International Development: Education

Paul Scully Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I am grateful for your forbearance, given my lateness. Unfortunately I was unable to catch what I know must have been an excellent introduction by the Chairman of our Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) that the speakers previous to her had said it all—well, I do not know what was said in the introduction, so I maybe have a slight advantage and will just bowl on anyway.

I want to tackle the other two issues that we covered in the report, beyond financing global education: improving access to education, and improving the quality and equity of education—of course, financing is the key to that. The Chairman of the Committee is to be commended for the fact that report took a good long time to go through because of its depth. I know that he was keen to follow through on the sustainable development goals. The millennium development goals and the sustainable development goals had transferred the international community’s responsibility on education from just getting people into school, sitting down and looking at a blackboard for a few years to actually getting them learning and achieving something so that they can then play a positive role in their community.

For all the reasons that we have heard, education helps people develop their communities, economies and countries, not just through financial prosperity but by building democracy. That is the long-term view behind so many other areas of international development. When we speak in this place and speak to our constituents to quite rightly justify our 0.7% contribution, we can—we should—look really proudly at what we are achieving in getting people into school so that they can make a positive contribution that will help build their countries’ democracies. That will reduce the need for people to emigrate from those countries, so that they can stay in their countries and build them. That also improves security—all those factors stem from education in the first place.

In the last Parliament, the Committee went to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. We looked at barriers to girls’ education in particular, some of which we have talked about. One odd, but no less serious, case was in the Samburu wildlife camp, where one poor girl was eaten by a crocodile on her way to get water for her family. As extreme as that is, it shows that in the most hostile environment in the world, not everything can be catered for.

We went to a PEAS—Promoting Equality in African Schools—school and looked at the lighting, which gave the girls a sense of security in getting around the school camp where they were boarding. They could also have lunch on site, because some headteachers feared that when they were off site, they were subject to predatory behaviour. Some girls were dragged into a situation where they could not carry on with their education, because they felt encumbered by the person who took them on board as a wife in that hostile environment and got them pregnant. It is really difficult in that culture and in those circumstances for a young girl to have a sense of independence and carry on their education. There was no greater example of that than in the Samburu tribe’s practice of beading, whereby a Samburu warrior would put a necklace of beads around a girl’s neck and that girl would become his sexual partner, later to be married. She was effectively owned by that warrior. That restricted her for ever more from that point.

The sense of empowerment provided by lighting, safety and sanitary products can really help liberate girls. PEAS had a girls club that had some boys in it—those boys felt bold enough to join it. It gave them a sense of respect and of being able to discuss issues that are not normally discussed between the sexes in a Ugandan or Kenyan community. That can only help in the long term. Many Samburu and other nomadic people in the area had to move from area to area because of the lack of food and crops. We need to look at what more the Department for International Development and the international community can do to help them stabilise themselves, so that girls and boys can stay within one school and have a sense of continuity and, therefore, a sense of learning.

It is right that DFID stopped offering budget support many years ago, but we should still be influencing the domestic education system. We have talked about public and private schools, but in the Committee in the previous Parliament, the debate about the difference between public and private dampened down slightly when we actually saw what it meant in practice. There were a number of public schools that were still charging for things such as electricity, uniform and food, so there was still quite a considerable cost for many people, albeit within a public school setting. None the less, we need to compare the quality of private and public schools.

The Bridge schools in Liberia have been mentioned. When we saw the Bridge schools in Uganda, they were really a mixed bag. That comes partly from the teaching, which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire mentioned. Teachers can only have so much training, and they rely on a tablet for their work. They read out the lesson plan from the tablet, rather than having a deeper understanding of what they are trying to teach the children sitting in front of them. That brings us back to the old millennium development goals, which, as we heard earlier, were just about having people sitting down and being lectured at, but not really learning. We need to find a way of connecting with domestic training in countries to ensure that the teachers are the right people for the job and have the skills they need to engage.

Finally, in the directly funded work that we saw about getting the most marginalised back into schools, we found that people were able to experiment outside the state system. We saw some examples of people with learning disabilities who were learning to count through dance. If the Daily Mail found out about that there would probably be a headline tomorrow, but they had a little space to experiment and trial these sorts of things, to see what works and what does not. We know in this country that people learn in different ways—some visualise, and some learn by rote—so differences in learning are really important to engage people and to ensure that no girl or boy is left behind.

[Sir Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

We have four wind-ups to come, including from the Chair of the Select Committee. May I ask the Opposition spokesmen to try to keep their remarks to no more than about eight minutes, to ensure that everybody is heard?

Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Sri Lanka

Paul Scully Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission in Sri Lanka.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I am delighted to be joined by fellow members of the all-party parliamentary group for Tamils. The turnout represents the depth of feeling, particularly among the Tamil diaspora, in our constituencies. Yesterday, I led a debate in this Chamber on cystic fibrosis, which was the first time I have seen it with standing room only. The fact that there are fewer Members here for this debate does not negate its importance. Every Member in this Chamber represents many thousands of members of the Tamil diaspora, who remain concerned about what is happening in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Government’s slow progress in meeting the terms of UN Human Rights Council resolution 30/1, which the Sri Lankan Government co-sponsored.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. He is right that there is all-party agreement on this issue. Does he agree that one of critical things we need from the Sri Lankan Government is a commitment to the timescales by which they will have delivered the commitments they have made?

[Paul Scully]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I absolutely agree. One of the things we need to say today is that we are nearly three years into this. Resolution 30/1 has been extended for a further two years, and we are halfway through that intervention. None of us wants to reach an impasse in a year’s time and go back to the UNHRC in Geneva to say, “Okay, guys, what has happened? Nothing.”

When the all-party group spoke to the Minister a little while ago, we said that if we get to this stage and still not much is happening, alarm bells will ring. I remember asking the Minister what the alarm bells meant. The hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and I went to the UNHRC, and there seemed to be a sense that there is not a lot it can do, which is slightly concerning.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and on the work he is doing as chair of the all-party group. Although not much is happening and the UNHRC does not seem able to move forward, there has been appalling sectarian violence in Sri Lanka in recent weeks, which has resulted in the imposition of a state of emergency for the first time in seven years. Does he agree that, unless the Sri Lankan Government finally tackle the culture of impunity on the island and provide a genuine reckoning with the past, which I think he is arguing for, the country will be unable to lay the foundations of a sustainable peace?

[Paul Scully]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention. I apologise to hon. Members that this is only a 30-minute debate, so they may not have as much time as they wish to share their views on behalf of their constituents. I am sure the Minister is pleased that he has got a bit more time to go out and talk to the Sri Lankan Government and other people, rather than spend time here.

On the issue of sectarian violence, the right hon. Lady is absolutely right. There was recently an outbreak of violence: petrol bombs were thrown at Muslim homes, shops and mosques. That is of real concern because there is an ongoing pattern of systemic violence by the authorities and a number of other issues, which I will try to touch on.

One of the things I try to do when I look at countries in the area—I have just come from an International Development Committee meeting about Burma and Bangladesh—is to triangulate what is happening in these countries. The sectarian violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka has real echoes of what is happening in Burma to the Rohingya Muslims. Indeed, there are Rohingyas in Sri Lanka. Unless we ensure there is a truth and reconciliation mechanism that has the confidence of the diaspora and the people left in Sri Lanka, the cycle will repeat. We need only look at how party politics works in Bangladesh now. There are still echoes of the war of independence and its aftermath, some 47 years on.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. As the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) said, in the past one of the key issues was freedom of religion, and the persecution and murder of people because of their faith. We would very much like to see truth and reconciliation. Does he agree that, for trust to be rebuilt in a community ravaged by guerrilla warfare and terrorism, people need to believe that there is a way of trusting a new generation? Support for and education of children is a driver for securing a future and hope for a war-torn nation. People need freedom of religion and the freedom to worship their God in the way they wish to.

