The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government
Tracy Brabin Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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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—
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.
Israel and Palestinian Talks
Tracy Brabin Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)
I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and of the Minister, who said at the beginning of the debate that this House has knocked around these issues for over 30 years. Today’s debate is welcome but, sadly, feels slightly like the film “Groundhog Day”. We debate and discuss, emotions and injustices are raised, we demand peace for the region, yet nothing changes and we do it all again six months later: a carousel of misery, false hope and inaction.
Israeli people continue to live in fear of violence, bombs fall on Gaza—as they did again this week—Palestinians are still living in fear of their homes and communities being occupied with no notice, and thousands of Palestinians are still being held in Israeli prisons, many without charge. We can only thank those people on the ground working day and night to maintain peace that we are not in the middle of a similar increase in violence to that we witnessed in recent years. But it is not all negative. There have been numerous times when it feels as though progress has been made. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) said, in October 2014 this House voted by 274 votes to 12 in favour of a motion to recognise Palestine as a state alongside Israel. That was a brave and welcome decision. As the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) said at the time:
“Recognition of statehood is not a reward for anything; it is a right.”—[Official Report, 13 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 72.]
Recognising Palestine as a state gives moral and political support to moderate Palestinian voices pushing back against violent extremists, and I would encourage the House to decide on a timeframe for that to happen.
Only last year, the United Nations passed a resolution condemning the occupations. Settlements are illegal under international law. They breach the fourth Geneva convention, which prohibits the transfer of the occupier’s
“own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.
But the UN resolution was passed only because of President Obama’s support, and now, with a new and very different President in place, we need clarification on what conversations the Government have had with him. Will they clarify whether he is of the same opinion as the rest of the international community?
Generations on both sides simply cannot continue to be brought up witnessing the brutality of war, fearing for their lives, and stressed and anxious about the future. The middle east and the entire international community need peace. More than anything, children should have the right to a childhood, to be a child, to play, to learn and to be happy. I would like to draw the House’s attention to the serious and ongoing situation of Palestinian child detainees. At the moment, 182 children are being held in Israeli military detention, most on stone-throwing charges, and 46% of them are being held in violation of the fourth Geneva convention and the Rome statute. The inquiry of 2012 chaired by the former Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, stated:
“Military law and public administration should deal with Palestinian children on an equal footing with Israeli children.”
That is clearly not happening.
It is now 50 years since the occupations began, and that is 50 years too long. Today, just about every respectable non-governmental organisation, Government and international community member stands against the occupations. How much longer can this go on? Let us ask ourselves whether we are doing all we can to bring peace to this volatile but beautiful and potentially prosperous region. We need vision, courage and leadership. Will this Government pledge to take up the baton and change the narrative by pushing even harder for peace?
Kurdistan Region in Iraq
Tracy Brabin Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)
It is truly an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I declare an interest: I have travelled to the region as the guest of the Regional Government of Kurdistan. I was invited to visit as part of a cross-party group of fact-finding parliamentarians. Aware that the conflict in the region is one of the biggest issues facing our world, I was very keen to go, and having spent a number of years volunteering in London with victims of torture—some from the region—I jumped at the chance to find out more.
On arriving in Irbil, I was shocked by the progressive and sophisticated surroundings. I was expecting a war zone, but the city could be mistaken for Dubai in its high-rise ambition and elegance. Sadly, war was not very far away. Half an hour’s ride out of the city, we were in a Syrian refugee camp near the border with the Kurdistan region.
Chatting to families, surrounded by playful children, I heard so many stories of pain and suffering: loved ones missing believed dead, people injured by mines, children made orphans by war. Most of those I spoke to had been there for more than three years, with no guarantee of when they would return home. They were weary and exhausted; all they wanted was to be reunited with their families and get back to their homes.
Kurdistan is host to not just refugees from Syria, but 1.5 million people displaced by war from other parts of Iraq. Although refugees have special status in international law and are cared for by the UN, internally displaced people are the responsibility of the host Government. Sadly, Baghdad seems to be doing little to help and leaves the task to Kurdistan, which is already suffering an economic tsunami, thanks to a dramatic fall in oil prices, the hostility of Baghdad, which has cut its budget since 2014, and Kurdistan’s own dysfunctional economy, which needs massive reform.
As the Kurds and Iraqis move to liberate Mosul from the brutality of the self-styled Islamic State, more displaced people are heading into Kurdistan—the population has expanded by a third, which is the equivalent of the population of Birmingham moving to Scotland. Understandably, there are electricity and water shortages, and schools and hospitals are overwhelmed.
Travelling to the frontline in Mosul to talk to peshmerga fighters and Iraqi special forces, we saw clearly the sacrifices made by those men and women. Over the border, in Mosul province, we visited the Christian village of Bartella, which had been seized by the Iraqis after a brief firefight. ISIS did not have time to destroy houses or set booby traps, but many houses were pockmarked by bullets, while some were entirely destroyed by airstrikes. Later, visiting a local hospital, we saw soldiers suffering life-changing injuries. I was humbled to witness a female peshmerga fighter passing away. We and the rest of the world owe them so much.
