Rohingya Refugee Crisis

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I congratulate colleagues from across the House who have brought this important issue to the Chamber today. I know that the number of MPs here does not reflect the importance we put on this vital issue. I have visited the Rohingya refugee camps on the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar twice in my capacity as a humanitarian doctor. In doing so, I have had the ability to see at first hand the brutality and hear the accounts of what has been undertaken in Myanmar. I have had a career spanning more than 10 years working in the field of humanitarian medicine, and never have I experienced such atrocity.

Last year, when I first met refugees crossing the border, I saw the most brutal injuries and heard devastating first-hand accounts of mothers having their babies ripped from their arms and having to make the choice of whether to go and save one baby from a burning fire or flee with the children they still had remaining, in the vain hope of saving their lives. These are mothers whose children were murdered with the same knives then used to slice off their own breasts. There are sprawling camps, housing almost 1 million Rohingya; the scale has to be seen to be believed, and I know that many in the House today have seen that for themselves. There is a generation of children born out of rape, women who have been brutally violated and men who have had to carry their pregnant wife for 15 days, without food, often needing to drag them just to get over the border to safety. Meanwhile, the world has watched; meanwhile, we have watched.

In October, I returned to the camps and heard how, despite the uncertainty surrounding their futures, people felt relief at finally being able to sleep at night. It was so much easier for people to live in a camp, knee-deep in mud, with a family of eight sharing one little shack, but without the fear of imminently having their child snatched away and murdered. I spoke with Humaira, whose young son was murdered when the army stormed her village. She told me how she wanted to kill herself but was kept alive by the thought of trying to find his body to at least give him a burial. After two days of searching in vain, she had to decide between staying and losing her own life, or fleeing across the border, knowing that she was leaving her son’s body somewhere to rot. She still lives with the pain of not being able to bury her son.

I then met Subara, a 24-year-old mother, who spoke of how the military snatched from her arms her one-year-old child and hacked him to death right in front of her eyes. I know this does not make for easy listening, but these are the facts. We have seen this and heard this; this has been happening on our watch. I was in a room full of 30 women each of whom had a similar woeful, devastating story to tell. The guilt of coming home to my own three-year-old and five-year-old daughters left me unable to sleep at night, as I pondered what it must feel like to have to choose between your two children and for a moment accept that choice. No parent, wherever they are in the world, should ever have to make that choice, but that has been happening as the world has watched and as we have watched. Why should our children’s lives be of more value than those of the Rohingya children, so brutally left for dead and slaughtered, without even a proper burial?

There are now plans to forcibly repatriate thousands of refugees, despite condemnation by the UN and despite their having escaped incomprehensible brutality. These refugees have already lived through the most intolerable cruelty. Just last month, refugees were fleeing camps in fear and others attempted suicide having been named on the list of 4,355 Rohingya refugees for imminent return, without their consent. Those repatriations have been halted for the time being, but they are due to start again in the new year. With the clock ticking, will the Minister confirm to the House that he will speak to the UN to place international pressure on Myanmar and Bangladesh to stop this forced repatriation? The UK Government, as the penholder for Myanmar on the UN Security Council, have a real leadership opportunity, which we have to take.

One year ago, Rohingya refugees were still fleeing over the Myanmar border into Bangladesh. One year ago, Members in this House were debating the horrors faced by the Rohingya in northern Rakhine. One year ago, the Minister stated in this House that if the UN found evidence of genocide, he would support a referral to the ICC. However, just last month, he stated, in writing, that there is insufficient support among Security Council members for an ICC referral at this time. Just how much more suffering do the Rohingya people have to go through before the UK Government are forced to act? The debate is not concluded, yet we have already heard so many first-hand accounts, and I have witnessed these things myself. What more needs to happen? How is it possible that we are still witnessing the Rohingya face unimaginable horrors on a daily basis and uncertainty, yet the UK Government have not publicly spoken out against the forced repatriation of the Rohingya to Myanmar? Should the Rohingya not return to Myanmar, it is looking ever more likely that they face an uncertain future, with the possibility of relocation to Bhasan Char, a desolate island in the bay of Bengal, where communication with the mainland would be entirely cut off during monsoon season.

Many people would do anything to have our job, sitting in this place and making decisions that affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. We need to be able to look ourselves in the mirror in the twilight of our years and know that we did something with our position in this House. Sometimes that will call for bravery, sometimes it will call on us to take a chance and speak out for all that is right and good. We sit here today on the verge of Christmas and new year. I will be cuddling my children in the new year, but there are hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees for whom their children are but a memory. How can life have such different value depending on where a person was born? The Rohingya are crying out for justice. Humanity must have no borders. Will the Minister today please replace platitudes with promises of action?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who has been to the camps on several occasions and has probably seen the degradation of process in that regard. I say again that, for the reasons set out by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), we absolutely oppose plans for moving any Rohingya to Bhasan Char, the island in the bay of Bengal. We do not feel that that would be a safe or feasible place, for the reasons that she set out. Any location or relocation of refugees has to be safe, dignified and in accordance with international humanitarian principles, standards and laws.

