Rohingya crisis appears to be ethnic cleansing, Foreign Office minister says
During a Commons debate, MPs hear reports of murder, rape and torture "designed to remove the Rohingya people from their homes".
Tuesday 17 October 2017 22:21, UK
Gruesome stories of genocide by Myanmar troops - including the murder of babies - have been told by MPs in a Commons debate on the plight of Rohingya refugees.
Responding to a catalogue of horrific accounts, Foreign Office minister Mark Field said it was increasingly accurate to describe the actions of Myanmar's government as ethnic cleansing.
The shocking reports from MPs came during a debate on the persecution of the Rohingya, including the rape of young children.
The most harrowing account came from Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, who said her mother - Bangladeshi politician Sheikh Rehana - had visited a camp where 500,000 refugees from Myanmar are living.
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"She spoke about a woman whose baby was ripped from her bosom and thrown in fire by military personnel," the MP, whose aunt is the Bangladeshi prime minister, told MPs.
"Another woman told a story of how a toddler was snatched away from its parents, put on the ground and the military stamped on the toddler, killing the toddler.
"There were young children who were raped in front of their elderly grandparents. It's systematic abuse and gender-based violence against Rohingyas."
Ms Siddiq said her mother was "not a stranger to suffering" and had fought in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, which cost the lives of three million people.
She added: "My mother said what she saw in the refugee camps has all the hallmarks of a genocide."
Ms Siddiq called on the Government to help Bangladesh to "make sure that we stop this ethnic cleansing, that we stop this genocide, and that people point to my country … and say they are the people who helped to stop this crisis".
Opening the debate, Labour MP Rushanara Ali called for a global arms embargo on Myanmar and a ramping up of pressure on other countries to end the violence, following recent clashes between insurgents and security forces.
She told MPs how five-year-old girls had been raped in front of their relatives - sometimes by several men wearing army uniforms, taking turns.
"We are witnessing a deliberate state-sponsored policy of terror, murder, arson, rape and torture designed to remove the Rohingya people from their homes," Ms Ali said.
"There is now such an overwhelming weight of evidence of ethnic cleansing that members of this House cannot fail to agree, nor can the Government."
Concluding the debate, Mr Field said he understood the criticism and disappointment many MPs feel in Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de-facto leader.
"I don't think it helps us to move towards solutions if we fail to acknowledge - in part at least - the pressures she is facing," he told MPs.
"She is walking a very fine line between international condemnation and Burmese public opinion, which I fear ... is overwhelmingly supportive of what the security forces are doing - terrible as that might sound.
"Weakening her strengthens the military's hand."
Mr Field told MPs: "The broader reason is we're trying diplomatically as far as possible to see movement from the Burmese government and in fact there has been some, quite significantly, from Aung San Suu Kyi."
On allegations of ethnic cleansing, the minister said: "It is a phrase, because it is loaded I think with great emotion and a sense of a finality about ethnic cleansing, that I have hitherto been relatively reluctant to use.
"Not in any way in disrespect to the Rohingya, but we still maintain a hope that many Rohingya will be allowed to return safely to Burma (Myanmar). It may be a forlorn hope.
"However, I do also accept the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights having said it seemed to him like a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.
"And I conclude this appears I'm afraid to be increasingly an accurate description of what has happened."