Another poignant visit was to a camp that is home to Yazidis, who practise a pre-Islamic and pre-Christian religion. Many have been murdered as apostates, sold into sexual slavery between one IS emir and another across Iraq or Syria, or killed because they were deemed too old to sell. Women survivors saw their men slaughtered before their eyes and their babies killed for fun. Of the 5,000 Yazidi women abducted as spoils of war, 2,000 have escaped, but they must still endure daily nightmares and flashbacks, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) alluded to.
At the SEED project, which operates from a schoolhouse building, assiduous professionals were working carefully to help victims overcome such traumas. A couple of therapists had studied clinical psychology at Koya University, but that is the only such course in the whole of Kurdistan: the country is in desperate need of people who understand post-traumatic stress. It must be our priority, and the Government’s, to offer that support, alongside physical reconstruction and the political reform the country so desperately needs.
Another way to heal psychological wounds can be through culture, which can be a force for rebellion and resistance, as well as for rebuilding empathy and tolerance in communities. The Kurds’ love of poetry and music attest to that. The legendary Iranian-Kurdish folk singer Mazhar Khaleghi, who now runs the Kurdish Heritage Institute in Sulaymaniyah, says:
“We have lost our lands and we’re probably never going to get them back. But we have to fight to save what is left of our culture. If we lose that, we have lost everything.”
As 150,000 peshmerga fighters push back against IS, Khaleghi’s team of a dozen ethnomusicologists, anthropologists and historians are fighting to preserve the Kurdish identity.
Kurdistan is an exceptionally beautiful country and I was privileged to meet a number of film makers and producers, who were anxious to use the beautiful location to create greater creative links with the rest of the world. I was shown around a disused cigarette factory by a local producer who had some of the finance in place to create a film studio to rival Shepperton or Pinewood. Nearby Turkey has a vibrant film industry and I am sure the same could be true of Kurdistan. It is younger film makers such as Syrian-Kurdish director Lauand Omar, making films such as “Curse Of Mesopotamia”—a low budget horror that can be screened anywhere in the world—who are leading the way.
We can help by supporting Kurdistan’s ambition for inward investment, domestic production and private-sector employment within the Kurdistan region and working with the UK film industry to secure an efficient unified film industry organisation, merging the cinema directorates within the KRG. Kurdistan has huge potential to be a film-making centre in the middle east, bringing economic, social and cultural benefits to the region and its people. I hope there are people listening to this debate who could make that happen.
To visit Iraqi-Kurdistan was an absolutely fascinating opportunity. Yes, there are grave challenges in that part of the world—but where terror has done untold damage, a rose is growing through the cracks in the cement. Beauty and creativity is growing. I think we can all agree that that is testament to the Kurdish people. Over the coming years, they will look to us for support, and sometimes guidance. I hope that, in years to come, such support will be more forthcoming from our Government.
Changes in US Immigration Policy
Tracy Brabin Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Edward Miliband
Well, there is a huge difference. President Trump’s order is a blanket ban on people from seven different countries. President Obama’s proposal —if I am allowed to say so, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon has had personal experience of this—was a specific issue about the visa waiver scheme. It was not about saying that there would be any kind of blanket ban on people coming into the country.
My final point on why the order is such a terrible thing for President Trump to have done is one that other hon. Members will want to talk about: the ban on all refugees from Syria. I recommend a piece that my brother wrote on the matter in The New York Times. Refugees are the most thoroughly vetted people in the world, with up to 36 months of vetting and screening by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Defence and others. There has been summary detention of the innocent, clear discrimination on the basis of faith, and a decision to depart from the UN convention relating to the status of refugees. This ban is neither rational nor fair, and it will not make the country or the world safer; indeed, quite the opposite. I can do no better than to quote Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who yesterday said
“we fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism…This executive order sends a signal, intended or not, that America does not want Muslims coming into our country. That is why we fear this executive order may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.”
I believe they are right.
Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
I am sure that I am not alone in saying that my office has today been besieged by phone calls from tearful, upset constituents asking, “Why has the world abandoned us when someone is basically saying that we are all terrorists?”
Edward Miliband
My hon. Friend puts it incredibly well. In fact, I was about to come to that point. We already see the implications of the order playing out. We are in partnership with the Iraqi Government against ISIL, and today we have seen their response to the Trump ban, as the Iraqi Parliament has asked its Government to retaliate against the measures of the US Administration. As my hon. Friend said, we should think about what this order signals to 1.6 billion Muslims all around the world. It sends the message that they are not welcome. Indeed, it precisely buys into the clash of civilisations narrative that politicians from across the political spectrum have tried to avoid ever since 9/11.
Regarding our responsibilities, the United States has always been our oldest and closest ally, and some will say that this is not a matter for us as long as our citizens are protected. I profoundly disagree. It is absolutely a matter for us because the fundamental and dangerous betrayal of values that this measure represents is an affront to us all—the Muslims living here and every other citizen of this country—and it will make the world a more dangerous place. Allowing the measure to stand and shrugging our shoulders will amount to complicity with President Trump. These actions are not normal, rational or sensible. President Trump is a bully, and the only course of action open to us in relation to his bullying is to stand up and be counted.