As colleagues will know, the Governments of Bangladesh and Burma were preparing to start a refugee repatriation on 15 November. I spoke as a matter of urgency by telephone with Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister and I spoke with both the Bangladeshi State Minister of Foreign Affairs and Burma’s Minister for International Co-operation in advance of that day. I was absolutely clear with each of them that the UK Government shared the assessment of the UN Refugee Agency: that insufficient progress had been made to enable safe returns to northern Rakhine.

Our concerns were also borne out by the fact, brought up by many hon. Members today, that no Rohingya refugees volunteered to return. I believe that international pressure at that point was a key factor in halting any involuntary repatriations. I welcome the Bangladeshi Government’s subsequent reaffirmation of their commitment to exclusively voluntary returns, but we all know in the international community that we will have to remain vigilant about that point.

I can reassure Members that the UK will continue to play a full part in supporting Rohingya refugees as a leading donor to the international humanitarian response, to which we have so far donated £129 million.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

It is great to hear the Minister affirming that we do not want any forced repatriations and acknowledging that Rohingya refugees want to return only if that is safe. On my most recent visit just two months ago, the word coming out from the refugees was that they wanted justice. Does the Minister agree that the issue is about not just safe repatriation but bringing about justice for all the atrocities that those people have had to live through?

[Mark Field]

I do understand that. What justice amounts to is obviously something that will develop in time, as and when, one hopes, people are able to return to traditional homelands. That is something I am sure we will discuss.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

I am taking rather longer than I intended, but this is an important debate and I wanted to take some interventions. However, I want now to come back to my speech.

Let me also say this very specifically about China’s actions at the moment: China’s forcing of a procedural vote as recently as October to try to prevent the fact-finding mission from even briefing the UN Security Council highlights, I fear, the level of opposition we are currently up against. But we shall continue to try to engage China on the need for accountability for this horrendous set of crimes, and our strategy of course is not constrained to the UN Security Council; we secured agreement as recently as 10 December at the Foreign Affairs Council to expand the EU’s Burma sanctions listing. Seven senior military and border guard police officers were sanctioned by the EU in June for their roles in human rights violations in Rakhine in August and September 2017. We shall be adding more names to that list and expect to announce details early in the new year. These measures and their signal that the international community will take further steps to increase the pressure are noticed and are not welcomed by the Burmese military or indeed the State Counsellor.

Of course human rights violations continue to occur elsewhere in Burma, as has been mentioned by a number of Members. In the last few weeks three Kachin activists were convicted of defamation and sentenced to six months in prison for organising protests in which they were alleged to have criticised the Burmese military. Our ambassador had met them only a few days earlier, and both he and I have publicly protested at that sentencing.

The fact-finding mission report also highlighted that atrocities had been committed against both Kachin and Shan state minorities, and I heard some of the horrifying evidence for myself.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I am sorry for intervening as I appreciate that the Minister has a limited amount of time in which to speak. However, I feel that I cannot sit here in silence while listening to the continuation of the debate without saying that the Minister has so eloquently spoken of the atrocities against a number of other minority groups unfolding as we sit here ready to go on our Christmas recess. I am proud to be British and proud to be in this Parliament, and we have a duty to call out all that is wrong globally. We sit here talking about this knowing full well that atrocities are continuing. When are we going to stand up, be counted and not be fearful of what the countries around Burma are going to be saying to us?

[Mark Field]

We are standing up in New York and in Geneva on a daily basis and being counted on this very issue—trying to take a lead. The Kachin and Shan issue is not an isolated example. This goes back to the issue of our being penholders, and one can look back through history to 1824 or 1945, but one of the desperate things is that those minorities fought on our side during the war while the Burmese Buddhist majority sided with the Japanese, and that is one of the reasons why we have an historical moral and ethical imperative. A number of those minorities have been considered as beyond the pale and not as citizens partly as a result of that episode; essentially that was seen as somehow being against the moves for Burma to have independence from the United Kingdom.

With the House’s indulgence, I will touch on two more points. I will write to Members on some of the specifics, because I would rather not say anything inaccurate. With regard to family reunion for refugees, I believe that the Home Office has written to the hon. Member for Bradford East, stating that the UK Government strongly support family unity, and that the Home Office has a comprehensive framework in place for refugees and their families. He made a good point that the refugees in Cox’s Bazar clearly cannot go to Dhaka anytime soon to exercise those rights. He made the point on the Floor of the House, and I will do my best and will write to the Home Office to make clear his concerns.