That this House has considered religious minority persecution in Myanmar.
This is something that has been on my mind, and the mind of lots of us, for some time. We may not know very much about Myanmar in relation to religious persecution, but I am glad to see my friend and colleague in the Gallery who, along with Rev. Cecil Rasa, told us all about what was happening.
This debate has also been some time coming. There has been great interest from many hon. Members in holding Backbench Business debates, so it has taken until now for us to have this opportunity, but I am very pleased to have it and I thank the Backbench Business Committee. It is indeed an honour to introduce this debate on Myanmar and to speak once again for those whose voices are silenced by violence, repression and fear. We will hear some of the things—hopefully others will contribute as well—that relate to just how bad the situation is in Myanmar.
I speak today because freedom of religion or belief is not a peripheral concern; it is a foundational human right. When freedom of religion or belief collapses, other rights collapse alongside it: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, access to justice and, ultimately, the right to life itself. Myanmar today is a stark example of that truth. Since the military coup of February 2021, religious freedom in Myanmar has continued to worsen amid civil war.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing today’s debate on Myanmar, because religious and ethnic minorities there are facing some of the harshest persecution. He will no doubt be aware that Christian communities have seen their churches destroyed, their clergy imprisoned and aid blocked, and that long-persecuted Muslim communities such as the Rohingya and the Uyghurs remain stateless, are severely restricted in their movements and face further persecution. Does he agree that international condemnation, co-ordination and action are urgently needed to protect those vulnerable groups?
I thank my hon. Friend—he has been my friend for all the time I have known him—for his intervention. He is absolutely right, and he has outlined, in those two or three sentences, what this debate is all about. It is an opportunity to highlight religious minorities and persecution, with a focus on Myanmar.
Independent monitoring by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom documents the destruction and occupation of religious sites, the killing of clergy and civilians, and the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid by the military authorities. Churches, mosques and monasteries have been affected by airstrikes, shelling and arson. In some cases, places of worship have been occupied or used by troops, turning sites of prayer into military targets. Aid convoys have been blocked or prohibited, even in areas of acute need. Religious leaders have been detained and harassed.
I know there are many issues demanding the attention of this House, and there has just been a debate in the main Chamber about the same thing, but I often think of Galatians 6:9, which urges us not to grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap if we diligently sow. The Bible very clearly gives us a challenge—indeed, it is a directive—about what we should do. We must not allow Myanmar to become a forgotten crisis, where atrocities continue in plain sight. We must continue to do what we can to help the vulnerable and the needy, and there are many of them.
The junta’s violence is nationwide, but its impact is especially severe on minority communities and on religious life itself. The USCIRF reports that over 3.4 million people have been displaced in recent years. That includes some 90,000 people displaced in Christian-majority Chin state, and around 237,200 in Kachin state. Alongside this internal displacement, around 1 million Rohingya refugees remain in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, living in prolonged exile, with absolutely no indication of when they will be able to return. That is one of the things we should look at today. I should have said that I am very pleased to see the Minister in her place. I always look forward to the Minister’s response. I wish her well in her role, and I look forward to her replies to our questions.
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. I have come along to learn more about the situation, which is, frankly, puzzling. Is the regime motivated by some form of extreme religion of its own? Is it just ultra-nationalism? Is it doing all this persecution to repress the people and keep them in a form of captivity, or to drive people whom it does not like because of their identity out of the country completely?
As always, the right hon. Member brings wisdom to the debate. He is right to highlight that the Tatmadaw and the authorities are using people’s religion and race as reasons to legitimise repression. As far as they are concerned, they do not want people to have anything, and by focusing on those things, they take away the very right to express religious belief—to have a race, a different culture and a different history.
Another root cause is Myanmar’s discriminatory legal architecture, particularly its citizenship regime, which probably highlights the very point that the right hon. Member just referred to. The 1982 citizenship law embeds exclusion by tying full citizenship to state-defined nationality categories and strict criteria, while granting wide discretion over who qualifies—in other words, it directly discriminates. Amnesty International documents how this framework has left most Rohingya without full citizenship rights, despite generations of residence in Rakhine state.
Citizenship denial is not symbolic; it is operational. Amnesty shows how exclusion from citizenship underpins restrictions on freedom of movement, access to education, healthcare, participation in public life and legal protection. It forms the backbone of the apartheid-like system imposed on Rohingya communities. Amnesty also documents how temporary registration cards, often known as “white cards”, were revoked, leaving many Rohingya without identity documentation linked to rights or political participation—even further entrenching their vulnerability.