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The way to move on, in addition to truth and reconciliation, is through education. I am going to a Tamil school in my constituency this Saturday, I think. When we go to that sort of cultural event, we always welcome the fact that British Tamils celebrate their heritage. They do so through song, dance and poetry, but they also remember. We recently held Holocaust Memorial Day here, which is a day on which we look back on the atrocities that ravaged Europe. Tamils similarly look back at what happened at Mullivaikal.

One of the toughest things that the hon. Member for Ilford North and I had to do was to listen to the testimony of survivors of Mullivaikal, who talked about people who had gone missing and those who had literally been ripped in half during the shelling of a hospital, which was deliberately targeted by the army. Normally in armed conflicts, the co-ordinates of hospitals and buildings of that sort are given out so that they are avoided. That hospital looked like it had been deliberately targeted.

We can see why people are so emotional, even now. To go back to Bangladesh for a second, it is the 47th anniversary of independence, and last Saturday I was speaking to a veteran of that war, who was in tears recounting his story. That was 47 years ago. In the case of Sri Lanka, we are talking about 2009—just the blink of an eye—so it is no surprise that the emotions are so raw.

UNHRC resolution 30/1 does not just talk about the truth, reconciliation and justice mechanism; it talks about human rights in general. It says that the Prevention of Terrorism Act needs to be ripped up and started again to bring it up to modern standards. It talks about land-grabbing and the return of land to people. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about religious tolerance. Buddhist structures have been popping up in the north and the east of the country, which antagonises Tamils there. The UNHRC resolution talks about setting up an office of missing persons. Although that has been signed off, we need to see that office properly established and doing its work. If the international community and the UN help it do its work, that would be welcome. I hope the Sri Lankan Government will respond positively to such requests.

When we were in Geneva, we saw a traffic-light or RAG—red, amber, green—system for rating how the Sri Lankan Government have been progressing on implementation of the resolution. There were far too many red lights for our liking. Some things are low-hanging fruit, such as the Government having a list of the disappeared that has never been published. They have the list. Why can they not just publish it?

We met mothers of the disappeared, a small group of people who had lost not only their children but their husbands and their grandchildren. We met them and took some photos, but we did not want to share those photos for fear of what people might have to go back to. That cannot be right. Those people, who have had so much pain and suffering, are in fear for their lives and of reprisals when they go back to their home country. It is important that we look into such matters to move forward.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that the people in Sri Lanka who do not want the resolution to be implemented are, in effect, engaged in a war of attrition—both with more progressive elements in their own Government and with the wider international community? They hope that, as time passes, as personnel such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights move on or Governments change, we will just forget about it. They think that they will be able to move on with impunity. That is exactly why the international community needs to keep up external pressure on the Sri Lankan Government to ensure that they sign up to the commitments they made, alongside the rest of the international community, in that important UN Human Rights Council resolution.

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, which goes back to what the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) was saying as well: it is too easy for the situation to drift. It is too easy for us to get to next year, as I was saying, and to find that nothing has happened. That is why a time-bound plan, as the hon. Member for Ilford North suggests, is the right way forward. That would mean that we can look at staging posts along the way to ensure that action is happening.

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman is generous to give way again. Does he agree with me that the Sri Lankan Government have nothing to fear from this? An office for missing persons, for example, or a truth and reconciliation commission, would look at what happened on both sides, which would be of benefit to everybody in Sri Lanka, not only to one group or another.

[Paul Scully]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely valid point. That is true: implementation is a way of moving forward for both sides, and it needs to move forward.

Under the European Union’s generalised scheme of preferences, Sri Lanka has just received back GSP-plus or most favoured trading status, much to the frustration of our all-party parliamentary group. We all want Sri Lanka to succeed—of course we do: we want the economy to be developed for the sake of all the people of Sri Lanka, Tamils and Sinhalese alike—but none the less the fear is that the pace is too quick and that we are releasing all our levers of influence before having any sense of meaningful progress. Moving things on through a time-bound plan, we believe, is the way forward.

When we were in Geneva, we met representatives of the missions of Germany, Macedonia, Canada, India and the EU mission itself. They all seemed incredibly supportive of keeping the heat on Sri Lanka to ensure that it adheres to the resolution that it co-sponsored. But when we asked what would actually happen when we got to next year, the answer was really a bit of a shrug of the shoulders: they could come up with another resolution, or the UN Security Council might be another way to do something, although that is a very different arm of the UN—a very different instrument. Going down that route would get us into a whole other dynamic of geopolitics. We are talking about human rights, not necessarily security: two separate issues.

What other avenue does the UNHRC have? I fear that there is not one, so we have to look at the validity and purpose of the HRC. It needs to be seen to be effective, because otherwise the institution itself is undermined. That might result in situations in which people feel that they can do what they want. Again, to return to somewhere such as Burma, if it can do something without any punishment, any repercussions or a forward view, why not do what it wants to do? What is needed is for the international community to be able to act, and to be able to act effectively.

[Joan Ryan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. Does he agree that the restoration of GSP-plus by the European Union seems to be giving a signal that things are moving forward when in fact nothing has moved forward? When the Minister responds, it would be useful to know exactly what line he took on the restoration of GSP-plus and how firm he was with the European Union on the matter, because I do not think for a moment that that status should have been restored.

[Paul Scully]

I thank the right hon. Lady for making that point. As I said, GSP-plus absolutely has its place in building Sri Lanka’s economy, but its restoration was far too early. Nobody wants to hold a country such as Sri Lanka back, because too many people are affected by lack of development of the economy. None the less, the Sri Lankan Government—who, frankly, have their own problems, as we have seen in the recent elections—need strong leadership. More to the point, the Sri Lankan people need strong leadership. It is not for us to run their country or tell them how it should be governed, but we are here, as critical friends, to ensure that human rights abuses do not continue and that historical human rights abuses are dealt with firmly but fairly.

Finally, I will move on to the main body of the debate, which is not about the ongoing human rights situation, but about settling what has happened, and that relates to the truth and reconciliation commission. We have talked about the office of missing persons, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the ongoing systemic use of violence by the police and the land-grabbing. What Sri Lankan people need, and not only those in this country—such as the 2,500 or so of the Tamil diaspora group in my constituency, with similar numbers in the constituencies of other hon. Members present in the Chamber today—and throughout the world, in Canada, Australia and all places, but Tamils in Sri Lanka, is a system of reconciliation and justice that includes international and independent representation so that people can tell their story and bring some to book, confident that they are not standing before those who might have perpetrated such crimes or their friends. People who appear before such a commission want confidence that they will get justice, and that reprisals will not follow for them or their family.

People want to make it safe not only for those in Sri Lanka to remain in their communities but, ultimately, for the diaspora to go back and forth to Sri Lanka and, more to the point, to invest there—that comes back to GSP-plus and the wider view of the economy. The diaspora in this country has done very good things economically, making a great contribution to this country, so if we can get them to have the confidence to go back and invest in Sri Lanka, that would be great for everyone there. If we can move the judicial process on with our support and international support, that has to be a good thing.

Will the Minister ensure that he keeps the pressure on? Perhaps he will detail what more we can do to secure a time-bound plan and, ultimately, if Sri Lanka does not adhere to resolution 30/01, what are the next moves that we can take?

International Development Committee: Burma Visas

Paul Scully Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I do agree. As I say, I do not want to cast judgment until we know the facts about the involvement of Aung San Suu Kyi or other senior members of the regime in the refusal, but it is absolutely right that this is a textbook case of the worst elements of an increasingly closed regime. I repeat to the hon. Gentleman, as I said at the outset, that in the midst of our displeasure, anger and frustration at not being able to visit there, we should please, please remember the interests of those millions in Burma who so desperately need our help and support.

