Myanmar: Rohingya Minority

Paul Scully Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing the debate, and on her powerful advocacy, which I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated. She went through so many of the important aspects of this terrible situation.

It is a shame that more people are not here today— I know they would have been ordinarily, because every time this subject is raised in Westminster Hall or in the Chamber lots of people want to speak, get involved, share their views and keep the pressure on the Burmese Government. However, we all understand the situation in Syria at the moment. It is absolutely right that that terrible situation is being debated in the Chamber.

The situation faced by the Rohingya has been going on for many years. Kutupalong camp is the biggest camp in Bangladesh. It is now effectively Bangladesh’s fourth biggest city, because of how the camps have come together and how many people are there. It has been there for 30 years. My first question when I was elected to this place was about the Rohingya community. At that point, they were being pushed out into the sea and were making terrible boat trips.

In September last year, after the latest escalation, I was one of the first Members to go to the Kutupalong camp. I remember coming back and wanting to share the voices of the people I had met, and tell their stories, because I knew that world events would overtake what is going on in a part of the world that is relatively unknown to the west. I remember thinking at the time that something else was bound to happen in Syria that would take the world’s attention away from Burma and the Rohingya community, and indeed that is exactly what we risk letting happen. This is therefore a really opportune, important debate. Despite the fact that few of us are here, I know that the contributions will be well received by those who have been campaigning for so long for those people whose voices we cannot hear—the 680,000 people who are languishing in terrible conditions in Bangladesh, and the few who are left in Burma.

I have spoken in this place about what I saw in September 2017. The Burmese Government have called these people terrorists, but I have spoken at length about the 60-year-old woman I met who was dead behind the eyes after telling me about how her son-in-law had been stabbed and dragged away. Her 12-year-old grandson had been beheaded in front of her. Others had their genitals chopped off and their villages burned. People had gun wounds in the backs of their legs. People were describing how helicopters had been chasing them, and firing just behind them to push them across the border.

The hon. Member for Warrington North mentioned landmines. We saw videos of the landmines that had been planted, and we could track exactly where they were, because in the video that was shown to us we could see where we were standing. A lady had had her leg blown off just four days before. This is really gruesome stuff and one of the toughest things I have had to see, listen to and speak about. These people have suffered in ways that I, frankly, cannot imagine, but I must press on, as we all must, to share these stories.

As the hon. Lady said, in Kutupalong camp the people have found the one part of Bangladesh that has some hills. Bangladesh is a low-lying country, but because of its forestland the camp is on sloping ground. It has all been deforested. Effectively, a population the size of Liverpool is on an area 5 km by 5 km. The trees that were there have all been taken away; the land is just a series of mudbanks. When I was there, we spent an hour and a half walking through the camp, but we did not get anywhere near the end of it. We could not see the end, the camp is that big.

The rainy season is nearly upon us again, so we have gone full cycle. When I was in the camp recently with the International Development Committee, things had improved. There is now a registration camp with proper UN canvas tents where people can settle in, register, tell their story, be documented and get the vaccinations that they need. However, they then move over to the bigger camp, where there is still plastic sheeting, bamboo sheets and such things. The risk is of further landslides that will take their homes away from them.

Roads had also been built. Bricks had been broken up and hardcore laid. What had taken me 20 or 30 minutes to walk through now took me only five minutes, because the roads had improved that much. However, again, the person who was in charge of building the roads told us at length that when the rain comes it will all be washed away. All the work that has happened over the last six months is at risk of being undone by just one or two monsoons. That is before we even get to the cyclones. If the cyclones come, there will be severe devastation. Save the Children reckons that about 120,000 to 200,000 people will be affected. Many lives will be lost, and it is not a matter of if lives will be lost, but of when and how many. Unfortunately, this is now about mitigation, not elimination.

I am full of admiration for the Bangladeshi Government for what they have taken on. This is a country of 180 million people. During the Bangladeshi war of independence, just 47 years ago, so many of them were in refugee camps. It was Bangladeshi independence day just a few weeks ago. I could see how raw the emotion was for them as they told the story of their war of independence and the suffering that they went through. It is no surprise that they are so welcoming and so open to people going through the same process.

