moved:
That the House do now adjourn.
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Midnapore.
I speak from time to time in the House about my children. It is important for us to think about our own children and families when we think about the experience of families previous human rights abuses. People are people and children are children, wherever they are, whatever their colour, and whatever their faith.
The Subcommittee on International Human Rights had hearings about the situation facing the Rohingya community last week, and I want to read from that testimony. The subcommittee heard the following:
“...on August 27th. Around 10 a.m. Myanmar army soldiers arrived in Maung Nu Village....Some residents fled immediately, but a large number gathered at what is essentially the largest home in the village. It's a two-storey home owned by a prominent Rohingya family. The residents in this village thought perhaps they would be safe in this home. Each room of the house, which is relatively large, filled up with huddled masses of residents. According to survivors, women and girls were downstairs, and men and boys were upstairs.
“The Myanmar army surrounded this home, entered the home, corralled women and young girls to the house next door. One eye witness watched as soldiers dragged the men and boys out of the house including children as young as 12 years old. Some of the soldiers tied their hands behind their backs, and they tore veils off of women, and tied them over the eyes of the men and boys, and proceeded to violently interrogate them.
“Soldiers started beating the men and boys, screaming at them, and threatening them. After period of time the detainees were made to lay face down on the ground, and Myanmar army soldiers started executing them. Soldiers shot them and in some cases used knives to inflect fatal wounds to necks. One woman with whom we spent a period of time with witnessed soldiers shoot dead her father-in-law who was a local...her brother-in-law, and his two sons who were aged 16 and 18.
“The killing in this particular village on that particular day lasted for a period of about two hours. The victims ranged in age from 90 years old to 12 years old. Myanmar army soldiers in some cases wrapped bodies in tarps. and dumped them in a military vehicle, and drove toward the local battalion referred to locally as the Pale Taung battalion. It's Battalion 564 of the Myanmar army.”
The same testimony and various other reports contain many more stories of atrocities and massacres. I struggled today, as I prepared for this, with which elements of the testimony to share and ultimately decided to stay away from the most graphic. However, I would encourage members to review the work of the subcommittee and the many media and independent reports out there, in particular, the testimony from last week.
We have here a clear textbook case of ethnic cleansing, of genocide against the Rohingya people in Burma. We are in the midst of a present escalation. The Conservatives have been raising this issue repeatedly in the House for the last year and a half, and we have asked the government to do more. In our view, the government did not start early enough and can do better now.
In the context of these events, it is important for us to work together as much as possible, but also to continually challenge the government to do more to protect the vulnerable. I will speak more about what I see the Canadian role being later on.
I have shared one of many stories of massacres, but here is the situation in broad strokes.
The Government of Burma has, for decades, pursued a policy of denying the reality and legitimacy of the Rohingya claim to citizenship. The Rohingya people are, in reality, indigenous to western Burma. Their presence can be tracked back over a millennium. However, the government seeks to deny that reality and define them as “other”. Their right to be citizens was first denied them in 1982, and the Government of Burma since then has taken successive steps to deny their citizenship, push them out, and/or kill them. The goal is quite apparent: to rid the region of its indigenous Rohingya people.
There was once a great deal of hope for Burma after the military rule gave way to a power-sharing structure between the military and the elected government. There is still hope for Burma, but it will be a longer road than many people thought. The elected government has not shown an interest in improving the situation of the Rohingya community. In fact, the situation has obviously worsened.
Canadians will know well the name of Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Burma and an honorary Canadian citizen. She bravely resisted military rule and fought for democracy, but now, bizarrely, is providing cover for the same military as it continues to delegitimize the Rohingya people, kill them, destroy their villages, and force them from their homes.
That Aung San Suu Kyi is providing cover is an important point. It speaks to her responsibility and need to do more, but it also speaks to the need to be specifically holding the military leadership and commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing responsible.
Despite calls to do so much earlier, the government failed to raise these issues with Aung San Suu Kyi until quite recently, but still has not, at least as far as we know or have been told, done anything to apply direct pressure to the military. There has been a dramatic escalation in the campaign of violence in recent weeks. The situation has now entered a critical phase.
Many of my relatives were victims of what Hitler called the “Final Solution”. Although we cannot know the twisted logic of those responsible for this ongoing genocide, it seems that they may be pursuing their version of what they would think of as the final solution in this case, that they want to drive out or kill those Rohingya who have hung on until now.
In response to incidents of genocide, it seems to me that the world follows a familiar pattern: ignore it while it starts, start to notice it when it happens, and then wring hands after it is over, while promising to never let it happen again. This seems to repeat itself over and over again.
After the fact hand-wringing may have a useful function but it is often somewhat disingenuous. Many of the same world leaders involved in that after the fact hand-wringing then go on to pay limited attention to subsequent atrocities.
For those of us who might look back and ask why people did not do more in the context of the Rwandan genocide, in the context of the Holocaust, we have an opportunity now to ask ourselves why we are not doing more. Our children and grandchildren will ask us the same question.
Let us make “never again” meaningful. Let us act with the same urgency we would as if these Rohingya children were our children. They are no less human.
It is of course well and good to say that we should act. However, addressing situations like this require us to do more than express solidarity, but to act in a specific, effective, and sustained way.
Let me identify a number of things I think the government should have done and has not done unfortunately, but then, more important, identify some things the government should do going forward.
First, the government should have prioritized human rights in Burma and, in that context, answered direct questions that were posed to it on this in the House much earlier. The government should have engaged with military and civilian leadership, including Aung San Suu Kyi but also Min Aung Hlaing much earlier. The Prime Minister should have raised this issue during his speech to the UN General Assembly last week.
We cannot change the past. We feel that time has been lost already. However, going forward, the government must do the following.
First, the government must review every aspect of our present relationship with Burma. Burma is a major recipient of Canadian development assistance, for example. We must review that, yes, to get resources to vulnerable people, but we should review any government-to-government aid, and it seems there is a substantial amount of bilateral aid going to Burma.
We should forcefully raise this issue publicly and privately with military and civilian leaders, and do it in a sustained way.
We need to prioritize this issue in multilateral fora. It should be Canada's voice in all multilateral fora, asking what is being done about the situation in Burma.
We cannot change the past with respect to the Prime Minister's UN speech, but going forward, we should, and we must, prioritize discussion of this issue in multilateral fora. We must put pressure on our allies to end any elements of military co-operation with Burma, and to ramp up that pressure in every way possible. We should be imposing sanctions on all those individuals who are responsible.
We can do this. The Government of Canada can make a concrete difference in this situation if it ramps up the emphasis, if it ramps up the pressure and it prioritizes the issue fundamentally, and if it takes those specific concrete steps that I have mentioned.
I want to respond to some of the criticism I have received on this issue. It has not been much, but the Government of Burma has tried to muddy the water somewhat by suggesting it is responding to stereotypes. It has frankly sought to play on negative stereotypes about Muslims to delegitimize the legitimate demand for fundamental human rights.
Let us be clear. These are significant crimes being undertaken by the Burmese military against civilians. Nothing ever justifies that, even if this were the middle of a war or some kind of active guerilla campaign.
The reality is, though, that this is a completely asymmetrical situation of a Burmese government that for a very long time has seen no kind of violent response from any elements of Rohingya society and has still consistently sought to delegitimize the Rohingya people's presence, to deny the reality of their long-standing presence in that area.
For those who play on these stereotypes, it is unconscionable because the facts in this case are clear. We need to take action. We need to hold the Burmese government accountable.
The world is watching. Canada can take action here. The situation must change and we have to do our part.