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your letter—your intervention in this case—which was very well received. I think it was Daw Suu herself who said, when she was here, that if she could see the cut and thrust of Prime Minister’s questions, she knew that she was moving towards democracy. Unfortunately, the country is moving in the wrong direction. Since I saw you chair the all-party parliamentary group on Burma in 2005, Mr Speaker, I have always wanted, if I got elected to this place, to help to move the country towards democracy. Now that I am co-chair of the APPG, that is what I intend to do. I am also, as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy, keen to play my role in looking at economic development in the country; and as an International Development Committee member, keen to look at health and education for the Kachin, the Karen, the Shan and all the other ethnic groups.

Does the Minister agree that now that the International Development Committee is going to be carrying on its work, it will only be speaking to people on the Bangladeshi side, the refugees themselves and the non-governmental organisations, giving a one-sided view that the Burmese Government could otherwise have helped with? Does he also agree that it will make the work far harder for those of us who want to take a holistic view of Burma as a country?

[Mark Field]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work in all those areas, and indeed as the Conservative party’s vice-chairman in charge of London affairs. I do not know where he gets the time to do all this work. Joking aside, I agree with everything he says. In many ways, we need to have a proper perspective on this issue, not just from the Bangladeshi side but from Burma too, in order to see to what extent there is any efficacy in being able to return to Burma at the earliest opportunity.

May I ask all Members here please to keep faith with Burma and the Burmese people? However much we distrust, dislike and wish to dislodge any Government, we must remember that this is important work that is being done. If we do not do it here in the United Kingdom, it is not clear that anyone else is going to have the commitment that we have; part of that, as everyone knows, is for historical reasons. Please keep that faith.

Refugees and Human Rights

Paul Scully Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

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

It is great to have this debate today given that Saturday is Holocaust Memorial Day and that this year marks the 70th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights.

I came to this place after having stood for election on a platform of local issues, but my eyes have been opened over the past three years through travel and by speaking to other people. There was the woman in a Rohingya camp who had seen her sons murdered and the man who had had the back of his head staved in with a machete that morning. There was the Yazidi Christian who had made a dangerous boat crossing with a 10-day-old child during which the boat had been capsized before the navy cutters came to pluck them out of the water.

I have spoken to a CNN journalist who had risked her life by going undercover to film slave auctions in Libya. I have met Venezuelan opposition politicians who had been beaten up due to their political beliefs, and there are now a reported 140,000 refugees in neighbouring Colombia. I have of course been to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, where I saw the hall of names of those who died in the Shoah, which really goes to the crux of things when we talk about suffering.

I do not have the time to do justice to the Government’s policy on Syria, where we are the second-biggest donor to the camps in neighbouring countries. We are supporting people as close to their homes as possible in anticipation of them being able to return, which they want to do, when it is safe to do so. By doing that, we are able to help hundreds of thousands of people there, including many children, instead of waiting until they attempt a boat crossing.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will not due to the time, and I know that the hon. Gentleman’s private Member’s Bill is coming up on 16 March.

I do not have enough time to talk fully about the Rohingya. If we use too blunt an instrument in our diplomacy, we risk the country closing off. Ethnic conflict is already intensifying in northern Shan state and Kachin state, where the situation is actually backed by the popular support of the Burmese people, who already do not believe what the western media is telling them about the ongoing atrocities.

I cannot do justice to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East, who responded to the recent debate on the petition on the slave trade in Libya. He is making proactive moves to consider the petitioners’ demands and to speak to as many people as possible to address the causes, which include the migrant path from sub-Saharan Africa.

The conflict, security and stability fund, which has been allocated more than £1 billion for this year, aims to stabilise areas, but only by sorting out conflict, such as ending the war in Syria and appealing to the Burmese Government to ensure that the commander-in-chief ends the situation for the Rohingya, can we start to tackle some of the ongoing situations in Nigeria and other countries and prevent people from feeling the need to leave. It is through soft power, trade where appropriate, quiet and calm diplomacy in the UN and the Council of Europe, where the UK delegation is working this week, and all manner of other ways of mobilising the international community that we will start to succeed.

Enslavement of Black Africans (Libya)

Paul Scully Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 205476 relating to the enslavement of black Africans in Libya.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I would like to read the petition into the record. It reads:

“Put pressure on Libya to take action to stop enslavement of Black Africans.

CNN has released video footage of black Africans being sold into slavery in Libya. I am asking the UK government to put pressure on the Libyan government to take immediate action to stop these criminals from selling more people, to set current prisoners free, arrest the criminals and end this.”

I am delighted to welcome the petitioner, Constance Mbassi Manga, who has done a fantastic job in raising this issue and getting so many signatures in such a short space of time. I am delighted that she is able to join us today.

As of this morning, 265,272 people had signed the petition within only about three weeks of it going live, which is a real testament to people’s strength of feeling. It is interesting: the likes of Cara Delevingne, Naomi Campbell and Rihanna, and a whole load of rappers who are far too cool for me to even know who they are, have taken up this issue, put it on social media and shared it. All of that, including the petition system, is really part—not the end—of a campaign to make people aware of the horrific things going on in another part of the world that they might otherwise not have been aware of at all. Hopefully, as well as raising awareness, we can start to effect change.

It was international Human Rights Day a week last Sunday. A number of us were out and about, raising issues; I was talking about the situation that the Rohingya Muslim community face in Burma, the Tamils, the Ahmadiyya Muslims and a number of other issues that are close to me and to my constituents, given the various diaspora groups in my constituency. Only a week later, we are talking about something that we thought had long since passed. When the Prime Minister was Home Secretary, she brought in the Modern Slavery Act 2015—a fantastic achievement—which recognised that slavery still existed in hidden pockets of this country. However, this is not hidden; it is absolutely brazen and out-and-out across parts of Libya and its migrant routes. It has to stop.

I was chatting to the Minister a little while ago—I do not know if he will remember this—and we shared the view that when people believe that another group of people are subhuman, there is no depth to which they will not stoop in their treatment of them; they are treated worse than animals. People started being aware of this situation when the International Organisation for Migration started to hear stories and went to document people’s experiences, write reports and share what those voices were saying. However, it was only when CNN covered the issue a few weeks ago that it really came to the public’s wider awareness.

I want to read one piece of documented evidence from the IOM to illustrate what is happening. One of the operations officers in Niger reported on the rescue of a Senegalese migrant. He referred to him as SC, to protect his identity. SC was returning to his home after being held captive for months.

“According to SC’s testimony, while he was trying to travel north through the Sahara, he arrived in Agadez, Niger, where he was told he would have to pay 200,000 CFA—about $320—to continue north towards Libya. A trafficker provided him with accommodation until the day of his departure, which was to be by pick-up truck.

The journey—over two days of travelling—through the desert was relatively smooth for this group. IOM has often heard from other migrants on this route who report seeing the remains of others abandoned by their drivers—and of trucks ransacked by bandits who siphon away their fuel.

SC’s fate was different. When his pick-up reached Sabha in south-western Libya, the driver insisted that he hadn’t been paid by the trafficker, and that he was transporting the migrants to a parking area where SC witnessed a slave market taking place. ‘Sub-Saharan migrants were being sold and bought by Libyans, with the support of Ghanaians and Nigerians who work for them’”,

the IOM reported.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He mentioned Nigeria; when I visited it as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy, I had a discussion about this problem. We all agreed that if we did not help to get sub-Saharan Africa right, the catastrophe waiting to happen in Europe would be colossal, as more and more Nigerians put themselves in the hands of unscrupulous traffickers on the way to Libya and the Mediterranean coast. Does he agree that that is a realistic view of the situation?

