Madam Chair, my name is Yasmin. I am a Rohingya.
Rohingya has been part of Myanmar's ethnic minorities for many generations before the country declared independence in 1948. During that time, the Burmese parliament crafted the very first constitution, and the question of whether Rohingya are Burmese never appeared once.
During the British colonial era, many who were considered foreigners had to obtain national verification cards, or NVCs, in order to become naturalized Burmese citizens after a specific waiting period. Under the British, Rohingya were never questioned about their origin. It was understood that we were part of a larger mix of various minority groups who were local to the land that became Burma, or Myanmar as it is known today.
However, in the 1970s, the military took control of the government and slowly changed the law that protected our citizenship rights. In 1982, they implemented legislation that revoked Rohingya citizenship, using the claim that the treaty of Burmese unification that was signed didn't mention the word “Rohingya” to include Rohingya in the 135 ethnic minorities. The treaty itself acknowledged the existence of minority groups, but it was never passed in any motion in the Burmese parliament. As a result, Rohingya were no longer able to obtain national registration cards, which is the accepted form of Burmese identification.
Fast-forwarding to recent years, Rohingya are now subjected to restriction of movement, restriction of education and access to health care facilities, and restriction to jobs in the government, unless they can provide proof of identification with special permits, which are incredibly complicated, time-consuming and expensive to obtain. In case of an emergency, if a Rohingya needs access to health care, for example, they would not only have to obtain a permit, which would possibly cost more than the household income for an entire year, but time would not be on their side either. It takes many days to obtain these permits.
This is a major problem within the Rohingya community, especially for women. When women are faced with difficult deliveries or pregnancies, they have to seek medical help from Rakhine doctors. With the kind of hate rhetoric that is prevalent in Rakhine State at this moment in time, most of the women who seek medical help end up dead after visiting the hospital, and their newborn babies as well. This is reportedly done with lethal injections that are given to these women prior to their discharge.
I would like to point out that this also affects children. I will tell you about a 16-year-old boy named Abu Talek. On November 6, 2018, he died in Buthidaung prison. He was arrested in 2016 because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was sentenced to seven years without a trial. There were no documents to support his charge. There were no lawyers for his defence. During his imprisonment, he was severely tortured by the military. He died as a result of injuries from the torture a few weeks ago.
The Rohingya would need their own homeland to be protected. It is the only viable solution that would end the genocide. This is part of our mandate on the adoption of “responsibility to protect”, which says:
The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.
We have failed as a global community to protect Rohingya from this ongoing genocide. We failed to recognize the problem back in 1982, 1991, 1992, 2012, and 2015, and that has led to the full-fledged massacre we have witnessed in 2017.
We cannot keep showing our condolences and uttering the word “genocide” without doing something to stop it from happening. It is time that Canada led the world in ending genocide, not just for Rohingya but for other minorities in Myanmar. It is time we pressed the Myanmar military and civilian government to act in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Myanmar voted in favour of in 1948, and which Canada has helped author and co-sign.
Thank you.