We need to work with the Bangladeshi Government to do more. The area that the Rohingya are in at the moment is far too small. We need to work out how we can encourage the Bangladeshi Government to disperse people. As the hon. Member for Warrington North said, if the Rohingya were treated as refugees they would have a right to stay and would be able to disperse through the country. The Bangladeshi Government are not too keen on that, because they expect to come to an agreement with the Rohingya people, and for them to move back to their homeland.

Originally, that is what many of the Rohingya I met wanted to do. However, the second time I went, I got a sense that there was a hardening of opinion among the people in the camps. Previously, they were really hoping that the world was coming to their aid, and that we might be able to reach a solution. As long as it was safe, they would go back to Myanmar and build a new life for themselves. I got that sense from the people I spoke to the second time around of a hardening of opinion, and, unfortunately, they do not see a light at the end of the tunnel.

The Burmese Government have started to change and make some moves under public pressure, but that is clearly nowhere near enough and they are failing to tackle the underlying issues. The Rohingya need surety; they must have the sense that they can stay. When they get back to Myanmar, they need freedom of movement, access to work and the ability to make a livelihood. Bear in mind that their villages and homes have all been destroyed, and I dare say that there has also been some land grabbing—other people have moved in and taken the best of what was theirs. The personal safety of the Rohingya must absolutely be guaranteed, but I get the sense that they feel it is drifting further away. To get all those things, they need a pathway to citizenship.

When I first went to Burma in February 2016, I went through the country, including states other than Rakhine, talking about religious freedom and ethnic conflict. Many of the people I met had been in prison—it was a self-selecting audience, I suppose—and it seemed that there was a flat rate of 14 years for political sentencing. The shortest sentence I came across was seven years, and the only reason that woman—an amazing lady called Wai Wai Nu—had been in prison for seven years was that she was only 29. She is a Rohingya, and her father had been a Member of Parliament in Burma.

Imagine that—we are all Members of Parliament in this place, but within just a few years, that man was not only not a Member of Parliament, but was not able to stand for election. He cannot even vote or secure the basic rights to health and education for his family. His whole family was put in prison. What a change in a country in which we had—and I hope still have, although this is in the far distance at the moment—such high hopes. I have talked many times in this place about my Burmese heritage. My father was born there, so I am half-Burmese, and it absolutely breaks my heart to see what is going on in that wonderful country.

Will the Minister talk about his sense of what the Burmese Government are doing, even if it is in name only, to open up the visits that are allowed at the moment? In a recent speech, the new President, U Win Myint, talked about the rule of law and ethnic conflict, but he did not get anywhere near getting to grips with this situation.

I know this is a controversial issue; I talk about it here and in many other places. The week before last, I was lecturing at the Britain-Burma Society, an institution made up of expat Burmese—the Burmese diaspora here—including a lot of experts and academics. The issue is controversial with the Burmese diaspora here, never mind the people who are living to the parochial, closed news cycle in Burma, which transmits the hate speech of Wirathu, the nationalist Buddhist monk who heads Ma Ba Tha—a particularly pernicious group of Buddhists, which started a popular uprising.

People in Burma are largely behind pushing the Rohingya out, and as far as they are concerned, the Rohingya are not Burmese; they are Bangladeshis or Bengalis. People use disparaging names, calling them Bengalis and refusing to accept the fact that the Rohingya are a discrete community. I do not believe for a minute that they appreciate, know about or accept our description of the violence, mutilations, rapes and killings or the burning of villages that we report on. They say it is just western propaganda, but it is well documented. The Minister has been to Cox’s Bazar and spoken to people, and I have seen and smelled the smoke of the burning villages.

[Rushanara Ali]

Is the hon. Gentleman also concerned about how social media has been used for years, but especially last year? A recent report in The Guardian, based on analysis by Raymond Serrato, showed that the level of incitement to violence and hate on platforms such as Facebook is unprecedented.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that our Government need to take a broader international approach to how we monitor the activities of social media platforms, both in the UK and elsewhere, to prevent extremist groups from promoting acts of genocide and violence?