[Paul Scully]

I understand my hon. Friend’s expertise and knowledge of the area and totally agree with him. There is a real risk. We can tackle the atrocities of the slave trade in Libya, and Libya’s power vacuum, but ultimately the biggest threat to that part of the world and many others is migration—and not necessarily just migration through conflict. Economic reasons, climate reasons and any number of other reasons are moving such a mass of people, which causes other situations.

[Royston Smith (Southampton, Itchen) (Con)]

On the power vacuum in Libya, the UK Government continue to support the Government of national accord, yet we hear that these things are becoming very much worse. Would it not be right for the UK to consider whether the Government of national accord are perhaps not the answer?

[Paul Scully]

I am grateful for the intervention. I will be interested to hear from the Minister on we can do to work towards democratic elections, and to create a mainstream Government in Libya, which clearly has not had one for many years. It is only by having a mainstream, democratically elected Government that we will be able to have a long-term view, whichever party makes up that Government. It will not necessarily be for us to pick a horse, run the country or tell it what to do, but we can help support it. We can work with the African Union and a local offering to help Libya create its own destiny and future, which hopefully will be much safer and a lot more secure.

Let me get back to SC. He was bought, and then brought to his first prison. The IOM said it was

“a private home where more than 100 migrants were held as hostages. He said the kidnappers made the migrants call their families back home, and often suffered beatings while on the phone so that their family members could hear them being tortured. In order to be released from this first house, SC was asked to pay…about $480…which he couldn’t raise. He was then ‘bought’ by another Libyan, who brought him to a bigger house—where a new price was set for his release…about $970…to be paid via Western Union or MoneyGram to someone called ‘Alhadji Balde’, said to be in Ghana.

SC managed to get some money from his family via mobile phone and then agreed to work as an interpreter for the kidnappers, to avoid further beatings. He described dreadful sanitary conditions, and food offered only once per day. Some migrants who couldn’t pay were reportedly killed, or left to starve to death.

SC told IOM that when somebody died or was released, kidnappers returned to the market to ‘buy’ more migrants to replace them. Women, too, were ‘bought’ by private individuals—Libyans, according to this witness—and brought to homes where they were forced to be sex slaves.”

It was Nima Elbagir and CNN’s groundbreaking report, and those pictures, that really brought the situation home to so many people in the west. CNN heard from its contact that two auctions were going on at the same time. Some people in the Libyan Government would say that those things happen only sporadically, but on this occasion there were two at the same time, and the one that was filmed was an overflow auction, because there were so many people to be sold. There was also a big buyer in town wanting to buy people—that is what I said: “buy people”—as commodities or merchandise, to work on farms. It is atrocious, and while I am speaking I am reflecting on the words I use. That episode brought the matter home. Officers from the International Organisation for Migration said:

“What we know is that migrants who fall into the hands of smugglers face systematic malnutrition, sexual abuse and even murder. Last year we learned 14 migrants died in a single month in one of those locations, just from disease and malnutrition. We are hearing about mass graves in the desert.”

The total population of migrants in Libya, based on estimates provided by embassies, is about 750,000, mainly coming from Egypt, Niger, Sudan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Syria and Mali. Previously, under the Gaddafi regime, there were about 1.1 million; I think that that was the estimate. They were predominantly there as cheap labour. Of the 750,000 who are there now, about 450,000 at least do not see Libya as their final destination. They see it as being on a migration route to Europe and beyond. Those are the people in connection houses, who have been trafficked. They are the people who are beaten and whipped with wires—hundreds of thousands of people. They experience extreme insecurity in Libya, including arbitrary arrest by non-state actors, detention for indefinite periods of time, bonded labour, harassment and general exploitation.

There were other pictures on CNN of not the auction but the detention centres. That aspect of the matter is of huge concern, and I want to ask the Minister for his views. The people held there share small mattresses, and are effectively in a cage. That brings me back to what I said when I began my speech: they are treated worse than animals. How can we have reached a situation where that is anywhere close to the case?

The 450,000 people who come through Libya, seeing it as part of their migration route, go to the north coast, to a crossing point, pay another trafficker to get them into a boat, and go predominantly to Italy—to Lampedusa, a small island that simply cannot cope. I went, as a member of the Council of Europe, to Lesbos, to see some of the hotspots there where the Syrian refugees come from. There were a number of north Africans there and some were protesting and throwing things at the bus I was on, wondering why the Syrians were getting preferential treatment. Having seen what they go through to get there, it is possible to understand their concern.

We need to look at how the Italy-Libya deal is framed. I understand that it is a bilateral arrangement supported by the EU, but that it is being contested in the Libyan courts by human rights organisations based in Libya. I want to ask the Minister how robust the memorandum of understanding between the countries is, when there are reports of Libyan coastguards taking bribes to release migrants to traffickers. A second question leads on from that. The Department for International Development is doing fantastic work, as it tends to do. It is a world leader in the aid and support it gives. However, it is supporting more than 20,000 emergency interventions, involving healthcare, psycho-social support, hygiene kits and safe shelter. Can we be sure that we have robust accountability, to ensure that any support we give is not being fed into and supporting the cycle of trafficking, and that it is focused absolutely on the things I have specified?

It is good to hear that the IOM has managed to up its repatriation flights. The target originally was for 1,000 people a month to be taken back to their place of origin; that has gone up, and it is expected that 15,000 people will be repatriated to their original country this month alone. That is a good sign of the direction in which things are going.

I wonder whether DFID can get involved, either directly or through leverage of support from elsewhere, in trying to get accurate numbers. Together with the power vacuum, a problem that hampers what is being done is the fact that no one really knows the extent of the problem. There is work using various methodologies, but there is more to be done to get accuracy. Can we, for example, build up a phone network so that families from around the relevant part of sub-Saharan Africa can report in and talk about their loved ones—where they are, what has happened, the last time they saw them, and so on—so that we can begin to get more accurate figures?

Of course the UK Government will have a competing agenda. We want accountability, clearly, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) says, there is a need for stability and preparation for elections; we need to give support on the route towards elections, to get rid of the power vacuum. It is only a question of enforcement—everyone knows that slavery is illegal already, and there is nothing to be done to change the rule, but someone is needed on the ground to arrest the people in question and hold them to account, bringing them to court and applying the full force of the law to them. If, for any number of reasons, there is no one on the ground to do that at the moment, it will not happen.

[Royston Smith]

Slavery these days is completely different from the way people would have imagined it some years ago. Many of the people who are trafficked get themselves to the traffickers to get somewhere else. Should we be looking at the possibility of DFID or others educating people in their country, village or town of origin, so that they do not embark on the journey in the first place? Does my hon. Friend agree that that would be helpful?

[Paul Scully]

I absolutely agree, because it is a matter of pull factors, and stopping people having to make the choice to migrate over such a treacherous route. They have so far to go: there are human traffickers; people may just be ditched at the side of the road as I have described, or sold out of a bus in the back of a car park, and then sold on again and beaten with wires; they may then be on the Mediterranean on a boat—and the technique used with those small boats is that as soon as a navy cutter comes to the rescue, they are deliberately capsized to tip the people in the water. The rescuers have to pluck them out of the water; they cannot just pull the boat somewhere. To return to the Greek example, while I was there I met a Yazidi Christian—someone on a different migrant route—with a 10-day-old child. They had gone through that whole process. How the child, who by then was aged three months, was still alive, I shall never know. Those are the most treacherous circumstances, so anything that can be done to stop the migration in the first place must be the only course of action.

[John Howell]

I want to pick up on the previous intervention. I think that there is a huge role for British companies in educating people in their country. I went to see Unilever in Nigeria; it has eradicated modern slavery from its whole supply chain, and that has had a big effect in the effort to convince Nigerians that they should stay and make something of themselves in their own country. Unless we do that, we shall run into a lot of problems.

