The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Baroness Hodge of Barking Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

I very much hope that our Government will back up that definition.

The House will be aware that in 1993 the final report of the Commission of Experts, which was established following UN Security Council resolution 780, defined ethnic cleansing as

“a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”

That is a textbook definition to which the motion refers and against which we must measure what is happening in Myanmar. The question is whether the events in Burma amount to “a purposeful policy”. Are violent and terror-inspiring means being used? Is a specific ethnic or religious group being removed from certain geographical areas? The answer is yes to all the above. We are witnessing a deliberate state-sponsored policy of terror, murder, arson, rape and torture designed to remove the Rohingya people from their homes. There is now such an overwhelming weight of evidence of ethnic cleansing that Members cannot fail to agree and nor can the Government. It is vital that Members of this Parliament, which is seen as a beacon of democracy in the world, send a powerful message today that we will stand with the people being persecuted, the Rohingya population and other minorities in Myanmar.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and her powerful contribution. Does she agree that although we welcome the Government’s action on stopping training support for military personnel, the Government should pause all other such programmes that they fund, through the Department for International Development and elsewhere, while we reflect on how best to respond to the ethnic cleansing that she has so powerfully described?

[Rushanara Ali]

I believe that all humanitarian efforts and pressure on the Government for access should be retained but that other non-essential programmes should be reviewed so that we can consider what to do to bring an end to the violence and find a longer-term solution that brings peace to the region and protects the Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar.

As the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Burma, I have been aware of the discrimination and mistreatment that the Rohingya have endured for decades. In 2013, following a series of violent clashes in 2012 that left more than 100,000 people internally displaced, I visited Myanmar with Refugees International and the Burma Campaign. I heard stories of how Rohingya communities had fled violent attacks to remote areas of the countryside. In Rakhine state, the camps where Rohingya had been forced to live were horrific, with little or no access to humanitarian aid or healthcare. Some of that pressure was relieved, but international agencies had limited access. I travelled by boat to a UNHCR-supported camp in Pauktaw and have vivid memories of the shores nearby being covered in faeces and of dead rats floating just metres away from children bathing to keep cool in the unbearable heat. I remember being told stories of loved ones being killed and of children dying from a lack of healthcare and women from a lack of support in childbirth.