[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 17 (Wednesday, January 24, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S489-S492]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Rohingya Refugee Crisis

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, on August 25, a minority group of 
Rohingya militants proceeded to attack a number of Burmese police 
outposts in northern Rakhine State, and they inflicted injuries and 
killed about 12 members of the country's security forces in the 
process. These attacks certainly must be condemned, but they have 
triggered a response by the Burmese Government and military that is 
beyond horrific--attacks by the Burmese Government and military that 
have inflicted a massive humanitarian crisis in that nation.
  The Burmese military, aided by mobs of local vigilantes, carried out 
the violence against the Rohingya people in a systematic way. These are 
people who have been in Burma for generations, but they have been 
stripped of their citizenship under Burmese law. In the attacks that 
followed, Doctors Without Borders estimates that well over 6,000 men, 
women, and children were murdered in just the first month of this 
ongoing assault, and that included hundreds of children--an estimated 
700 children ages 5 and under.
  The survivors have shared countless stories of women being raped, men 
murdered, children murdered in the most inhumane ways imaginable. Human 
Rights Watch has reported that the Burmese military and the associated 
vigilantes have burned 354 villages to the ground. The response of the 
Rohingya has been to flee the country, desperately fleeing as fast as 
they could the systematic violence inflicted upon them--systematic 
rape, systematic shooting, the murder of children. The result is that 
650,000 people have fled to the adjoining country of Bangladesh, where 
they are now establishing refugee camps.
  These camps are a big improvement from being attacked, shot, 
murdered, and raped inside Burma, but the camps themselves are just a 
jumble of split bamboo frames with plastic draped over the tops of 
them. You can see here in this photo that the ground has been cleared 
away and people have shoveled out relatively flat sections of the 
hillside, split bamboo into little pieces, tied them together with 
threads, and draped plastic over the top of them.
  I wonder what will happen when the monsoons come or a severe 
windstorm comes. I don't think these shelters are going to hold up.
  The overcrowded conditions and poor sanitation in these camps put 
them directly at risk for diseases like diphtheria and cholera, and 
these camps--full of displaced, disenfranchised, angry young men--are 
also recruiting grounds for violent extremist groups like ISIS. This 
is, in the words of the United Nations, the fastest growing refugee 
emergency in the world. It is unacceptable, and America needs to pay 
attention and respond.
  The flow of refugees has continued, even until now. The numbers have 
dropped. There aren't that many Rohingya left inside of Burma. The 
Governments of Burma and Bangladesh are discussing a repatriation 
strategy on how these individuals may be able to return to Burma, and 
they have a framework for a plan. Burma says that they will welcome 
them and let them go home. They have even said that they can return to 
where their villages were burned and have assistance in rebuilding 
their homes and community structures.
  In the first step, they say that they will house them in reception 
camps, and they also say that they may put them into model villages. 
These words ``reception camps'' and ``model villages'' are words for 
encampments that are based on what is already in much of Rakhine, 
central Rakhine State, which are long-term camps that are essentially 
prison camps--prison camps for the Rohingya.
  If this is not going to unfold in this manner, the world has to be 
engaged. Right now, of course, the Rohingya who have fled this horrific 
violence are

[[Page S490]]

not anxious to return immediately because they don't believe the 
government will protect them. If you had been subjected to a horrific 
rampage of slaughter and violence, why would you immediately go back to 
that unless the circumstances were dramatically modified? Can they 
depend upon the Burmese Government to protect them when they haven't 
protected them since August? Can they depend upon the Burmese military 
to protect them when the Burmese military perpetrated these crimes?
  Repatriation is important. The ability to go back to the villages and 
rebuild them is important, and time is of the essence for it to happen 
in a way that is really going to work. The international community is 
going to have to be involved.
  Let's understand that this assault, which went from August even until 
now, is not a one-time occurrence. It is the latest in a long line of 
atrocious assaults on the Rohingya people. In 1978, Burma's military 
launched Operation King Dragon, causing more than 200,000 Rohingya to 
flee to Bangladesh. There were similar campaigns of assault in 1992 and 
in 2012 and in 2015 and in 2016, none as horrific as what was witnessed 
just a few months ago, in August of 2017, but terrible assaults 
nonetheless.