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend makes a typically insightful point, and it is right to use some of our big companies working in the areas in question to provide education and secondary industries. As we move into looking at trade agreements with Africa but while we are also a member of the EU, we could seek tariff reduction as well. Obviously a big concern is tariffs on the least developed countries, but with the slightly better-off countries such as Nigeria, the “Everything but Arms” rules do not apply. They are charged a lot in tariffs on coffee and chocolate and similar things, and cannot build up the secondary industries that would help to develop gainful employment, so that people would have a stake in their own area and not feel the need to leave to find a better life.

I have talked about the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and it is nearly 200 years since the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that William Wilberforce worked for. Only last year there was a remake of the seminal television programme of the book “Roots” by Alex Haley. I watched the original version, but the one I watched last year seemed to be of a time gone by. There have been other fantastic films about slavery that have also really hammered their point home, but they give the sense that “This happened so long ago; isn’t it wonderful that we have stamped it out?”—but we have not; that is the news. It is still going on every day.

I ask the Minister to answer my questions. Finally, what more we can do as a country to support Libya, improve conditions and ultimately end the need for detention camps there?

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. As we heard in the extremely powerful opening remarks from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), there is incontrovertible evidence that slavery—that brutal and dehumanising exploitation—is taking place in Libya today.

As we know, modern slavery is shamefully common in our world and exists in our country. However, the images and words that have come out of Libya in recent weeks are shocking and have historical resonance: the victims are black Africans and the people who have enslaved them are not. The people who have been bought and sold in Libya have been violated in so many ways; they have experienced much violence and they have been betrayed and cheated at every step of their journey.

The personal stories make clear that the victims have paid, borrowing and scraping together money to start a journey to Europe because they believed an evil deception—but that was only the start of their exploitation. They are left utterly alone, terrified and without support in an unstable foreign country and under the control of people who care only about extracting every penny that they can from their “merchandise”. Foka, a Cameroonian, described the beatings he witnessed and endured at the hands of the traffickers, as he and others were cowed and forced to submit:

“There was torture like I’ve never seen. They hit you with wooden bats, with iron bars…They hang you from the ceiling by (your) arms and legs and then throw you down to the floor. They swing you and throw you against the wall, over and over again”.

Foka’s injuries were still visible when he made that statement.

The traffickers are not only exploiting young migrants through slave labour but making money from ransoms, as we have heard. Sometimes, to coerce a ransom payment, a migrant is forced to call a parent or relative and then beaten while the relative listens. The story of Victory, a young Nigerian man, is illustrative. First, he paid people smugglers, who lied and said they would get him to Europe. He then endured weeks of slave labour in Libya once he could no longer pay them, and he was then forced to find a ransom payment to set him free. His mother had to beg and borrow the money to save his life. Victory’s ransom was more than 1 million Nigerian naira, which would take 56 years to earn on the local minimum wage. Victory had already spent his life savings to pay the people who exploited him, and now his family may literally face a lifetime of debt while his exploiters continue to escape justice. 

As we have heard, Mohammed Abdiker, of the United Nations migration agency, said that migrants who fall into the hands of smugglers face

“systematic malnutrition, sexual abuse and even murder…14 migrants died in a single month in one of those locations, just from disease and malnutrition. We are hearing about mass graves in the desert.”

The UN estimates that there are anything from 700,000 to 1 million migrants currently in Libya, with 70% from sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence shows that 30% of adults and 40% of children have been forced to work against their will. That is a massive number. So many people enslaved—so many children.

I would like the Government to outline what we are doing to stop the enslavement and sale of human beings in Libya and the trafficking of people towards the Mediterranean. I understand that France is to work with the UN’s sanctions committee for Libya to identify individuals or organisations involved in trading human beings. That committee can require UN member states to freeze assets owned or controlled by individuals on its list and can impose a travel ban. Does the Minister support that proposal, and will he work to ensure that that committee has all the information it needs?

Action against slave traders must be the priority; they have to be shut down. However, there is obviously a broader context. Large numbers of desperate people from sub-Saharan Africa are stuck in Libya. That was not their intended destination, and it is getting harder and harder for them to move on, partly because of the actions taken by our Government, in concert with many other European Governments, to make it harder for migrants to cross the Mediterranean.

Those actions have generally been taken with good intentions, motivated by a desire to shut down trafficking routes. However, shutting down the traffickers who run routes up and down the Mediterranean is clearly only half done at best; the terrible re-emergence of slavery in Libya is testament to and a consequence of that. If we want to reduce harm by closing those routes, that strategy cannot stop at the shores of north Africa—action needs to be taken in Libya and, equally, in countries to its south.

Social media is a critical tool for the perpetrators of modern slavery. It is how traffickers advertise, spread lies and recruit victims, and it enables them to run their amoral trade. Social media companies, whether they like it or not, have a role to play in disrupting this trade, and I hope the Minister will comment on any conversations he has had with those companies in his remarks.

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Lady rightly raises social media. However, does she agree that social media has also played a positive role in getting this petition out and this issue raised? The one caution I urge is that some of the photos doing the rounds to raise awareness of the slave trade are actually not related to the slave trade. It is important that, when we share photos, we share accurate photos, which is not always easy to do.

[Lyn Brown]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: social media can play a very useful role in our society. However, we need to understand that it can be used by completely unscrupulous people to lure others into slavery and ultimately, possibly, to their deaths. Social media companies have to accept responsibility for what they do and find ways to help us to close down those traffickers.

The UN has understandably requested urgent funding—I presume the Government are considering that request—and 1,300 new resettlement places across the world for the most vulnerable African migrants in Libya. Niger has offered to take that number temporarily before the end of January, but a more permanent solution has to be found. The current situation is simply dire—so many people are vulnerable to slavery and all the abuses that go with it. Those people matter. African lives matter, and they need us to be their allies by taking action to end this today. This is not a situation that we can simply take note of and move on from.

Who these hope-filled, naïve, ambitious, desperate migrants were before they fell prey to the traffickers is no longer important. All are refugees now, needing help and a route out. We could and should do more to help them. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on how we plan to do just that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

Thank you very much, Mr Walker, for calling me to wind up the debate, and I also thank the Minister for his typically comprehensive and open response to the questions that have been put to him today. It does not take experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment and other psychological research experiments to see how bestial people can be to other people. We need only look at Rwanda, the situation in parts of Rakhine state in Burma and obviously the slave trade that we are discussing here today to see such bestial behaviour happening every day.

I will also just say thanks again to Constance Mbassi Manga and the signatories to the petition; to the supporters who have raised the issue on social media to bring it to the public fore; and to Nima Elbagir from CNN and her team who, as we have heard, bravely reported this story. I spoke to Nima this morning and she is really fired up for following up the story, to make sure that some action comes out of it.

This has been a very good debate, and I will not go through what has been said, as I must be brief. I will just say that, although there have been calls on our time today from the main Chamber and elsewhere, we have hopefully done what we aimed to do, which was to tell the story of the people in Libya who are on the frontline and who are suffering. We must tell those human stories to raise the profile of the issue and to add depth to the coverage of it, so that we can try to find solutions. I very much thank everybody who has taken part in the debate today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 205476 relating to the enslavement of black Africans in Libya.

Centenary of the Balfour Declaration

Paul Scully Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)]

As an old friend from Bury, it is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) for securing the debate and the thoughtful way he navigated the balance required as the mover of the motion, while making his position perfectly plain.

I would like to put some things on the record about the Balfour Declaration and that aspect of a regular and important topic of debate in the House. I will not be answering all the questions that have been raised, but I will go through the debate, check the questions and put an answer in the Library, so that colleagues will be able to see not only the answer to their own questions, but everything else.

