MPs criticise UK over Myanmar's treatment of Rohingya

International plans for the potential return of 100,000 Rohingya to Myanmar without a clear understanding of their legal status, destination or willingness to return represent a grave risk, a select committee has warned.

In a tough report questioning the UK government’s strategy towards the military regime in Myanmar, the all-party international development select committee challenged ministers to “reflect on why so much evidence of discrimination, marginalisation and abuse of the Rohingya people in Myanmar was seemingly ignored for so long, rather than translated into effective action by the international community”.

It said: “Conduct, described clearly as amounting to ‘ethnic cleansing’, has been regularly reported by groups such as Human Rights Watch for some years and yet nothing effective seems to have been attempted to stop it.”

It suggested ministers, in retrospect, took an over-optimistic view of how far democracy had developed in Myanmar, and in the leadership likely to be given by Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. The report suggested that “continuing engagement” with Myanmar “seems to have been interpreted as tacit acceptance of the treatment of the Rohingya”.

The committee said the repatriation of displaced Rohingya from Bangladesh to Myanmar was well under way “without any evidence of consultation or involvement with the community”.

The select committee said: “The required conditions for the safe return of the Rohingya must include … access to fundamental human rights. Previous episodes of displacement and return of the Rohingya, and other ethnic minorities, over the last 20 years do not inspire confidence.

“It is unacceptable to propose that the Rohingya be returned to live in Burmese-run internment camps; inevitably to be faced with further privations, potential abuses and uncertain access for outside agencies; and likely only to be displaced once again if there is further violence.”

The committee also asked the government why so few of its expert sexual-violence-in-conflict team have been deployed to help the Rohingya. William Hague, when he was foreign secretary, made combatting sexual violence in conflict a major priority. It says only two full-time staff have been deployed.

The select committee released a private letter Hague sent to the Foreign Office asking ministers to send its prevention-of-sexual-violence team to Myanmar or the refugee camps in Bangladesh.

The Rohingya are Muslims who live in majority-Buddhist Myanmar. They are often described as "the world's most persecuted minority".

Nearly all of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya live in the western coastal state of Rakhine. The government does not recognise them as citizens, effectively rendering them stateless.

Extremist nationalist movements insist the group are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although the Rohingya say they are native to Rakhine state.

Rights groups accuse Burmese authorities of ethnic cleansing, systematically forcing Rohingya from the country through violence and persecution, a charge the government has denied.

The committee accused the government of being reluctant “to commit its specialist team on sexual violence to assist with reported cases of gender-based violence. In the face of substantial evidence of horrific, gender-based, atrocity crimes such as rape, sexual violence, torture and mutilations, it is essential that official, contemporary evidence-gathering of crimes must be gathered by forensic professionals as a matter of course.”

The committee chairman, Stephen Twigg MP, said: “The UK has 70 experts ready to deploy to Bangladesh to assist with this situation and yet we haven’t sent them. This flies in the face of the UK’s commitment to deter gender-based violence, championed by William Hague in 2012. It is unacceptable that it is taking the UK so long to send any specialist resources.”

The report said: “The UK government should have expected the high incidence of sexual violence and prepared accordingly. As an international community, we should consider what message this conveys to other regimes.”

The Department for International Development said the committee was wrong to suggest the team was 70 strong since it included a range of experts.

DfID said ministers had repeatedly said “the conditions for a safe, voluntary and dignified return of Rohingya people to Burma are a long way from being met. We continue to push for returns to be in line with UN principles and for international oversight on both sides of the border.”