Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the nature of the violence perpetrated by the government of Burma against the Rohingya Muslims, Christian minorities and other minority groups.

The Foreign Secretary has made clear that the military operations conducted in Rakhine in August and September 2017 constitute ethnic cleansing, and may even be genocide, though that should be a determination for an international court to make.

The Foreign Secretary expressed his deep concern about the intensifying conflict in Kachin on 5 June, and called for Burma's military to exercise restraint and allow humanitarian access when he spoke to Burma's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi on 11 June. Officials from the British Embassy have visited Kachin in May and in June, but as I told the House of Lords on 12 June, the Government is unable to make a full assessment of the situation in Kachin State due to access restrictions.