The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

John Bercow Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) on organising and leading such an important debate.

More than half a million people—mostly Rohingya women and children—have fled violence in Rakhine state, seeking refuge in Bangladesh. The latest reports from Amnesty International speak of massacre, murder and brutality on a huge scale, with women raped and tortured, and children shot in the back by the Myanmar military as they flee. The latest arrivals in Bangladesh have said they were driven out by hunger because food markets in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state had been shut down and aid deliveries restricted by the Burmese authorities.

The Government have donated £30 million in aid and pledged to match £5 million in donations to the DEC appeal for people fleeing Burma. The public response to this humanitarian crisis is profound. I pay tribute to all the fundraising efforts in my constituency of Bedford and Kempston—from the efforts of faith groups, mosque leaders, schools and charities to individual giving. That fundraising shows human nature at its best, and I am sure it will make the difference between life and death to those who are suffering terribly.

Families in Bangladesh are living huddled beneath sheets of plastic, with no access to clean water or toilet facilities. Let us not forget that that is the fate of the survivors. It is difficult to know exactly how many people have been executed, burned alive, raped or slain in their homes and villages, but it is in the thousands. Those responsible must be held to account. Myanmar’s military cannot simply sweep serious violations under the carpet by announcing another sham internal investigation.

While aid is vital, we know that money can only do so much. We must find a political solution to end this barbaric persecution so that the Rohingya can return home in a dignified way to rebuild what is left of their devastated communities. The international community must help to ensure that no Rohingya refugees are forced back to Burma if they remain at risk of serious human rights violations.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been rightly condemned for her refusal to intervene in support of the Rohingya, but she has since pledged accountability—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am immensely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but his contribution is at an end. I did not mean that unkindly—he has done very well—but his time is up.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Much has been said about the situation, and I will say nothing more about it. I merely want to add my voice to the concern expressed at the reaction of the British Government and the international community as whole.

On issues of human rights in recent times, the global north has been very long on rhetoric and very short on action. We have seen the atrocities in Darfur; we have seen the great city of Aleppo turned to rubble; and now we have this situation in Myanmar and the terrible plight of the Rohingya people.

There is something that connects so much of this. Is there a crisis in the UN itself when China and Russia refuse to accept a resolution that would condemn what we are seeing and that would see action? Is there a crisis in some countries including our own, because as we turn inwards, with huge concern about immigration, we turn away from the refugees fleeing atrocities across the world and we have so little to say?

This country was at the centre of the UN declaration of human rights in the first place. That came out of the huge atrocities committed by Hitler and out of the holocaust. That was a time when we learned that the plight of refugees is something we must face directly. It was also a time when we learned that ethnic cleansing and genocide should be condemned robustly and bravely.

Because of Britain’s historical relationship with Bangladesh and Burma, there is a moral responsibility in this House and on this Government to lead the charge across the world as we see human rights in crisis. These people are among the very poorest. Just as we have seen, on the continent of Europe, Greece, one of the poorest countries, picking up the burden of refugees from Syria and north Africa as most of Europe looks in the other direction, we now expect Bangladesh, in Asia, to do the same. This needs strong condemnation and a country aware of its own history and global history. This is a moment to stand up bravely for human rights.

[Mr Speaker]

I ask the representative of the Scottish National party not to exceed seven minutes because—I emphasise this to the House—a lot of people have put questions and I think it is important that the Minister has a proper opportunity to respond. I also want the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) to have a minute or two to respond at the end, in conformity with the usual practice on these occasions. The hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) is an obliging fellow, and I am sure he will oblige us.

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will try to reduce my speech significantly because the key points have been made, particularly on the awful atrocities that have been happening to the Rohingya people in Myanmar. We have heard horrific stories from Members around this Chamber, beginning with the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). Those atrocities include Government soldiers stabbing babies, cutting off boys’ heads, gang-raping girls, shooting 40 mm grenades into houses, burning entire families to death, and rounding up dozens of unarmed male villagers and summarily executing them. That says it all. When the UN branded the Burmese Government’s actions as “textbook ethnic cleansing”, that was being polite, to say the least.

For those who have survived to get into Bangladesh, the torture continues—not directly from the Burmese military but from malnutrition, cholera and other diseases. Save the Children has warned that over 14,000 children are already suffering acute malnutrition and over 250,000 refugees need food urgently. Sixty per cent. of all refugees going into Bangladesh are children—more than half. This is the story that should be dominating our national newspapers and on our television screens day after day, instead of the Cabinet’s squabbling, yet it goes largely ignored. We have heard about the history of this. It has been going on for decades. As Human Rights Watch has said, the Rohingya have faced

“decades of discrimination and repression under successive Burmese Governments. Effectively denied citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law, they are one of the largest stateless populations in the world.”

