The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow three very passionate speeches. People feel very strongly about this, and there are statistics that we can all quote, but the human tragedy is the most important thing. We can talk about how much money we have spent, how much other countries have spent and how many people have been displaced, but we understand more when we watch the television news. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) and others, I have not been to Bangladesh, but on last night’s television news I saw a mother who had seen her two children drown. She saw one of the bodies floating past her. There was also a son whose mother and brother had drowned, and there had been nothing he could do about it. Those are stateless people who are trying to escape persecution.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be stateless—none of us in this Chamber is stateless and none of us is likely to be—but let us try to imagine generations of people who have had no home and no country to stand up for them. That is what we are talking about. This is about hundreds of thousands of families who are stateless, and nobody cares about them. However, Bangladesh has opened its doors, taken them in and looked after them. We need to support that initiative. Bangladesh has its own problems—it has floods, as it has done before—but it has welcomed those people. It has not passed by on the other side. It is looking after them, and it is incredibly important that we should step up to the plate to support it.

We must also say that there must never again be a genocide, because that is what this is. We have said it before, about Bosnia and about Rwanda—which I have had quite a lot to do with—but we must say it again now. We must step up to the plate and actually do something to stop this crisis continuing. A lot has happened and many thousands of people have lost their lives. Many more have lost everything they have, and they have little dignity left. This Government must please continue to work with every other country that can help to stop this happening, and they must do it now.