voting down Labour’s Magnitsky amendments. I was therefore pleased that the Prime Minister expressed a change of heart yesterday, not least because we noticed that the United States used Magnitsky provisions to sanction one of the generals, Maung Maung Soe.

The Minister spoke about the importance of providing support for the victims of sexual violence, and documenting the abuses that they have suffered, with a view to bringing prosecutions against those responsible at some future date. He will know the concern across the House that when we last received an update on Myanmar, it was confirmed that only two of the 70 sexual violence experts employed as part of the Government’s preventing sexual violence initiative in 2012 had been deployed to work on those cases. Have more of those staff now been deployed in the refugee camps? Are those two experts still there? How many people are now working to support victims and document their evidence? What percentage of the victims of sexual violence does he estimate have now received support and had their cases documented, whether by UK experts or other agencies working on this issue?

The Minister noted the impending monsoon season, and we are all aware of the risk that those heavy rains could turn the existing humanitarian crisis in the refugee camps into something even more catastrophic, including through the spread of waterborne disease. What assessment have the Minister’s officials, and their counterparts in the United Nations, made of the current shortfall in humanitarian funding to support the refugees, and of the expected shortfall if the monsoon season makes the crisis worse? If those numbers are as high as many of us fear, what emergency action will the Government take with our international partners to try to plug those gaps?

Finally, we must return to how we can best ensure the safe, voluntary and dignified repatriation of and a sustainable future for the Rohingya refugees, and how we can ensure that those responsible for the atrocities against them are brought to justice. I appreciate what the Minister has said about the pressure the United Kingdom has exerted behind the scenes at the United Nations in terms of setting up the fact-finding mission and obtaining the Security Council presidential statement. However, he will understand the long-standing view on the Labour Benches that it is time to go further and be more public in using the UK’s formal role as penholder on Myanmar on the United Nations Security Council to table resolutions on these vital issues: first, to table a resolution setting out the terms under which the repatriation process should proceed, and the future rights and protections that must be accorded to the Rohingya refugees, obliging the Myanmar authorities to accede to those terms. Secondly, at the appropriate time, a resolution should be tabled referring Myanmar to the International Criminal Court, so that the generals, who this week scandalously dismissed the UN’s claims of ethnic cleansing and genocide by saying the Rohingya had burned down their own houses, can be brought to account.

The Minister spoke with candour on that second point, admitting that such a resolution would be difficult to get past the Security Council. I ask him to expand on that. What steps have the Government taken to engage with Myanmar’s near neighbour China and did the Prime Minister raise this issue with the Chinese on her recent trip?

Many of us fear that, if we do not act quickly to break the stalemate, especially with the monsoon season coming, we will have these types of updates for too many months to come, and the humanitarian crisis the Minister described will only get worse.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

May I just give a little bit of advice to both Front Benchers? The speeches are meant to be 10 and five minutes. I think one was nearly 16 and the other was seven. I did not want to stop them, because this is a very important subject, but I would like us to keep to that in future.

[Mark Field]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think that the Speaker’s Office was made aware that we wanted to have a slightly longer statement.

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s kind words, which were broadly supportive of what we are trying to do. I am very keen, as far as we can, to work together on this issue. I appreciate that, inevitably, these issues can be partisan, but I think there is a way in which this House can express its strong views, not least given our penholder status. Let me touch, if I may, on some of the broader issues she raised.

On sexual violence, I will come back to the hon. Lady with details of how many civilian experts we have on the ground, what their situation is and what work is being done. We are confident that significant progress has been made. As she will be aware, Rohingya women and children remain very vulnerable to gender-based violence and sexual exploitation. The Department for International Development is to a large extent leading the way in supporting and working very closely with a range of organisations, even if they are not necessarily from the UK, to provide specialist help for survivors of sexual violence. This help includes some 30 child friendly spaces to support children with protective services, psychological and physiological support, 25 women’s centres, which are offering safe space and support to the activities of women and girls, and case management for the 2,190 survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. Some 53,510 women are being provided with midwifery care and we are helping to fund the provision of medical services, counselling and psychological support. If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will come back to her in writing with further details of the issues she raised on that point.