This is not an accident of bureaucracy. When a state writes exclusion into its citizenship law, it builds persecution into the legal system itself—and that is how it pursues its goals. Impunity compounds all of this. The military’s long history of avoiding accountability encourages repetition. Atrocities become a tactic, not an aberration. UN fact-finding missions have emphasised the need for criminal investigation and prosecution, yet meaningful accountability remains elusive.
Four Back Benchers want to speak, and I will have the chance to call all of them. We have 40 minutes before the Front-Bench speeches, so that is fairly easy to work out: there are 10 minutes each, if you want to take them.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this important debate; he is well known in the House for defending the rights of minority faith groups, wherever they are found. The Backbench Business Committee was right to grant this important debate, so that the House has an opportunity to put a spotlight on one of the worst conflicts currently on the globe—one that does not share as much attention as other conflicts.
I wanted to secure a similar debate myself, but as the hon. Member was successful in securing this one, I was pleased to put my name down to speak, putting on record the importance of civil society in these matters. In my constituency, the human rights group meets every 10 December in Crouch End to have a Write for Rights Day, and Burma-Myanmar is always one of the areas where it highlights the importance of supporting victims of human rights violations, showing that humanity can win. I also put on record my thanks to the Burma Campaign UK, and to other civil society groups, which are so active in this regard.
We know that religious persecution is one aspect of the awful ordeal that the people of Myanmar have endured for far too long. In March 2025, Myanmar was already facing one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises after four years of conflict, with up to 7 million children out of school. The impact of that on every family in Myanmar—and on the fastest growing region in the world in terms of economic growth—is that 7 million children will be out of school and uneducated. That will dog them for the rest of their days, and create many local problems in the region.
Drawing on the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), the Rohingya people and the impact of the mass movement of people over the border has led to a very fragile situation in Bangladesh. In just a month’s time, on 12 February, there will be a general election in Bangladesh. The fragile situation could easily be worsened through the further movement of people along that border, which is one of the highly militarised areas in this conflict. I hope the UK can continue to support both Bangladesh with its upcoming election next month, and Myanmar, in any way that it can through the mission in Yangon.
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing this vital and unfortunately forgotten issue to the fore with this debate. When we speak about conflict, we sometimes look at the numbers and forget the nuances and the people who matter. As the saying goes, one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic, and so it goes with this tragedy, because behind every number are real people.
One case particularly puts that into perspective. On new year’s day, a Rohingya man by the name of Mohammed Faruque woke up in a bamboo shelter in camp 7 in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. His phone was full of birthday messages wishing him a happy birthday. It was also his wife’s birthday, his parents’ birthdays, his siblings’ birthday, his friends’ birthday and the birthdays of hundreds and thousands of other people in that camp. We all know it was not their birthday, but when they fled the massacres, arson and rape in February 2017 the poor, frankly overwhelmed care workers just entered 1 January on everybody’s refugee cards. Mohammed Faruque said:
“When I see this date, I feel like I am no one.”
That single sentence answers the question that the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) asked: why is this being done? It is because the people of Myanmar and the junta are trying to deprive people of other ethnicities of any form of identity. They are erasing their identities and who they are.
In Myanmar, faith and identity are intertwined. Since the coup in 2021, as mentioned by all those who have spoken in this debate, persecution has escalated dramatically. More than 200 religious institutions, including Buddhist monasteries, Christian churches, mosques and even Hindu temples have been destroyed or looted, and at least 41 religious leaders have been killed, including monks, Christian clergymen and Muslim imams, not just because of their faith but because of the overlap between faith and ethnicity.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I commend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing the crisis in Myanmar to our attention and I congratulate the other Back-Bench speakers in the debate so far on their eloquent and important contributions.
I declare my long-standing membership of the Burma Campaign UK. I joined because, about 20 to 25 years ago, I heard testimony from two Burmese refugees at my local Labour party meeting. I asked what I could do, and they said that I should sign up to the Burma Campaign. That is part of the reason I am speaking today, having received their updates and understanding what is going on in the country. I also commend the Burma Campaign on the consistency of its support for human rights. Whatever the changes—the political twists and turns in society in Myanmar, or whichever individuals ended up on different sides of the debate—they have not mattered, because the campaign has consistently advocated for fundamental human rights.