[Paul Scully]

I totally agree with the hon. Lady about the use of social media, which whips things up so quickly. I will leave it to the Minister to comment on what more the Government can do about the wider issue she raises. I am fortunate that I do not get anywhere near the level of abuse that other Members get on social media—especially female MPs—but I do get it every now and again from Burmese nationalists, and from Sri Lankans when I talk about Sri Lankan human rights. It is interesting that we get it from the other side of the world. As the hon. Lady says, the speed with which these things flow on social media is incredible, so it is difficult to tackle them.

I talked earlier about what the Burmese Government are doing. Also, seven Burmese soldiers were found guilty of murdering 10 Rohingya and got 10 years’ hard labour, but that is an imperfect approach. The two Reuters journalists who discovered the massacre that relates to the sentence have themselves been arrested. They have been in custody for four months so far and they face a full trial, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. How can it be that while the Burmese Government are carrying out show trials and putting a few people in prison—we are all desperate for them to open up transparency—two people who are just doing their job incredibly well and bravely are held up to the Burmese people as enemies of the state? That cannot be right. Effectively, the crime of those 10 soldiers was not murdering people; it was getting caught.

One of the petitions talks about the need to have hard-hitting financial sanctions. I must declare an interest: I am trade envoy to Burma. I think we need targeted sanctions. We must look at the military, because the commander-in-chief could stop this tomorrow if he so decided—if he called off the dogs and appreciated that the Rohingya are human beings with a right to stay in the place they have called home for decades, if not hundreds of years. We must target our sanctions carefully on the military and military-owned organisations, but an overall sanctions regime targeted on Burma would risk impoverishing people in other parts of the country, such as Kachin state and northern Shan state, where there is the risk of ethnic conflict opening up again. There have recently been air strikes in those states, so other people are suffering. None the less, the international community must come down as a whole on the escalation in violence in Rakhine state.

I am also trade envoy to Thailand and Brunei. I can go to those countries to further economic interests, and we can talk about what we can sell and buy, but there is no way we can do that in Burma at the moment. We need to talk about economic development, which is one of the pathways to showing Burma what it means to be a true part of the international community. Let us not have that country yet again close in on itself and go back to being reliant on China for its economy. In 2016, when I spoke to members of the Government and to civil society, they knew that relying on the Chinese economy was a very short-term view: it is soft loans, it is all about the money and there is no lasting interest in the country. Britain and other countries tend to have a lasting legacy: knowledge transfer and the building of secondary industries, which create jobs and prosperity. Hopefully, such moves can help the country—it is about the carrot, not the stick.

[Rushanara Ali]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that our Government need to be very clear about who we trade with? By all means, our businesses can trade, but they need to trade in an environment that respects human rights and is ethical, and they must not do business with the military. The military has huge interests in companies in that country. Does he agree that the Minister should look at whether there is such trade going on with our businesses in Burma and that, where there is, we need to take action to make sure that we are not complicit? For too long, our Government have bent over backwards, been willing to relinquish sanctions and did not use our leverage when we had those sanctions back in 2012. We need to make sure that that does not happen again.

[Paul Scully]

I could not agree with the hon. Lady more about the need to target properly and to make sure that those businesses are not trading with military-owned companies. That is the big difference between economic development and trade. A Burmese trade delegation came here—funnily enough, on the day that I returned from Bangladesh. I went to see them and I said to them, “This is what I have just seen.” The people in this country who might want to invest over in Burma know only two things about Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi and Rohingya Muslims. That is all they ever hear about in the press. There is no diaspora of any size over here that will champion Burmese interests, to tell them the other side of the story. Burmese businesspeople and Burmese Ministers—be they the Minister for commerce, construction or whatever—all have a vested interest in human rights in the rebuilding of their country, way before we even get to the point of asking, “Are you human yourself? Are you complicit in the suffering of 680,000 people who have been driven across the border into Bangladesh?” There are lots of practical reasons—it comes back to the carrot and the stick.