Kashmir
Tracy Brabin Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) for bringing the debate to the House today. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) on her detailed and passionate speech and my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) on the determination and clarity in her speech.
Like many other hon. Members, I have been horrified at the ongoing violence in Kashmir and I know that trying to get peace for the region is enormously important to a great number of my constituents. A couple of months ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) came to Batley and Spen in her role as shadow Foreign Secretary. Speaking to a packed hall in our Pakistani Kashmiri Welfare Association centre, we heard heart-breaking stories from my constituents, who were stressed and anxious about friends and loved ones in the region. Their anxiety was intensified by frustration at the seeming lack of political will to resolve the crisis. If the Minister had been in the hall that afternoon, he would have been left in no doubt of the urgency of the situation. A number of constituents have also contacted me in the lead-up to this debate, all stressing their desire that peace be agreed in the short-term and that self-determination for the people of Kashmir be negotiated in the long-term.
As we know, the UK’s long-standing position on Kashmir is that it is for India and Pakistan to find a genuine political solution, while respecting the wishes of the Kashmiri people. The Prime Minister has previously stated that it is not for the UK to prescribe a solution, or act as a mediator. That said, we cannot ignore the urgency of the situation. We are considering two nuclear powers with a volatile history of mistrust, violence and brinkmanship.
As the Minister will know, under the partition plan of the Indian Independence Act 1947, Kashmir was free to accede to either India or Pakistan. Time does not permit me to give a full history of the Kashmiri conflict, but we cannot avoid the fact that there is a very clear link back to the conflicts there and the decisions made here. We have a moral duty to encourage Pakistan and India to commence peace negotiations to establish a long-term solution on the future governance of Kashmir, based on the rights of the Kashmiri people to determine their own future in accordance with the provisions of the UN Security Council resolutions. So far, we have not done enough.
For example, the Prime Minister had a unique opportunity to raise human rights abuses in Kashmir when she met Prime Minister Modi in November. We have heard in a reply to a parliamentary question that the Prime Minister discussed Kashmir with the Indian Prime Minister, but sadly we have no information about what was said or agreed.
However, we know that the Prime Minister engaged in a charm offensive to secure a lucrative trade deal with India. My concern is that the Prime Minister’s anxiety to secure a trade deal may have diluted her comments on Kashmir. With that in mind, I would be grateful if the Minister expanded on what the Prime Minister raised with her counterpart and the responses she received.
Did the Prime Minister raise the arbitrary and excessive force carried out by the Indian security forces? Can the British Kashmiri people be assured that their Prime Minister took meaningful steps to leave Modi in no doubt that the recent conflict is completely unacceptable? Amnesty International has stated that the excessive use of violence violated international standards and worsened the existing human rights crisis in the region.
The flare-up of violence that the world has witnessed since July 2016 has shocked us all: a devastating loss of civilian life and injuries counted in their thousands; closure of universities and schools; general strikes; curfews and the closure of media outlets and mobile phone services. As we have discussed, the authorities’ use of pellet guns has left people blind and with other severe injuries. Lives have also been lost. I wholeheartedly support Amnesty International’s call for a ban on the use of pellet guns against stone-throwing protesters.
The injuries that pellet guns leave are devastating. Insha Mushtaq who, at just 14 had dreams of being a doctor, is now blind, possibly for the rest of her life. When hit by the bullet, Insha was sitting by a window. She wants to know what she did wrong. My constituent, Amjed, told me of the state of anxiety his family live in every single day. Some are lucky enough to have made it out of Kashmir to Pakistan, others are left living in fear. The women and girls in his family do not leave the house for fear of being raped or attacked. The menfolk have to tell family members precisely where they are going in case they never return.
It is no wonder that women and girls do not leave the house. According to Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, rape by Indian police and the armed militia is commonplace throughout Kashmir. The victims are generally poor women and those who are vulnerable and low caste, and tribal minority groups. Vicious acts routinely go unpunished.
The British Kashmiri community in my constituency has been at pains to stress that they want a peaceful solution. The lives of their friends and families in the region rely on it. We must continue to call on all parties to engage in meaningful dialogue to break the cycle of violence and breaches of international human rights on the Indian side of the line of control in Kashmir, and seek a lasting bilateral resolution. The wishes of the Kashmiri people must be at the forefront of those negotiations, because the world is watching.
Human Rights: Burma
Tracy Brabin Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
My hon. Friend is a great champion of human rights, particularly those of minorities around the world. He puts his point about the pastors eloquently, and we will continue to make representations. On specific aid, I mentioned that the UK has provided £18 million in essential humanitarian and healthcare assistance, which of course has been in Kachin and the north Shan state, over the past four years.
Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm what discussions he and his Department have had with other Governments about getting medical assistance into the area? Will he update us on that?