I have listened to debates on this topic for the best part of 30 years now. I have heard colleagues speak with real knowledge, real passion, understanding and a democratic commitment to respecting the opinions of others. If the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is to be settled in the way we would like and every part of the Balfour Declaration fulfilled, as we all want, the positions of tolerance, understanding and passion that colleagues have displayed in the debate today will be beneficial.

The contributions have been mostly thoughtful and balanced—I will not go through them all. There has been the odd ember on which it would be possible to pour fuel, but I will not do that. I cannot single out too many Members in addition to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, but I want to mention another old friend of more than 30 years, the hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis), who is a former Minister for the Middle East. One would have to go a long way to hear a more balanced, succinct and poignant explanation of the Balfour Declaration, and commitment to peace, than we heard in his speech.

I would also ask my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) not to bang on about his age. Some of us in this room were the future once, and some of us think we still are, so I ask him to go easy on that.

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

My right hon. Friend talks about peace. I wonder whether he welcomes, as I do, the Prime Minister’s words at Prime Minister’s questions today. She concluded by saying that it is important that we recommit to ensuring that we provide security, stability and justice for Israelis and Palestinians through securing peace. May I ask the Minister if that demonstrates that the Government give that the highest priority?

[Alistair Burt]

It does. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I will mention our commitment for the future, as colleagues were keen for me to do so.

The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Paul Scully Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

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

It is important to note the history behind this issue. As we heard earlier from the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), the Rohingya Muslims have been in that part of Myanmar for many hundreds of years. When the British were controlling Burma, they used people from what is now Bangladesh, moving across what was then a very permeable border, for employment and labour. That started to muddy the waters, because we did not register those people or acknowledge them as Bangladeshi. That has given the Myanmar Government the excuse to set a new year zero and to deny these people, who have been there and had roots there for so many years, the right to citizenship.

When I was in Burma in February 2016, at the time of the transition Government, I was really hopeful. Everyone was incredibly optimistic that, as the country came into the light, we would start to see the desperately needed end to the ethnic conflict throughout the country. I ask all Members present, including the Minister, to acknowledge when they condemn what is going on in Rakhine state that the Burmese people are largely behind it, as shocking as that may sound. There are demonstrations in Yangon at which people say, “We stand with the lady, we stand with the army and we stand with the Burmese people.”

Aung San Suu Kyi was speaking at the same time as we were at Cox’s Bazar airport. We have all said that she needs to be far more forthright in condemning the actions in Rakhine state, but we must concentrate on the man who could stop this tomorrow: Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief. If we whip this up into “the west against a nationalist uprising in Myanmar”, we run a risk, because this is a man who might fancy his chances of presidency in 2020. We might end up with the military getting back into control via the ballot box rather than the gun.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

My hon. Friend is making an extraordinarily powerful point. We should all be familiar with the point that during the transition, the military retained 25% of control in the Myanmar Parliament. The commander-in-chief is no fan of Aung San Suu Kyi, so she is in an extraordinarily difficult position. Yes, we would like her to speak out more, but we must also recognise that in the longer term the progress we have seen in Burma could easily go backwards, and that would endanger peace throughout the country, not only in Rakhine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

Members in the Chamber and people throughout the country are rightly passionate about the atrocities that are taking place and that were witnessed by a number of us who went over to Cox’s Bazar, but we must realise that the situation in the country is complex. Our response must absolutely reflect that so that we do not make the country close in on itself. If we do, the conflicts in Rakhine state will start to reignite in Kachin state, Shan state and all the other areas in which the peace process, under Kofi Annan’s commission, has started to have some sort of traction—although it is taking some time.

The military claims that what is going on in Rakhine state is a response to the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army, and that ARSA is a terrorist group. Let us assume that there are some terrorists there, although if there are, they number a couple of hundred at most—nothing like the 500,000 people who have crossed the border. Along with my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for St Albans (Mrs Main), I met a 60-year-old lady. She came over with her surviving grandchildren—and I mean surviving grandchildren. Her son-in-law had been stabbed in front of her and dragged away, and was assumed dead, and her 12-year-old grandchild was beheaded in front of her.

[Mrs Main]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we were given her words absolutely verbatim? They were translated by people in our party who understood, so we were not being duped in any way.

[Paul Scully]

Absolutely. We picked all of the dozen or so people to whom we spoke over two days and we had our own translators there, so it was absolutely verbatim. Another one of her grandchildren had their genitals mutilated and chopped off. As Members will understand, this woman was dead behind the eyes. There is no way that that woman was a terrorist. The response by the military is clearly disproportionate and needs to be called out. We must absolutely ensure that every time we have dealings with the Burmese Government and the military we call them out for what they do.

We need to plan things regionally, work with our Commonwealth friends, and try to encourage the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to have a regional response. At the moment, there is little movement from Thailand, and the Indian Government are rejecting the Rohingya Muslims who have settled in their country, so, as we have heard, this is not just a Burmese-Bangladesh situation.

The Bangladeshi Government are doing a fantastic job under difficult circumstances. The fact that the situation is not new is clear when I reveal that the Kutupalong camp is 30 years old. This is not a new camp that has just been set up; it is 30 years old. There are two treaties outstanding with Bangladesh and Burma dating back to 1978 for the safe return of Rohingya Muslims to Burma. They have been ignored by the Burmese Government, so we must ensure that a treaty, which is backed up by international support, is put in place to allow the safe return of the Rohingya.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for securing this necessary debate. I also thank my hon. Friend for the vital work that she has done in raising awareness of the persecution of the Rohingya. Sadly this abuse is not new. In 1992, a cross-party early-day motion criticised the “systematic extermination” of the Rohingya in Burma. Some 25 years later, the extermination continues.

The most recent UN report contains witness statements detailing shocking acts of violence and humiliation: children and elderly people burned in their homes; mass use of gang-rape, including soldiers gang-raping girls as young as five; victims, including children, forced to watch relatives and loved ones tortured and killed; and a pregnant woman raped, her stomach cut open, her unborn baby killed, and her nipples cut off.

Since August, more than 540,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, taking the total now in Bangladesh to more than 800,000. Sickeningly, Amnesty International and some of our colleagues have said that there are clear indications that the Burmese authorities have been deliberately targeting the Rohingya as they flee, placing landmines at border crossings.

[Paul Scully]

Does the hon. Lady agree that landmines are terrible not just for those in the present, but in 10 or 20 years’ time when, hopefully, this has been solved and children are out playing?

[Sarah Champion]

That is the perversity of the situation, and we have our eyes wide open.

The Secretary of State for International Development has said that children are at risk of “sexual violence and trafficking”. The International Rescue Committee said that there are

“reports of girls in Rohingya camps being raped or abused when going to the toilet or collecting firewood.”

There are those who suggest that there are two sides to this story, and that paramilitary attacks mean that the Rohingya are to blame for the violence. Nothing can ever justify the horrors that innocent Rohingya are suffering. The UN report contains a witness statement of a 12-year-old Rohingya girl. She told the UN team:

“They surrounded our house and started to shoot. It was a situation of panic—they shot my sister in front of me, she was only seven years old. She cried and told me to run. I tried to protect her and care for her, but we had no medical assistance on the hillside and she was bleeding so much that after one day she died. I buried her myself.”

That was a 12-year-old girl. If a proportional response existed, that could never be it. The UN also said that

“security forces targeted teachers, the cultural and religious leadership, and other people of influence of the Rohingya community in an effort to diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge.”

This is planned and co-ordinated ethnic cleansing. I am pleased and relieved that the Secretary of State has echoed the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in describing it in that way, but we need not only strong language, but strong action. The director of International State Crime Initiative has called ethnic cleansing a “euphemism for genocide”. She adds that genocide is a process that takes place over many years. In 2015, the organisation described the violence towards the Rohingya as

“highly organised and genocidal in intent.”