The impending cyclone and monsoon season is a matter of grave concern. Working with international partners, the UK has already done a huge amount with agencies to ensure that a quarter of a million people will continue to have access to safe drinking water throughout the rainy season. We have also supported cholera, measles and diphtheria vaccination campaigns. We are putting some pressure on the Bangladeshi authorities to try to ensure that a little more space is cleared for further camps, if existing camps become uninhabitable. I should perhaps also say that, along with my colleague in the House of Lords, Lord Ahmad, I hope to meet the Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary immediately after this statement. He is the most senior civil servant, as the hon. Lady will understand, with foreign affairs responsibilities. I have met him on a couple of occasions, both in Dhaka and here in London. I will be meeting him at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and I undertake to discuss these urgent concerns about cyclone-related issues.

On returns, let me first confirm that at a meeting in China in February the Prime Minister made it very clear in private session with her counterparts the concerns we feel about this issue and have tried to get through the UN process.[Official Report, 28 March 2018, Vol. 638, c. 3MC.] I am hopeful that we will be able to continue to put pressure on—unfortunately, the veto is an issue in relation to not just China but Russia—not least with the interim report being finalised as this sad situation remains high profile. I had hoped to come to the House on Monday immediately after the interim report, but with all the other business, this has been the first available opportunity to be able to speak to the House. One of the biggest fears I think all of us have had—certainly, it is a fear shared by the Bangladeshi authorities—is that the eyes of the world will move away from the Rohingya and on to other issues. I believe they will return if things go as dismally as we fear they might during the cyclone season. We will keep the pressure on. I do not rule out the idea that we will work towards preparing a UN Security Council resolution to call the Burmese authorities to account.

The hon. Lady mentions Magnitsky. She is absolutely right that that provides an opportunity. However, it is probably fair to say that, unlike many former Russian citizens who are in this country, many senior Burmese figures do not have huge financial interests in this country in assets, wanting to arrive here for a visa or having children in schools. I do not think that if the Magnitsky amendment is passed into law it will be a silver bullet. I do not think it will make a massive difference in terms of sanctions against senior Burmese figures, but we will continue to work on it.

Finally, on the returns process, which other Members may wish to raise, the hon. Lady will be aware that the Governments of Bangladesh and Burma signed a repatriation agreement as long ago as 23 November. To be absolutely honest, it is not just the UK that thinks that northern Rakhine is simply not safe for returns. I think everybody shares that assessment. I spoke at great length with Lord Darzi, who is on the advisory commission, at the Foreign Office last week. He had been on the ground and spoke to people there. It is clear that we are, I fear, a considerable way from there being any possibility of safe, voluntary or dignified returns to Rakhine state.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. The great majority of Bangladeshi Britons come from the north-east of the country in Sylhet, rather than the area around Cox’s Bazar, although some are from near there. Although £59 million is a large sum in the context of international contributions, it does not take us very far when we are dealing with 600,000, 700,000 or 800,000 Rohingya. The message I ask the hon. Gentleman to take back to his constituents is that we are doing our absolute level best. We are working hard on the ground, but the sheer scale of what is required might give rise to a sense of hopelessness, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to implore his constituents not to turn away from this very real humanitarian calamity.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

I call the ever-patient Nic Dakin.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

This humanitarian disaster shocks us all, but none are more affected than the Bangladeshi diaspora, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) pointed out. I welcome the fact that the Minister will meet Bangladesh’s Foreign Secretary soon after this statement. As well as urging Bangladesh to organise and prepare as well as possible for the cyclone and monsoon season, will he offer whatever additional support the UK can give to help with those preparations not only in terms of assistance, but as part of our leadership role as UN penholder on this matter?