Debate: Rohingya Refugees - 16th Jan 2024

Parallel Parliament

Rohingya Refugees
Tuesday 16th January 2024

Lords Chamber 

 

The Lord Bishop of St Albans - Hansard - - - Excerpts


To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs what steps he is taking to address the Rohingya Refugee crisis.

Debate Over Myanmar Upends Start to UN Rights Body Session

U.S. News

Associated Press
JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press
June 21, 2021,

FILE - In this Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020 file photo Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The U.N.’s top human rights body opened its latest session on Monday, June 21, 2021 and was immediately embroiled in a debate over the representation of Myanmar, where a military takeover toppled the civilian government in February. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, file) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.’s top human rights body opened its latest session on Monday and was immediately embroiled in a debate over the representation of Myanmar, where a military takeover toppled the civilian government in February.

Western countries said two planned debates about the human rights situation in Myanmar during the Human Rights Council's 3-1/2 week session should go forward, even without the country represented. But China, the Philippines and Venezuela insisted it should be on hand.

Myanmar’s ‘Rohingya’ vs ‘Bengali’ Hate Speech Debate

THE I DIPLOMAT
By Shafiur Rahman 
December 21, 2019
A new campaign seeks to single out local media outlets that refer to the Rohingya ethnic group as “Bengalis.”

Rohingya activists have accused the Myanmar Press Council, a quasi-government media adjudication and ethics body, of defending the practice of using the word “Bengali” to refer to the Rohingya. Rights groups and Rohingya advocates argue that the term amounts to “hate speech” and that it is directly linked to misinformation, “fake news,” and vilification campaigns against the Rohingya actively promoted by the government, the military and others.

Myanmar’s internet and social media landscape has come under increasing scrutiny after a Reuters investigation found over a thousand examples of hate speech attacking the Rohingya and Muslims of Myanmar. Following a UN report’s conclusion that the army had carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya “with genocidal intent,” a number of social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, banned the accounts of Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s army chief, and others in an unprecedented move to control hate speech.

Stay or go: For Rohingya refugees, a divisive debate over island camp plans

The New Humanitarian
Freelance journalist and regular TNH contributor
Kaamil Ahmed
Wednesday, 20 November 2019,

‘Every hour, you have a different thought about what's the best thing for your life.’

COX’S BAZAR

Ali Ahmed’s bamboo tea shop deep in Bangladesh’s Rohingya camps is a hub for debate and discussion for some of the hundreds of thousands of refugees living in these packed settlements.

Lately, the conversation has centred on one divisive issue: the government’s plans to transfer up to 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char, a disaster-prone island near where Bangladesh’s Meghna River meets the Bay of Bengal.

Most Rohingya scoff at the idea of moving to a distant island exposed to cyclones and frequent floods. But in tea shops like Ahmed’s, the tone of these debates is changing.

Worn away by the grind of life in the camps and the dimming prospects of a safe return home more than two years after 700,000 Rohingya were pushed out of Myanmar, some refugees, Ahmed for one, are reconsidering their options.