The Bangladeshi Government have already called this genocide so I ask the Minister, if the UN finds that genocide or other violations of international law have been committed, will the British Government support a referral to the International Criminal Court?

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

It should be remembered that, yes, she could have done more to prevent this tragedy and to speak out when it began, but she does not control the army.

The article continued:

“The international community must now act to hold the Burmese military to account for its crimes.”

Those warnings were also made many months ago. Now a tragedy is unfolding on a far bigger scale and action is long overdue.

I welcome the action taken by the Government so far: initiating discussions at the UN Security Council, suspending training programmes with the Burmese army, providing £30 million in aid and pledging to match £5 million in donations to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal.

[Paul Scully]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, while it is absolutely right that we should suspend our military programme with the Burmese military, it is a matter of regret that the people left training the Burmese military at the moment are the Russians?

[Fiona Bruce]

I will come in a moment to the further action I want to challenge the Minister to take with regard to the military.

More surely can and should be done. When the United Nations Secretary-General describes the crisis as “catastrophic” and “a devastating humanitarian situation" and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that it is

“a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”,

there is surely a need for a much more robust response.

So what other measures will the UK take to put pressure on the army and the Government of Burma to stop this appalling ethnic cleansing? What steps are the Government taking to demand that the military in Burma immediately cease operations in Rakhine state and that the Government of Burma allow unhindered access to all affected areas for international humanitarian aid organisations, human rights monitors and the media? What pressure will the Government put on the Government of Burma to ensure that Rohingyas can safely return to their home villages and that homes are rebuilt, livelihoods are secured, security is guaranteed, the recommendations of the Rakhine advisory commission, chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, are implemented, a reconciliation process begins, and the military are held to account for their crimes?

Will the Government work at the UN Security Council to secure a global arms embargo on Burma and targeted sanctions to prohibit investment in Burmese military-owned enterprises? Will the UK urge the EU to extend its arms embargo to ban the sale of non-military equipment that could be used for military purposes and to impose a visa ban on senior members of the military? Will the UK work to reintroduce a UN General Assembly resolution on Burma, imposing specific measures to put pressure on the Government and the military in Burma to address this crisis?

I urge the Minister to consider introducing regular meetings at this critical time, either with himself or his officials, so that non-governmental organisations based in London that have much expertise in Burma can discuss the current crisis. I have referred to the expertise of Ben Rogers, but I also have in mind the Burma Campaign UK, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and, in particular, representatives of the exiled Rohingya community.

This tragedy requires our urgent attention and action now. It is time to act to prevent another ethnic cleansing from becoming another genocide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

The Rohingya are the most persecuted minority in the world, and their persecution is not a recent phenomenon; it is of long standing. People are being rendered stateless in their own land. If they are not being beaten, murdered or raped, they are being starved, literally, because of the closure of food markets in Rakhine state.

The scale of what the Rohingya face is unimaginable, and we have heard many moving examples from Members from across the Chamber. This is a textbook example of ethnic cleansing—let there be no doubt about that—with all the horror that that entails. We have heard about the more than 500,000 refugees who have fled in recent months to Bangladesh, and about the more than 200,000 who were already there, having fled violence previously.

I have been reflecting on the fact that we have had so many debates in this House about whether we should take a few thousand unaccompanied child refugees into our nation—one of the most prosperous on earth—from the ravaged land that is Syria, while Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations on earth, is housing 800,000 refugees. I do not know that we would be so generous if we faced the situation that the Bangladeshis face. As other Members have said, not only must we offer every assistance to the Bangladeshi Government—I welcome the efforts that have been made already—but we must strain every sinew to provide humanitarian assistance and use our particular expertise to support the Bangladeshi Government as fully as we possibly can, and we must implore the rest of the world to do the same.

[Paul Scully]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I will not, because of the shortness of time; I apologise.

I agree that we should keep a laser-like focus on the military, and I support Members’ calls for arms bans and visa bans for military personnel and their families in Myanmar. I hear the argument about Min Aung Hlaing, the military leader; as others have said, he could stop this overnight. However, I do not want us to get away from the moral responsibility on Aung San Suu Kyi. I take on board the points about the military leadership—I hear the argument saying that she does not have power, that this country is transitioning to democracy, that she has to tread a fine line and that there is a fear of overthrow by the military leadership—but the compromise of transition to democracy cannot come at the cost of turning a blind eye to ethnic cleansing. That is abhorrent, and a total corruption of democracy and everything that democracy stands for.

There is an idea that Aung San Suu Kyi has no power, but for many years not only did she have no power, but she did not have liberty, yet she used the one power she did have—the power of her voice, the power to speak out—and now she has fallen silent and brought her Nobel peace prize into disrepute. If she has not been utterly silent, all she has done is to act as an apologist for the military regime and to deny the truth of the crisis that has fallen upon the Rohingya in Burma.

The point about Aung San Suu Kyi raising her voice is so important because she must stand up and make the argument for democracy. Democracy is not the tyranny of the majority having a vote and persecuting a minority. It is founded on the principle that human rights are universal, and the universality of human rights must be accepted in Myanmar if it is ever going to be a democracy worthy of the name. That is the argument that Aung San Suu Kyi could and should make, and we in this House must call her out. If we, in the mother of Parliaments, do not stand up for the true nature of democracy, I fear all will be lost.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Lady talks about doing more but says she is not asking for military intervention. What would she like us to do rather than say?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Years ago, when I raised this matter in Westminster Hall, I said that the sanctions should be maintained, that military assistance should be stopped, and that the sale of weapons from across the world to Burma should be stopped. People need to get together and talk. I do not believe for one minute that if the richest countries in the world said to the Burmese generals, “Stop doing this,” they would not stop doing it—they would. If all the money and military aid was pulled out, they would stop. I am sorry to say, however, that the international community is still sitting and watching while genocide and ethnic cleansing take place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who is no longer in her place, for enabling us as parliamentarians to bear witness to this atrocity and to hear extremely powerful speeches from Members on both sides of the House; but sadly, speeches are not enough.

Anyone who heard the testimony a few days ago of the mum whose young daughter’s hand slipped out of hers in the raging sea as they tried to reach the sanctuary of Bangladesh on a boat that was barely seaworthy, or who heard the young son who carried his skeletal, disabled mum, barely alive, talk about how he watched the soldiers burn his village—he is unsure where the rest of his family have ended up—or who heard about the three children and their mum who were trampled to death by wild elephants as they slept, having been forced to build their temporary shelter on elephant walkways owing to the unprecedented numbers of refugees huddled in the forested hills of Balukhali, cannot fail to be heartbroken.

These are people—people like all of us in this Chamber. They are women and children, exhausted, injured and traumatised after walking for days. More than half of all new arrivals are children, and one in 10 is a breastfeeding mother. They are human beings who deserve to live in peace. We cannot stand by; we must call it out. The scale of suffering is unimaginable. Over half a million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. They are destitute, scared and hungry. But the Myanmar Government refuse to accept what the world knows to be true: we are witnessing ethnic cleansing. Farah Kabir from ActionAid has said:

“'In nearly 15 years of working on humanitarian disasters I’ve never seen a crisis on this scale. The scale of need is far outweighing the response.”

If anyone saw the recent posting on Twitter of a drone flying over the refugee camp in Bangladesh, they would have seen that the conditions for those who do manage to escape are barely fit for animals, let alone human beings.

