Madam Speaker, it is with profound sadness that I stand tonight in the House to speak on the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar and their brutal oppression at the hands of the Myanmar government.
Thirty-five years ago in 1982, the Rohingya, who are a Muslim minority in a Buddhist majority country, were stripped of their citizenship. Even before that, the Rohingya experienced the severest forms of legal, economic, educational, and social discrimination. Through concerted government and local efforts they have been one of the most persecuted peoples on earth. This situation has only worsened over the past 35 years.
I am honoured to sit with six other members of the House on the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the foreign affairs committee, and I am honoured to have been elected as chair of that subcommittee. Our subcommittee has done extensive work on the human rights situation facing the Rohingya and I would like to highlight some of our work to give members an idea of the tragedy that these people have faced.
In November 2012, the subcommittee studied human rights in Myanmar. The report studied the gradual dismantling of a military dictatorship and the birth of a nascent democracy with cautious optimism. The peaceful election of Aung San Suu Kyi as a member of parliament in a 2012 by-election and the election of other candidates from the NLD, was promising. Myanmar, it seemed, had emerged from 60 years of repressive military rule, characterized by grave human rights violations, an absence of the rule of law, persistent internal armed conflicts, and low levels of human and economic development.
Given the obvious challenges this new democracy faced, no one expected progress on human rights in Myanmar to happen overnight. I think as Canadians, and as elected representatives ourselves, we were glad to see a democratically elected civilian government led by individuals who we thought were committed to democracy and human rights.
Last year, after the election of the NLD to government and Aung San Suu Kyi's rise to State Counsellor, the Subcommittee on International Human Rights did an updated report on the plight of the Rohingya as its first order of business during this new session of Parliament.
The witness testimony was gut-wrenching. Throughout this study, our subcommittee heard that the Rohingya remain the target of hatred and violence in Myanmar, led by Buddhist nationalists and exacerbated by an environment of impunity and official complacency.
Those same 2015 elections that saw a civilian government finally elected also saw the Rohingya lose their right to vote. A Rohingya member of parliament testified about his Kafkaesque experience of being told that he was not a citizen and therefore could not run for the very position he was currently holding by the same immigration department and election commission that had approved his paperwork and candidacy for the 2010 elections.
When we drafted that report and made our recommendations, we understood that the situation of the Rohingya was dire, but we did not think it could get worse. In October of last year it got worse, much, much worse.
On October 9 last year, a group of Rohingya armed themselves and killed nine police officers in Rakhine State. None of us in the House condone the use of violence, but it is the responsibility of the Myanmar government to exercise restraint in the maintenance of peace and security and the exercise of justice.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, Myanmar security forces carried out a ruthless and disproportionate response to the violence in Rakhine State. Satellite evidence showed that Rohingya villages had been burned to the ground. The Government of Myanmar expelled humanitarian workers, international observers, and western journalists, deprived the 100,000 Rohingya confined to camps of food, medicine and other aid, and emptied the region of witnesses to the violence. Let me reiterate that this was not last month or last week; this was last year.
The Myanmar military's attacks on thousands of innocent Rohingya civilians, including women and children, were inexcusably brutal and disproportionate. Security forces and mobs of Rakhine villagers set fire to houses with families still inside. We heard reports of members of the Myanmar military using widespread rape and sexual violence as a form of torture, targeting women and girls of all ages.
These are the same horrors we hear when we recall Rwanda or the plight of the Yazidis. They are stories of neighbours murdering neighbours, of families slaughtered, and women and children brutalized in the most horrific way. We looked at the situation from last October and said it could not get worse. It got much worse.
Last week, the subcommittee heard a horrifyingly familiar update on the current situation facing the Rohingya. Just last month, the Myanmar military launched a disproportionate operation against the Rohingya following deadly attacks by extremists. Make no mistake, these events were brought about by an enduring policy of cruelty towards the Rohingya. The rise of violent extremism was both predictable and preventable in light of years of persecution at the hands of the Myanmar authorities. In what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has labelled “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, Myanmar authorities and Buddhist extremists have burned entire Rohingya villages and shot at fleeing civilians.
We heard from a witness just last week who described how he calls what remains of his family every day to check whether they are still alive. The night before our meeting, his nephew in Myanmar told him: “Uncle, if we do not die, if we do not get killed by the army or the attacks with them, we will die here without food.” This is the risk they face. If the Rohingya who remain in their homes or are confined in camps in Myanmar are not murdered, they are being starved to death by the atrocious conditions forced upon them by the Myanmar government.
Since August 25, around 3,000 Rohingya are estimated to have been killed, tens of thousands of Rohingya remain stranded in northern Rakhine State without access to basic supplies such as food and water, and almost 400,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar into Bangladesh. In case anyone questions the intent or brutality of the Myanmar authorities' response, I have this to say. According to information collected by the international campaign to ban landmines, credible witnesses saw an army truck arrive on the Myanmar side of the Myanmar-Bangladesh border on August 28 from which soldiers unloaded three crates. They saw the soldiers take antipersonnel landmines from the crates and place them in the ground. One does not lay landmines to maintain public safety. One lays landmines to murder indiscriminately. The alternative conclusion to the cruel act of laying mines to prevent Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh from returning to their homes is the barbarity of laying those mines to murder Rohingya fleeing violence.
This is the point that we are at, where we all know that ethnic cleansing is happening in front of our eyes. It is clear that the blame for these atrocities lies at the hands of the Myanmar government. Myanmar is among the youngest democracies. Its constitution mandates military control of key ministries, and effectively gives the military veto power over constitutional amendments, but this situation does not excuse gross human rights violations. One cannot advocate for democracy and peace with one side of one's mouth, and demonize and murder minorities with the other.
Aung San Suu Kyi must show leadership and denounce these crimes. The political reality she faces in Myanmar does not absolve her of the responsibility to speak up for the principles she once stood for, the hope she gave to so many, the Nobel prize she won, and the honorary Canadian citizenship she holds. The world recognized Aung San Suu Kyi for her leadership advocating for the rights of the oppressed. She is complicit in her silence.
Lastly, we must not forget to recognize that it is the military leadership in Myanmar that orders, undertakes, and oversees the brutality. Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of Myanmar's armed forces, bears direct responsibility for the atrocities committed by his military. Myanmar security forces must end all violence, and the rights of all citizens of Myanmar must be immediately recognized and protected.
As I close, I want to return to my earlier point, which is that whenever we heard of the atrocities the Rohingya have faced, we thought it could not get worse. We look at the scope and scale and the brutality of the attacks today. We look at the victims and the international outrage, and we say that it cannot get worse, but we know it can get worse. We know that if it gets worse from this point, from the ethnic cleansing and the massive displacement of Rohingya from their homes, then we know what this will become.