As we have heard, Myanmar is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. Since the military coup in 2021, the Christian and Muslim minority populations of Myanmar have encountered greater violence and tighter restrictions on their freedom. In Rakhine state, about 630,000 Rohingya Muslims remain subject to systematic abuses and crimes against humanity. About 150,000 are held in open-air detention camps. The Rohingya are one of the largest stateless populations in the world, in effect having been denied citizenship since 1982. As we heard from the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam), about 1 million Rohingya live in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, after fleeing Myanmar in 2017, showing the tangible impact of the persecution that we are highlighting, with the displacement of swathes of people, condemning them to a poor quality of life.
As conflict rages in this part of Myanmar, the Rohingya have been caught between the junta and the Arakan Army, which the UN has documented committing multiple violations of international law. Both sides have indiscriminately attacked civilians since hostilities between them resumed in November 2023. I therefore ask the Minister whether she can assure us that aid to Rohingya refugees and the people of Myanmar will not be cut in the context of the overall UK aid budget. The Arakan Army also pursues its agenda of oppression by less direct means. It limits freedom of speech, censors access to international media and communications, arrests journalists, and threatens civil society organisations in the area it controls.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Betts, for this important debate on religious minority persecution in Myanmar. As I have done so often over the years, I sincerely thank and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the driving force behind the APPG for international freedom of religion or belief, for securing this debate and ensuring that people who have been persecuted for professing their beliefs or—just as importantly—those exercising their human rights not to believe or practise a faith, wherever they are in the world, are not forgotten about. With the world on a seemingly endless cycle, stumbling from crisis to disaster and back again, it would be all too easy to forget or choose to ignore issues such as the persecution of religious minorities, but it is vital that we do not do so or allow others to forget or choose to ignore such a fundamental human rights issue.
No one would wish us to forget or ignore this issue more than the military regime in Myanmar, where for decades a deliberate policy of religious and ethnic cleansing has been pursued as they seek to Burmanise the country. Burmanisation is the belief that true Myanmar citizens are both Burman and, of course, Buddhist. That is why the citizenship law was introduced in 1982 to strip Rohingya Muslims of their citizenship, rendering many of them effectively stateless and making them foreigners in their own land. That hideous, racist, sectarian policy excluded minorities from the political process and limited the social and economic development of ethnic minority communities by curtailing their cultural and religious freedoms.
The attempt to erase the identity of anyone who is not both Burman and Buddhist has resulted in the most appalling oppression of religious minority communities. Notably, as we have heard, Rohingya Muslims and Christians have been the primary victims of this ethno-religious Burmese nationalism. As we just heard, this year the charity Open Doors declared that Myanmar has risen up its world watch list rankings, and is now deemed the 13th most dangerous place in the world in which to be a Christian. Since 2021, Open Doors has recorded a steep rise in murders, destruction of places of worship and forced displacement, and has now put Myanmar in the extreme category for religious persecution.
Those figures are not abstract. They represent families torn from their homes, congregations scattered, and communities unable to gather safely to worship. For many, the simple act of practising their faith has become a source of danger. This is not only a freedom of religion or belief issue viewed in isolation; it sits within a much wider framework of state violence. UN-linked reporting has documented systematic torture by Myanmar’s security forces, including cases involving children, as well as sexual abuse and sexual attacks on women and girls. I do not know whether it is my age, but I certainly get more affected by the things happening in the world than I ever did before. It is almost inconceivable to comprehend all the horror taking place.
It is important to note that FoRB violations in Myanmar are part of a broader pattern of repression and brutality. They are not isolated incidents. The plight of the Rohingya Muslims remains one of the gravest examples of this persecution. UN fact finders concluded that there were grounds to investigate senior Tatmadaw leaders for genocide and other international crimes, and they explicitly called for criminal investigation and prosecution. Can the Minister confirm whether she is aware of a criminal investigation taking place? Are there grounds for prosecution? Obviously, that would all be built on evidence, but has that started?
Crucially, this issue did not begin and end in 2017. Amnesty International has described a state-sponsored system of apartheid in Rakhine state marked by institutional discrimination, segregation and extreme restrictions on movement and daily life. Rohingya communities are confined, controlled and denied access to basic services. A people stripped of citizenship, boxed in by policy, and punished for trying to move—this is not merely insecurity; it is engineered oppression.