As we heard earlier, the International Development Committee has just begun an inquiry into the situation in Myanmar for our first report on the subject. My colleagues and I on the Committee will be going to Myanmar and Bangladesh and reporting back here as soon as we can. It is encouraging that the Department for International Development announced on Thursday that it will pledge £2 million to the crisis in addition to the £3 million it has already donated. The Scottish Government have also played a key part in pledging £120,000 to be made available for the emergency response.

I want to turn my attention to the UK Government’s decision to provide UK taxpayer-funded training to the Burmese army to the tune of £305,000 a year. The UK Government initially claimed that the training related to human rights, but were later forced to admit that only one hour in a 60-hour training course covered human rights. Considering the history of the Burmese military, the decision to train and trade with them is a spectacular failure of this Government’s foreign policy. The UK Government announced only last September that military training contracts between the British military and Myanmar would be immediately suspended, and I welcome that. However, ending the free training programme should be just one small part of a wide range of measures that put pressure on the military to end its violations of international law.

For too long the international community has tolerated the intolerable. Therefore, the UK must put strong international pressure on the Burmese civilian and military Government to stop the persecution and help negotiate a process for the protection of the remaining Rohingya in Myanmar and the return of those who have been forced to flee. There must also be a full restoration of international sanctions and a global arms embargo on Myanmar, and this needs to be imposed now. The UK Government must take the lead in building international support for this.

I was sorely disappointed when Aung San Suu Kyi refused to speak out against the violence as Myanmar’s de facto leader. In fact, her silence was so deafening that even fellow Nobel prize winners such as Desmond Tutu urged her to intervene to help with the crisis. Aung San Suu Kyi has been a hero of mine for a long time. She was imprisoned for nearly two decades after calling for democracy and human rights under the country’s oppressive military. She played a part in inspiring me to become involved in politics, as I am today. In a recent speech to Myanmar’s Parliament, she denied that there had been any “armed clashes” or “clearance operations” since 5 September this year. However, last week, in a welcome move, she announced plans to set up a civilian-led agency with foreign assistance to deliver aid and help to resettle Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state.

I appreciate that Aung San Suu Kyi may need to be careful not to inflame the situation further, as her adviser has said, and that she may have little influence over the powerful military. However, as a politically elected representative of the Government, and as someone who has championed human rights for decades, she has a moral responsibility, as well as a political one, to do right by all her people, which includes the Rohingya.

Many parts of the UK have already taken action. Glasgow City Council has written to Aung San Suu Kyi to give her one month before she loses the freedom of the city. My own city of Dundee is in the process of writing, and I have spoken out publicly. I would like to send a message to Aung San Suu Kyi today in the strongest terms. Her Government must now speak to the military, community leaders of Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists and the international community to end the cycle of persecution and violence, to prevent further loss of lives and homes, to restore law and order, to prevent violence from spreading to other parts of the country and to stamp out the online xenophobia that has been watched by the world.

I would like to end with some important words that inspired me in the past:

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Those are not my words, but the words of Aung San Suu Kyi. I therefore urge her to act fearlessly in the face of power, in the face of those who surround her and in the face of those who are committing—all of us in this Chamber can call it what it is—genocide on this earth as I speak.

[Mr Speaker]

Thank you. We can now enjoy the brilliance from Bishop Auckland for a maximum of seven minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

I thank my hon. Friends and hon. Members across the House for their moving contributions, for the unity of purpose and for their support for the motion. In particular, I thank those who spoke from direct experience of visiting camps and who spoke out about the appalling situation facing the Rohingya. Their testimonies were extremely powerful. It is vital that we continue to let the world know of the plight of the Rohingya refugees.

I also pay tribute to the British people for their support for the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal and to the people of Bangladesh for their generosity in campaigning and providing humanitarian assistance on the ground, where they now have a million refugees to host. I am grateful to the Minister for his contribution and the representations he has made on behalf of our Government, but I must emphasise the importance of the UK playing a leadership role in seeking a global arms embargo. Even if China, India and Russia oppose it, it is important that we can defend our position and that we do not regret our own lack of action or failure to put pressure on the military. It is also important that targeted sanctions against the business interests of the military be taken seriously and that the Minister provide an update on that point, which he did not address in his response.

Finally, I want to reiterate that we have been here before: in 2012, when more than 100,000 Rohingya Muslims were displaced; last year, when the military instigated this scorched-earth policy; and again in September. It is going to happen again. It is the military’s intention. Unless our Government and the international Government put pressure on the military, we will be back here again. I hope that we are not.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House agrees with the statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that the treatment of the Rohingya by the Myanmar Government amounts to a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank all colleagues who took part in today’s important debate. We come now to the Adjournment debate on the sale of puppies. Notwithstanding the excitement among colleagues, it is inexplicable that anybody should now choose to leave and not wish to hear the debate, both for the eloquence of the initial speech and with a sense of anticipation as to the Minister’s reply, but if colleagues insist on leaving, I know that they will do so quickly and quietly so that we can hear Mr Chris Evans.