Yet it seems as though the world is holding the coat of the oppressor, standing by, wincing when it is all too much, but doing nothing to protect the victims. We need political will. We need to pressure the EU to support a UN-mandated global arms embargo. Yesterday, EU representatives met to discuss the crisis and issued a joint statement suspending invitations to military leaders, reviewing defence co-operation with Myanmar in the light of the disproportionate use of force against the Rohingya minority—

[Paul Scully]

rose—

[Tracy Brabin]

I will keep going. The EU had also placed an embargo on weapons and equipment. That is all good, but it is not enough. We need to ban new investment in and business relationships with military-owned companies and members of the military and their families. We need to reinstate the annual General Assembly resolution on human rights in Myanmar. The international community, including the European Union, has failed the Rohingya, and hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, have paid the price. To do nothing is unacceptable. To speak without taking action is unacceptable. It is time to have courage to do the right thing. The Rohingya are counting on us because we are all they have got.

Violence in Rakhine State

Paul Scully Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

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

We must acknowledge the wrongdoings of the minority armed group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, but the disproportionate response has escalated violence and enflamed a long-running human rights problem. It has also left other states such as Bangladesh, as we have heard, to carry a significant burden. Does the Minister agree that we should recognise the pivotal role that Aung San Suu Kyi plays in bringing democracy to what remains a fragile country, but if we are ever to get back to talking about democratic structures, trade, healthcare and education in that country we need a long-standing solution that will work to bring the human rights crisis to an end, so that the Rohingya Muslims can live peacefully? Will the Minister outline what we are doing, so that we can cope without UK aid for the increasing numbers of people who are fleeing to Bangladesh?

[Mark Field]

I thank my hon. Friend for all the work that he does, both as an officer of the all-party group on Burma and for Bangladesh. He will be aware that the 2008 constitution in Burma grants the military 25% of seats in Parliament as well as control of defence, border affairs and home affairs Ministries. That situation has entrenched the role of the security forces since the coup in 1962 and makes it difficult for life to have any normality as we understand it. In that context, we have to recognise the amazingly courageous behaviour of leader Aung San Suu Kyi. I can understand the disappointment of the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), but we have to look at this in the context of Aung San Suu Kyi trying to play a role that has made life better for many Burmese citizens—not, I accept, for the Rohingya population down in the south-west.

Imagine the situation if there were another coup d’état and Aung San Suu Kyi was removed from the scene, and we went back to fully fledged military rule. That would be a calamitous outcome for the Burmese people. We need to do all that we can to support the moves, slow as they are, towards some sort of democracy as we would understand it in Burma. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) rightly said, the role of Aung San Suu Kyi and her international standing is critical in ensuring that some sort of normality comes to pass in the years to come.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Scully Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am sure that hon. Members who wish to travel to Israel will have absolutely no difficulties, but it remains up to the Israeli immigration authorities to decide whom they choose to admit.

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

In light of the interim report and the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State in Burma, which were published this month, will the Under-Secretary join me and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in working towards an international, independent investigation into what is happening in Rakhine state, especially against the Rohingya community?

[Alok Sharma]

Mr Speaker, I know that both you and my hon. Friend care deeply about Burma. The UK has helped to deliver a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution that sets up a fact-finding mission to investigate reports of human rights abuses, and it will be composed of independent, international experts.

Human Rights: Burma

Paul Scully Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make statement on human rights in Burma.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alok Sharma)]

Mr Speaker, I know that you care deeply about the situation in Burma and have done much to foster democratic values in that country and to promote relations between the UK and Burma. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for raising this matter. He knows Burma well and has close family connections there.

We have of course been deeply worried by the flare-up of violence in Rakhine state since an attack on police posts on 9 October by unknown assailants—presumed to be Rohingya militants. While we condemn the attack and recognise the right of security forces to carry out security operations to root out the perpetrators, we remain deeply concerned by the conduct of the army in its response. Although restrictions on media, diplomatic and humanitarian access make the facts difficult to ascertain, we have been worried by numerous reports alleging widespread human rights violations in the security response.

British Ministers have directly lobbied Burmese Ministers in response to the escalating violence. The Commonwealth Affairs Minister, my noble Friend Baroness Anelay of St Johns, raised the issue with the Burmese Defence Minister when she visited Burma in November last year. Specifically, she called for the full and immediate resumption of aid and for an investigation into allegations of human rights abuses. I repeated those calls to the Construction Minister when he visited the UK, also in November. The Burmese Government have now committed to investigating the 9 October attacks, restoring human rights access and investigating allegations of human rights abuses. In practice, however, much aid is still blocked by local authorities reporting to the military, particularly in the areas where security operations are ongoing. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.

We are also worried by the recent escalation of conflict in Kachin and Shan states, which has also led to allegations of civilian casualties, the widespread displacement of civilians and human rights abuses. We have raised our concerns about the violence in north-east Burma directly with Burmese Ministers. As I said, we continue to monitor the situation closely. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will visit Burma soon and will reiterate our concerns about such issues.

[Paul Scully]

I thank the Minister for that response. The first question I asked in this House was about the situation faced by the Rohingya community in Rakhine state. It is incredibly frustrating to return to the subject nearly two years later, following several worrying reports from Rakhine, northern Shan and Kachin, the last two of which have reportedly involved airstrikes and heavy artillery.

Since that first question, Aung San Suu Kyi has won a remarkable election victory. Although she has a difficult task in keeping the Government together while the military still has such a huge influence, does the Minister agree that friends such as the UK should continue to raise humanitarian issues while so many suffer due to their faith?

Tomorrow, Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, an inter-governmental body of 58 member states, will meet in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the situation of the Rohingya in Rakhine state. Will the Minister join me and more than 40 Myanmar-based civil society organisations in calling today for a truly independent international investigation into that situation, whereby state-sponsored attacks on Rohingya Muslim civilians have escalated in recent months? It is difficult to get accurate information about what is really happening in Rakhine, so in order to get to the truth and beyond the false reports, will the Minister call for full access for independent observers and journalists to villages and displacement camps in Rakhine state?

I have also been informed that Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, who has been on a 12-day monitoring mission to the country, has been denied access by the Government to conflict-affected areas of Shan state. Does the Minister agree that Ms Lee should be allowed to do her job and bring such issues into the open? Finally, when the Foreign Secretary visits Burma this weekend, will he raise the situation in Rakhine, Kachin and northern Shan, and will he also raise the matter with Burmese MPs and the Speaker of the House of Representatives when the Burmese delegation visits the UK next week? Will he also raise the matter with the Government of Bangladesh to see what more can be done on a humanitarian level for displaced Rohingyas on the border between Burma and Bangladesh?

[Alok Sharma]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and of course, we are deeply concerned about what is happening in Rakhine state. Yes, it is difficult to get access to verify the facts but, like him, we are extremely concerned about the human rights violations that have been reported and, of course, about the security response.

My hon. Friend raised a number of questions. He asked about UK support for an international commission —I assume a UN-type commission. A UN-led commission of inquiry can be established in one of three ways: by the Secretary-General, by the Security Council or by the Human Rights Council. Establishing an inquiry in that way would require broad international support, which we assess does not exist in the current international environment.

My hon. Friend also asked about the visit of Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur, which I very much welcome. I am aware that she is currently in Burma, and for many years we have supported the annual resolution of the Human Rights Council that mandates her role. We hope that the authorities in Burma will give her full and unimpeded access so that she can conduct a thorough assessment, including of Rakhine. Like my hon. Friend, I look forward to reading her report.

My hon. Friend talked about the overall peace process and particularly about the aid that we are providing. I can confirm that we are providing aid not just in Rakhine but to the refugees in Bangladesh. In our meetings I have urged the Bangladeshi Government not to return refugees to a situation in which they would face harm.

Finally, my hon. Friend made a plea in relation to the Foreign Secretary’s visit. I assure him that the Foreign Secretary will strongly put the case on humanitarian issues from a UK perspective. As far as I am aware, he intends to meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as the chief of the military.