Christian communities have also suffered targeted attacks, particularly in Chin, Kachin and Karenni areas. The USCIRF documents repeated attacks on churches and confirms that the military has destroyed religious buildings and killed clergy and civilians through airstrikes and arson. The USCIRF further reports that at least 128 religious persons have been detained by the authorities, including 113 Buddhist monks, one imam and 14 Christians. These are not random arrests. They reflect a deliberate effort to intimidate religious leadership and community life. There are many examples, but one case in particular brings this into sharp focus: Rev. Hkalam Samson of the Kachin Baptist Convention—a respected Christian leader who is much loved in his area—was arrested, granted amnesty, and then re-arrested within hours. This is injustice. It is harassment, designed to send a message that no religious leader is beyond reach—no religious leader is safe.
More broadly, independent monitoring documents attacks and intimidation affecting multiple faith communities in churches, mosques and monasteries, and across several regions and states. When places of worship themselves become targets, freedom of religion or belief ceases to exist in any meaningful sense in the area—not just for the places of worship themselves, but for the practising Christians, Rohingya Muslims and people of other faiths as well.
We must also be clear about why these abuses occur. Many analysts argue that the Tatmadaw has long instrumentalised race and religion narratives to legitimise repression. It is beyond dispute that independent monitoring documents repeated targeting of religious leaders and religious sites across communities, reflecting persecution linked to identity rather than military necessity. They are being targeted because of who they are—because of their religious beliefs.
There are also factors that worsen and sustain this crisis. UN investigators have highlighted the role of social media, particularly Facebook, in spreading hate speech and incitement against the Rohingya. That does not absolve the state of responsibility, but it shows how hatred has been amplified and normalised. Doing it so often means that it becomes a way of life that focuses on those who are in a religious minority.
Of course, we cannot point fingers outwards and not look internally. International action also plays a role. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned Myanmar in the main Chamber debate and referred to the Magnitsky sanctions that need to be in place for some of the Myanmar leaders. With great respect, the Government—this has been going on for a number of years, so it is not just this Government, but previous ones—have not pursued those involved in horrendous things in Myanmar, but they should have.
When decisive multilateral action stalls, the junta itself can outlast condemnation. Annual monitoring shows that detention, attacks on religious sites and the obstruction of aid continues despite years of international concern. Humanitarian obstruction remains a central tool of control. The USCIRF states that the military has blocked or prohibited critical aid from reaching displaced people, worsening their suffering and vulnerability —especially for minorities. All my life I have said that if a person is denied their human rights, they are also denied their religious viewpoint, and if they are denied their religious viewpoint, their human rights are also denied.
The question is: what should be done and what can realistically be done? We cannot solve all the problems of the world—if only we could—but the bit that we can do, we should do. In the immediate term, civilians and places of worship must be protected. Humanitarian aid must be allowed to reach those in need. I am sure that the Minister will be able to confirm where, or if, that is happening. I ask that the Foreign Office tie the substantial funding that we give to Myanmar to the principle of freedom of religion or belief. The UK has provided over £190 million for aid, healthcare and civil society since the 2021 coup, including some £66.45 million in the financial year 2024-25 alone. That was boosted by £10 million for the 2025 earthquake, with further funds for the refugee crisis—always with enhanced due diligence to avoid the military regime benefiting. We must leverage our goodness to them and ensure their goodness to their own.
In the medium term, the international community must constrain the junta’s capacity to wage war, including through air power, and strengthen evidence gathering and accountability mechanisms. Those who carry out abysmal and despicable crimes need to be made accountable, and the evidence needs to be gathered and made ready so that we can at some stage hold them accountable. Diplomacy can be a mighty tool and I believe that we can do more.
In the long term, there can be no durable peace without an inclusive settlement in which citizenship and equality are restored—especially for the Rohingya—so that freedom of religion or belief is protected by law, not dependent on good will or military discretion. For many years, the House has repeatedly raised concerns about freedom of religion or belief and wider human rights abuses in Myanmar. The question now is whether our actions match the scale of the crisis.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. First, will the Government commit to regular, published assessments of freedom of religion or belief and human rights in Myanmar, using independent monitoring benchmarks? It is really important that we have an independent body that is able to assess what is happening in Myanmar specifically. Through that, we will be able to gauge whether persecution is decreasing, or if there is any more action that we could take.
Secondly, what further steps will the UK take with allies to constrain the junta’s capacity for attacks that destroy religious sites and kill civilians? The air force has been used to bomb and kill, and to destroy churches and even hospitals and schools—nothing is ruled out in the junta’s attacks. Something really needs to be done to ensure that they stop.