We need to take an holistic view of Burma, looking at each ethnic state and its economic development. We need to call upon the international community to do everything it can and make sure that the Burmese Government are continuingly put under pressure. I get the idea that they are starting to realise who will be held responsible when the rainy season starts and we start getting reports of deaths. Now is the time for us to redouble our efforts and make sure that they are doing something about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

Of course—I will come to that and the role our Government can continue to play. Although our Government have made generous contributions, we need other countries to do the same. In total, around $1 billion is required to support just the 1 million affected people in Bangladesh. We cannot expect a developing country to cope with that huge cost. There needs to be international support, and I hope Britain continues to play an international leadership role to ensure that that happens.

Others spoke about the important role that the people and the Government of Bangladesh have played in hosting close to 1 million people who have been forced out of Myanmar into Bangladesh in appalling circumstances. More than 600,000 were displaced last September, and hundreds of thousands were displaced following previous attacks led by the Burmese military. I echo the point that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam made about the response of the Bangladeshi population. I am of Bangladeshi heritage. I am acutely aware that the Bangladeshi public’s reaction has been positive because they have direct experience of seeking refuge in India during the 1971 war of independence. Many have experience of being internally displaced. Many of my constituents, and people across the country in other Members’ constituencies, also raise money to help, because that connection is well felt. However, this is not a sustainable situation for an emerging economy that itself has a high level of poverty, which is why it is so important that we step up and take urgent humanitarian action.

As Members have pointed out, the monsoon season is imminent. Leaving aside the refugee crisis, Bangladesh often faces huge floods, during which half and sometimes two thirds of the country is underwater. It copes relatively well, but it is not able to cope with 1 million refugees who are not in decent accommodation. Its systems are not geared up to cope. The international community therefore must work hard to ensure that the Government of Bangladesh is open to help from international non-governmental organisations as well as domestic ones to scale up support, which is urgently required, and that in return Bangladesh gets the humanitarian assistance and funding that it requires. The situation is urgent. Lives will be lost—there will be a double catastrophe—if we do not act quickly to ensure that the Government of Bangladesh, with the support of international partners, are prepared for the monsoon season.

This week we host the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Although Burma is not a member of the Commonwealth, Bangladesh is, and other countries in the region have a vested interest in solving this crisis and ensuring that the situation does not get worse. I therefore hope the Minister can explain what representations our Government will make and what they will do to facilitate discussion not just with the Prime Minister of Bangladesh but with other Commonwealth Governments that can help to achieve a more positive result than the one we have now.

[Paul Scully]

The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is important, but does the hon. Lady agree that members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—Burma’s direct neighbours—could also play a key role in trying to unlock the situation?

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more. I hope the Minister will tell us what discussions he has had—and what discussions the Foreign Secretary has had, if he has had any—and the outcomes of those discussions. I hope the Minister will also explain what practical outcomes he and fellow Ministers have got from the European Council. He reported back to the all-party group, but some of the things that were reported were disappointing. I hope that he has persevered since that discussion, and that he has something more positive to tell us, particularly in relation to the arms embargo.

Although we have an EU arms embargo, our Government have not pushed for an international UN-mandated embargo. Will the Minister explain why not, and what he will do to try to get an international agreement? A number of countries—China, Russia, India, Ukraine and, until the end of last year, Israel—continue to sell arms to the Burmese Government, and there are reports that they did so even during the period of the attacks that displaced so many people. I hope the Minister recognises the urgent need to prevent the sale of arms, given that the military does not respect human rights despite Burma’s transition, albeit imperfect, to democracy. The international community continues to allow arms to be sold.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights described what is happening to the Rohingya people as a military campaign in which

“you cannot rule out the possibility that acts of genocide have been committed”.

The UN team stated:

“Brutal attacks against Rohingya…have been well-organised, coordinated and systematic”.

It added that the violence by the Burmese military has been perpetrated

“with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar but preventing them from returning to their homes”.

A February 2017 report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights detailed the serious human rights violations committed by Burma’s security forces, including mass gang rape, killings, including of babies and young children, and brutal beatings and disappearances. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said:

“The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable—what kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother’s milk. And for the mother to witness this murder while she is being gang-raped by the very security forces who should be protecting her”.

