It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) on securing this important debate.
We are debating the human rights crisis in Burma, where ordinary citizens are being denied the most basic freedoms and rights, and the international community is not doing anywhere near enough to change the situation. It has been two years since the Burmese military launched its coup and seized control of the country from a democratically elected Government. Despite heroic resistance and international condemnation, the miliary has instituted a regime of repression and violence on a massive scale.
I want to extend my solidarity to the international non-governmental organisations that have done a great deal to protect people inside Myanmar and support internally displaced people, particularly in Rakhine state, but also in other states across the country, and in Bangladesh where there are now 1 million Rohingya refugees who have had to seek refuge over the years, particularly after the attacks in 2017.
Burma Campaign UK, which I thank for its tireless work, estimates that more than 2 million people have fled their homes and become internally displaced in Myanmar. I want to declare an interest: Burma Campaign UK provides secretariat support to the all-party parliamentary group on democracy in Burma, which I chair.
There are 40 political parties that have been banned, including the National League for Democracy, which was declared the winner in the last democratic elections. More than 21,000 people have been arrested and 17,000 remain in detention. More than 60,000 civilian homes and properties have been destroyed. The Burmese military have used almost daily airstrikes to target medical centres, schools, religious buildings and camps for people displaced from their homes. As has been mentioned, as recently as 12 April the world’s media reported helicopter attacks on a village ceremony including women and children in the Sagaing region. The death toll is likely to have reached 100, including many children—one of the worst atrocities since the military coup. Thousands of resistance fighters and civilians have lost their lives.
Despite the unprecedented level of repression and danger, the people of Burma have resisted their oppressors. The people have boycotted military-owned companies and risked their lives to protest peacefully, and young people have taken up arms to form the People’s Defence Force to fight the military. In the months since the military coup on 1 February, the military has stepped up attacks in ethnic areas, including Chin, Karenni and Karen state, that have involved torching villages, murdering children and burning people alive.
Of course, we must never forget the plight of the Rohingya people. In August 2022, we marked the fifth anniversary of the Burmese military’s genocide against
the Rohingya people. For the Rohingya, it has been more than five years of pain, trauma, grief and displacement—five years in camps far from home, robbed of their livelihood, their education, their peace of mind and their future. For the perpetrators, the Myanmar military—the soldiers, auxiliaries and men who issued the orders—it has been five years of evading justice for their crimes, which the UN fact-finding mission described as genocide.
I saw the suffering at first hand during my two visits to Rakhine state, before the military coup, in the camps for internally displaced Rohingya people, and during multiple visits to the camps in Cox’s Bazar, which is now home to 1 million refugees—the largest such camp in the world. The pandemic ravaged the camps and put ever more strain on stretched resources. As has been said, the military coup has made it even more unlikely that the Rohingya will return to their rightful homes in Myanmar. Half of the people in the camps are children—denied a normal childhood and a normal education.
There have been some advances in holding the Burmese military to account, but not enough. The Burmese military has lost control internally in large areas of the country, and we are told that morale among the armed forces is low. As well as the documented restrictions that people face, the people are facing a huge economic crisis and need international support. Many international investors have pulled out, understandably and correctly, but that has a knock-on effect on people’s lives and leads to further poverty. The answer has to be action to remove the military dictatorship and ensure that the democratic Government are restored.
I welcome the UK Government’s support for the International Court of Justice case, and I am grateful to the Minister for the support that he extended in that campaign when he was on the Back Benches. I hope that, now he is back in power, he will do everything that he can to secure justice for those who face genocide at the hands of the Myanmar military. As well as supporting the International Court of Justice case against Myanmar led by The Gambia, the Government have committed in principle to supporting a case at the International Criminal Court. I welcome that, but a former Foreign Office Minister, the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), stated in response to my written parliamentary question that
“there is insufficient support amongst Security Council members”.
We recognise the challenge, which has been mentioned, of certain countries, such as China and Russia, vetoing action to seek justice in the International Criminal Court against the Myanmar military for committing genocide, but our Government, as the penholder in the UN Security Council, have a unique responsibility to ensure that the military is held to account and to show leadership. Otherwise, we will never see justice served for the Rohingya people, who have faced genocide.
As I have said, it is deeply distressing that the British Government have drastically reduced our aid to the Rohingya refugees over the past few years. For the 2021-22 financial year, British aid to the camps was reduced to 45% of the level of the previous financial year—a reduction of 67% compared with the financial year before that. The need in the camps has not reduced; it has grown.
After years of campaigning with parliamentarians, I welcome some of the steps that our Government have taken, but the fact remains that sanctions against the
Burmese military’s sources of incomes are too slow to be implemented. Even after two years, there are organisations and individuals who remain untouched by sanctions, including those working in major revenue generators such as gas, banking and mining. The military finds its way round sanctions, and continues to buy arms and equipment to oppress people. I ask the Minister to address the slow implementation of sanctions and whether he thinks that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has an adequate number of officials working to deliver the policy.
I believe that the UK Government should be doing far more to co-ordinate international efforts to speed things up, and they must go further with sanctions. They should sanction the military cash cow, Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise; ban UK companies from engagement with Burma’s gas industry, which earns $2 billion a year; sanction the mining companies and the Myanma Foreign Trade Bank; speed up the implementation of sanctions; and close the loopholes until sanctions bite hard. We have seen what Governments’ co-ordinated action on sanctions can do in relation to the Ukraine crisis, so where there is political will, we see action in the face of resistance from some players in the international community. I want to see that kind of leadership by our Government, and I am hopeful that the Minister, who was a great advocate of this agenda and worked with Back-Bench parliamentarians when he was a Back Bencher, is best placed to take this issue forward. I hope he will not disappoint me and other colleagues. More than 100 parliamentarians, over many years, have campaigned on this issue with him.
As I have said, there is more action that our Government need to take, including banning British firms from supplying aviation fuel to Burma, sanctioning the Russian, Chinese, Pakistani and Indian companies supplying Burma with arms, and encouraging other countries to uphold the ban on supplying arms. I want to point out that there are three particular UK companies that have insured vessels delivering aviation fuel: NorthStandard, formerly known as North P&I; UK P&I Club; and Britannia P&I. I hope the Minister will look at how the insurance regulators and others in our country can take steps to ensure that our insurance system is not inadvertently, or even consciously, providing fuel for air strikes and supporting a genocidal dictatorship. Can the Minister outline what conversations he has had with his counterparts in other Governments to encourage a ban on arms sales?
The sanctions must hit the supply of aviation fuel to the military. To save lives, we need to ground the jets and helicopters by cutting their fuel lines. British companies supplying fuel, or providing insurance or other logistics, must be dissuaded by the threat of sanctions. The diplomatic pressure must be stepped up, as well as the economic pressure. Why is the Burmese military attaché still free to wander the streets of Wimbledon and live in a mansion? It is an absolute disgrace, and I know the Minister will agree that it needs to stop. The military attaché should be expelled immediately. Can the Minister tell us why that has not happened?
In conclusion, what we have seen is years of persecution. What we have seen is one of the most ruthless military dictatorships in the world, which has jailed the former democratically elected leader. What we have seen is a military who have committed genocide and continue to act with impunity, and what we have seen is a lack of
co-ordinated action and limited leadership by our Government. Given the relatively new Minister’s track record, I very much hope that he will do what is needed to hold the Burmese military to account for the atrocities that they have committed in the past and continue to commit today.
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