Thirdly, how will the Government ensure that humanitarian aid reaches displaced minorities when the military deliberately blocks assistance? We know evidentially that whenever aid was sent from here to Myanmar, the military blocked it, put obstacles in its way and ensured that assistance did not get to the people that it should have.
Fourthly, what additional support will be provided to the accountability pathways identified by UN fact-finding work on genocide and other international crimes? I would love to have the people who have carried out these crimes made accountable in the court of this world, and then jailed accordingly. I am a Christian; I know that whenever they come to the next world, they will be accountable then. We all know where they will end up: they will end up in a place that is very warm—in hell. Still, I would love to see them get their justice in this world, just as they will get their justice in the next—I know that is going to happen, no matter what.
Myanmar’s crisis is not only political. It is a crisis of conscience, where identity is punished, worship is targeted, and the law itself—as the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said—is used as a weapon. This House must continue to speak clearly, consistently and persistently for those who cannot. Let us not be weary in doing good, and let us do what we can in Myanmar. I believe that with renewed focus, we can reap a harvest of freedom for those living in fear in that place. Our job today is to speak for them. They have no voice; today, we are their voice.
We are also very aware of the catastrophic earthquake that devastated a huge area of the country around the region of Sagaing. Thousands of people were killed; hundreds of thousands more lost their homes. I put on record my praise for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which worked well with a network of partners to deliver support on the ground, despite the challenges. It was just as effective in its intervention as China and a number of other important players in the region, but we need to keep that up. The humanitarian needs remain huge, and this awful conflict rages on.
Sixteen million people will require lifesaving assistance in 2026, nearly five years since the Myanmar military overturned the democratically elected Government. The regime continues to bomb and kill civilians. We have heard of that from personal stories that have come through the many representations made to MPs in this House. The military’s blockade of aid has led to severe food and medicine shortages and brought Rakhine state to the brink of famine. Two million people there are at risk of starvation.
On 10 December 2025 which, as I said earlier, was International Human Rights Day, this awful regime decided to call in an airstrike on a hospital in Rakhine state, killing more than 30 civilians, including health workers, elderly patients and children. I have spoken to people who provide vaccinations for children who have had to resign their posts because they were too terrified to go into villages for fear of aerial bombardments, as well as medics who have provided support and done surgery in trenches while bombs were falling on their heads. Médecins Sans Frontières, which has supported the hospital since 2021, said:
“Bombing of health facilities, patients being killed in their beds, this cannot be perceived as collateral damage in a conflict zone. Hospitals must remain a safe place for patients to receive medical care”.
We know that in 2024, Myanmar ranked fourth for attacks on healthcare workers.
I welcome the UK’s financial, trade and travel ban sanctions against the military regime in Myanmar. I argued for them early in 2024 as the shadow Minister for the region. I also welcome the UK’s statement at the UN on the military regime’s sham elections, which are neither free nor fair. We need the Myanmar military to cease hostilities, respect international law and protect civilians. The people of Myanmar need a peaceful, democratic future, but we are a long way from that. We need to keep hope alive. It is my plea that, in a world so full of uncertainty, we do not forget about Myanmar.
The UK has done such great work in Myanmar, together with our partners, but the people of Myanmar still need us. Can the Minister tell us what funding this desperate country attracts in her regional funding following the Chancellor’s statement in November 2025? Could she also provide her assessment of the potential for further sanctions on the Government of Myanmar and third parties, such as energy suppliers, to assist in slowing down the dreadful war machine that is harming so many civilians in Myanmar on a daily basis?
Finally, could the Minister update the House on progress in the International Court of Justice case, led by Gambia with the backing of the UK and the 57 members of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, so that the people of Myanmar can finally see justice in their lifetimes?
The Rohingya Muslims have suffered the most extreme violence. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called their treatment
“a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”,
and a United Nations expert has identified “the hallmarks of genocide”, but this persecution, as has been mentioned, does not just stop with one community. Ethnic Christian populations, particularly in Chin and Kachin states, have seen churches bombed and pastors killed, and religious identity has become a marker for punishment. They have been tortured, raped and executed on a daily basis. The cause is that the military junta is holding power through fear. It is a regime that has scapegoated minority communities and weaponised religion. That has been in the playbook for brutal and insecure regimes for millennia. It is being employed now in other parts of the world, and I am afraid that it will continue to be used in the future as well.