We must arrest and prosecute not just those who perpetrated that horrific violence but those who gave the orders.

It is encouraging that Fatou Bensouda, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, has asked for a ruling on whether the mass deportations constitute a crime against humanity. The International Criminal Court should rule in favour of an investigation and begin proceedings. I call on the UK Government to do all they can for that to happen.

I hope the Minister addresses the recent development of the forced exclusion—deportation—of the Rohingya population into Bangladesh. As I stated earlier, we must ensure that the Burmese military Government are put under significant pressure, with both sanctions on the military and targeted economic sanctions on their interests as well as a UN-mandated arms embargo.

I hope the Minister heeds the warnings of over 100 parliamentarians who wrote to the Foreign Secretary calling on the UK Government to make a referral to the International Criminal Court. I recognise what he said on the act of making a referral, as other countries have done—because Burma is not a signatory, it needs to self-refer—but given the UK’s position and historical and unique responsibility to Myanmar as a former colonial power, we have a leadership role to play and we should hold the Burmese military to account for committing crimes against humanity, and certainly for committing ethnic cleansing and genocide, according to the United Nations.

I appeal to the Minister to continue the effort to ensure that the Burmese military are held to account and that the International Criminal Court referral takes place in whichever way is possible. Frankly, it is not good enough to revert to saying, “It is not possible for these reasons.” I want to know how he will make it possible. When the Burmese military are put under pressure —to ensure that action was taken, we put them under pressure through that correspondence with our Foreign Secretary, the Government and other Governments on the referral, and they had negative publicity—they finally feel the heat and start to pay attention.

I hope the Government start to take action on those grounds to hold the Burmese military to account. Otherwise, once again, the international community, including our Government, will have allowed them to get away with ethnic cleansing and genocide, and that is not acceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I commend the excellent speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), who clearly set out the issues—the history and the main matters that need to be addressed. She reminded us all of the terrible situation faced by the Rohingya and the great urgency of the need to tackle it, both the immediate humanitarian crisis and the underlying political issues. It is significant that we have six petitions from the public that have triggered today’s debate, showing that the British people are extremely concerned about the fate of the Rohingya and that they will not be forgotten.

Colleagues have said that the monsoon is coming. My understanding is that the United Nations and non-governmental organisations last month issued a new call for a larger aid programme of $951 million. I would be grateful if the Minister reported on how that appeal is going and how much of that money has been raised.

Many of us are concerned about the proposal to put some of the refugees on the island of Bhashan Char. Will the Minister also give an update on that and tell us what representations he has made to the Bangladeshis about it? Of course, we all appreciate that the Bangladeshis are in an extremely difficult situation. Bangladesh is a very poor country, in receipt of aid itself, and it has had an overwhelming number of refugees to deal with, but the international community must look at whether this is the best way to deal with the immediate crisis.

[Paul Scully]

When we talk about the island, we should call it what it is. It is actually a sandbank—something that did not exist just a few years ago. It is quite extraordinary that it is being considered, but I take the hon. Lady’s point.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman is extremely well informed and makes a useful contribution to the debate and our understanding of this matter. I am grateful to him for that intervention.

Hon. Members have spoken about gender-based violence and the rape and abuse of women and children. It is clear that that is part of the Myanmar military’s strategy. Its strategy has been to kill the men from the villages and then rape the women and children. That is not some soldiers who are out of control; it is clearly a thought-through approach to terrorise the Rohingya people. We have debated that over the last eight months and we have repeatedly asked Ministers how many of our experts in dealing with sexual violence and trauma have been sent to Cox’s Bazar. I think I have asked the Minister about it four times now. He wrote me a long, very informative letter on 27 March, but he still has not told us how many of our experts have been sent to support the victims.

When the then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, announced that Foreign Office initiative, everyone was extremely pleased that we would have the capacity to deal with that kind of violence as crises arose. We have 70 people who can do that work, but the latest number the Minister gave us was that two people are there. I would like to have from the Minister today an update on that number.