There may be a light at the end of the tunnel, because the junta has never been weaker. It is only controlling about 20% of the country’s territory at the moment and thousands of soldiers have defected. There is a possible future for democracy, but the international community must step in if that is to happen, because in the meantime, civilians are paying the price. Overall, more than 2.6 million people have been internally displaced in Myanmar and about 1.3 million have fled abroad. Nearly 1 million Rohingya now live in Bangladesh, a country that already has 170 million people of its own, while 40,000 Rohingya—the number may be even greater than that—have sought refuge in India. Therefore, in addition to all the incredible aid agencies and aid workers who deserve recognition, India and Bangladesh also deserve some credit, because they have accepted large numbers of refugees despite facing their own population pressures and resource constraints.
Those pressures have unfortunately led to horrifying consequences, as was maybe to be expected. There have been stories of refugees being pushed back into the sea and of families being separated. There have been reports of Rohingya men, women and children allegedly being forced to jump from a naval vessel and asked to swim for their lives in the Andaman sea. Camps in Bangladesh are dangerously overcrowded, and fires, disease, violence and rape are unfortunately becoming routine. This is a failure not just of humanity and compassion, but of international burden sharing.
That brings me to our responsibility. I want to put a few of the issues to the Minister. First, we must confront the enablers of the crisis. The junta survives because it is propped up militarily, diplomatically and economically by external actors. Some of those countries may even have veto powers at the United Nations. The proxy enablers must be named, challenged and pressured. Secondly, we must seek justice. We should actively support the international legal action, joining Gambia’s case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, backing the ICC investigation to ensure that the junta is held accountable for genocide and crimes against humanity. Thirdly, we must support democracy wherever we can. I feel that the future depends on a genuine federal democracy, which protects religious freedoms, recognises ethnic equality and ends decades of civil war.
Finally I say to the Minister, we must match our words with actions and resources. Cutting the humanitarian aid to the Rohingya refugees and other displaced communities will have, and is having, catastrophic consequences. Aid to the region has dropped by 85% in the past five years, from more than £112 million to just £16.9 million. That is why we must make a commitment to ringfence overseas aid for that region, not just out of charity, but as prevention—prevention of further displacement, further regional instability and future atrocities.
This is not just a moral issue, but a strategic one. We should ensure that Britain remains a reliable partner, that the humanitarian system does not collapse, and that countries such as Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Vietnam are not left to manage the international crisis alone. I ask the Minister, what aid will we provide for the crisis? Mohammed Faruque does not want a different birthday; he wants recognition that his life, his history and his identity matter.
For Christians, the situation is similarly bleak. Believers have been killed and churches have been indiscriminately attacked. Nowhere has that been more intense than in the landlocked state of Chin—the poorest of Myanmar’s 14 states and regions. More and more Christians have been driven out of their homes, finding refuge in churches or displacement camps. Some have even been forced to flee to the jungle, where they are deprived of access to food and basic healthcare. Last year, Myanmar rose two places on the Open Doors world watch list, an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution. It now scores in the extreme category for persecution. That categorisation puts the situation facing Christians in Myanmar on a par with that in places such as Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Myanmar is currently in the process of holding a set of elections that no observer could characterise as free or fair. They will be an opportunity for the Burmese military to rebrand and put forward a false narrative that it is reforming. Frankly, it will not concern the Burmese military that we can see the elections for what they are: a sham. The military junta has said it itself that, in its view,
“Whether the international community is satisfied or not, is irrelevant.”
These elections are vital in understanding this issue. They will be passed off as a front for the appalling human rights abuses and the persecution of minorities we have heard about today. We must stand steadfast against that and reject the idea that these so-called elections give any legitimacy to a malign regime.
In April 2025, the UK supported a Human Rights Council resolution calling for the protection of civilians and all minorities. It has also been clear that it does not regard the military regime in Myanmar as a legitimate Government. I am pleased that the Government have committed to taking any steps they can, including sanctions, to bring about peace. Today is an important chance to strengthen our resolve and stand up for persecuted people who need our protection. Will the Minister therefore explain why it has been more than a year since any new sanctions were imposed to cut off money and arms going to the Myanmar military? Will she assure the House that we will resume imposing such sanctions?
We must not allow the religious minority communities of Myanmar to suffer in silence. I join colleagues across the House in urging the Government to keep standing up for the rights of those persecuted people by expanding targeted sanctions against those committing atrocities, directing humanitarian aid towards those who need it the most and working through international institutions to hold the military junta and other forces waging war in the region to account. Today, we must reaffirm that the UK will never stand by as religious freedom is crushed and human rights are denied.
State-sponsored religious persecution—as we have heard from every speaker in this debate—has caused Rohingya Muslims to flee, predominantly over the border to refugee camps in Bangladesh, where they are having to endure some of the worst living conditions on the planet, because they are fleeing what the United Nations has described as an “ongoing genocide” at the hands of the Myanmar military. So fearful are they of returning that appalling squalor and overcrowded camps are deemed preferable to the fate that would await them should they return home. Displacement, murder, repression and widespread endemic gender-based sexual violence are every bit as real a threat there today as they were in 2017, when over 1 million Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh. It is worth remembering that in 2019, the United Nations described gender-based sexual violence as the hallmark of the Burmese military’s operations in Myanmar.
The Rohingya are stuck in what has been described as a hell on earth. For the benefit of Members who were not here the last time we debated Myanmar and the situation in Cox’s Bazar and Bangladesh, I will repeat what the journalist and documentary filmmaker Simon Reeve said after he visited one of those camps. He said it was
“like nothing I have seen anywhere on Planet Earth. This speaks of a Biblical exodus of an entire people terrorised into fleeing.”
Yet for those people, living in that unimaginable horror is deemed preferable and safer than returning home.
The hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) is right that the situation for Rohingya Muslims living in the camps is only getting worse. Minister, that is in no small part due to the shameful decision by this Government to ape the previous Government and slash UK overseas aid, leaving Bangladesh—already one of the poorest countries in the world—to shoulder a massively disproportionate share of the costs of looking after more than 1 million refugees. When helpless, homeless refugees are dumped on impoverished countries, it leads to the crisis in Bangladesh that was alluded to earlier. We have a moral responsibility to do something about that.
As much as the Rohingya may wish to return home in a safe and dignified manner, such a return is not possible while the military in Myanmar is pursuing its reign of terror. The stark truth is that the Rohingya will be able to return home only when a Government committed to human rights, religious freedom and the rule of law are established. That prospect is unfortunately a long way off, because Myanmar, as we have heard so often, is in the grip of a man-made humanitarian crisis. The situation for the country’s religious minorities who have remained continues to worsen and the regime ramps up its persecution of those communities by attacking places of worship, forcibly conscripting minorities into its military, and continuing its genocide of the Rohingya Muslims.
As we also heard earlier, there are other armed players in this conflict who are also perpetrating abuses that disproportionately affect religious minorities—notably, the Rohingya Muslims and Christians. It is a dire situation. I desperately urge the Government to reassess the short-term, counterproductive and frankly inhumane decision to cut overseas aid; every single penny taken out of that aid pot has real-life, real-world consequences for men, women and children.
Although the return of UK aid would undoubtedly help considerably, so too would allowing refugees in Bangladesh the right to work and thereby to support themselves and their families. Of course I can understand why the Bangladesh Government would be reluctant to make legislative change that would, in their eyes, encourage 1 million or so refugees to stay within Bangladesh’s borders. But the reality is that these people cannot return home until it is safe for them to do so, and that is not happening any time soon.
Last month, I visited Thailand and Malaysia with the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief to meet many of those refugee communities who have been fleeing persecution—chiefly the Ahmadiyyas, Vietnamese Christians, Uyghurs, Chinese Christians and Iranian Christians, but also many more. Like Bangladesh, Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention. Legally, in Thailand, there is no such thing as a refugee, despite hundreds of thousands of them living there.
The largest group of refugees in Thailand are from Myanmar, and they have lived in the camps along Thailand’s northern border for decades. With no legal right to work they obviously make a living in the black market, but in recent months the Thai Government have recognised the reality that such people are unable to return home and could well be an economic asset, and so have loosened the rules to allow them to work legally in Thailand. Perhaps, at least, the Government of Bangladesh might look at that—and indeed, why would the UK Government not look at it as well? What is happening in Thailand could happen in Bangladesh, and here. Refugees can be that economic asset. Allowing them to work will allow them to contribute, better themselves and benefit us all.
I again thank the hon. Member for Strangford for securing this debate. I hope the Government can see that, although the persecution of these communities happens so far from our shores, we have a moral and a humanitarian obligation to help—because we absolutely, certainly do.