  Time and again, the Rohingya people have been subjected to abuse, 
persecution, and violence, and recognize this isn't just a tactic that 
the Burmese Government and Burmese military have used against the 
Rohingya. They have used it against other minorities--this systematic 
strategy of burning the village, shooting people as they flee, and 
raping the mothers and daughters. We have seen this with assaults on 
ethnic minorities in the Shan and Kachin States, where people have 
faced very similar persecution. In fact, in those States, over 100,000 
people have been displaced by the military since 2011. So the United 
States and the world must not only stand up and say that this ethnic 
cleansing against the Rohingya is wrong, but also say that this 
strategy being used by the Burmese military against minorities is 
absolutely unacceptable under any code of moral conduct, under any 
religious vision, under any civilized understanding of the treatment of 
citizens.
  Much of what took place over the last few decades was out of sight of 
the world because Burma was closed off to the world. But then Burma 
went through a diplomatic awakening, the budding of democratic 
institutions, and they have been more open to the world, so now we can 
see very vividly what is going on. They are not hidden, and there is no 
excuse for the world to turn away and not engage.
  Neither the Burmese Government nor the military is ready for 
international cooperation. They have left the international community 
out of the process of trying to address these issues. They have 
rejected the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees--no 
international monitoring allowed and freedom of the press curtailed.
  The Rohingya people are right to be wary of how they will be 
repatriated without significant international involvement, without 
strongly developed measures for their safety, without a changed 
attitude by the government.
  That is why, yesterday in the Senate, I introduced a resolution 
calling for international pressure and oversight to be brought to bear 
on the repatriation process. It calls upon the United Nations High 
Commissioner for Refugees to play a central role in ensuring that any 
repatriation of the Rohingya people is safe, voluntary, and dignified.
  The concern for the treatment of the Rohingya is bipartisan. I 
appreciate the 14 Senators who have already cosponsored my resolution. 
Particular thanks go to Senator John McCain and to Senator Todd Young 
not only for supporting this resolution but also for being advocates 
for the Rohingya people and for global human rights.
  I was profoundly shocked when the Burmese military started these 
massive assaults back in August. I knew it was important for our 
government to pay attention, for the people of the United States to pay 
attention, and for Members of this Senate to pay attention and to weigh 
in and try to create pressure to end the persecution and create a 
different path for the future.
  In the month that followed, there was a lot of international outcry 
about how wrong this was, and First State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, 
who is Burma's head of state, responded with a speech to the world 
through the United Nations. She invited the world ``to go with us into 
the troubled areas. . . . See for yourself what is happening and think 
for yourself: what can we do to remove these problems?''
  I applauded that attitude and that invitation to the world to be 
engaged and be involved and see what was happening. Senator Durbin and 
I, along with three Members of the House--Congresswoman Betty McCollum 
from Minnesota, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky from Illinois, and 
Congressman David Cicilline from Rhode Island--came together and 
accepted her invitation. We accepted her offer, and we planned a trip 
for November to go see the troubled areas in Burma, just as Aung San 
Suu Kyi had suggested.
  We intended to go to the afflicted areas. We intended to see for 
ourselves what was happening. We intended to talk to those left behind 
to get as full a story as possible. And we intended, as she indicated, 
to think of what we can do to reverse the situation.
  The Burmese Government worked with us to plan this trip. It involved 
a tremendous amount of logistics on how we could get to northern 
Rakhine State. But at the very last moment, just as we were getting 
ready to leave Washington, DC, the government reversed course. The 
Government of Burma said: We invited you, but now we will block you 
from visiting these afflicted areas.
  Clearly, the Burmese Government and military had a lot to hide. Their 
invitation to the world from the Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, 
turned out not to be sincere. She did not stand behind her invitation. 
She did not ensure that the world could come and see what was going on.
  We were not allowed to visit the villages that had been burned. We 
were not allowed to visit camps from the previous repatriation of 
individuals, called internally displaced persons camps, or IDP camps.
  We were allowed to fly into the capital of Rakhine State, Sittwe. In 
the capital of Sittwe, there was something there that I didn't expect 
at all. In the capital, there is a section of the city that is referred 
to as the Muslim quarter, the Muslim neighborhood. It is called Aung 
Mingalar. We were told we could go visit the Muslim quarter, Aung 
Mingalar, and so we did. This is a street in Aung Mingalar. At the end 
of the street, you have a police station, and you have a fence. In 
fact, every route out of this neighborhood is blocked by police.

  The people who live there are not currently trapped by high walls and 
extensive barbed wire, but it is illegal for them to leave this 
neighborhood--think of the early stages of the Warsaw ghetto in Poland. 
I had no idea this existed, and it is an indication of the situation 
the Rohingya live in, not just in this quarter, but there are 120,000 
of them in camps that have been set up where they are not allowed to 
operate as a normal individual, in a normal economy, in a normal 
village. This neighborhood is functionally sealed off from the rest of 
the city. They cannot leave and go a short distance away to open their 
shops, so they have no means to support themselves. They are trapped in 
a neighborhood cage with the barriers, police station, and consequences 
if they leave without permission.
  If they have a medical emergency, then what they have to do is get 
permission to leave to travel to an IDP camp--internally displaced 
persons camp--see a doctor at the IDP camp, get a referral to the 
hospital, return back to their neighborhood, and then go to the 
hospital that is just 5 minutes away. So it is a trip of many hours in 
order to go to the healthcare facility that is just minutes away. Can 
you imagine what that is like in a health emergency? Why? It is just a 
direct affliction on these Muslim residents in this Buddhist nation.
  They are dependent to survive on relatives who have found a path to 
other countries who can send money back to them so they can purchase 
goods, and they are also dependent upon the government. The government 
provides teachers for the higher high school-level classrooms, and 
those teachers disappeared after the August assaults and haven't 
returned. The children of this neighborhood are not allowed to go to 
the universities. So this may not

[[Page S491]]

look so horrific unless you know the facts; that it is a zone that is 
essentially a prison inside the capital city for the Muslim residents.
  In order to learn more, our delegation traveled to Bangladesh to the 
refugee camps. We went to a camp called Balukhali, and that visit 
brought home the breadth and horror of the human rights crisis that 
these men, women, and children have endured. Speak to any member of the 
delegation, and they will tell you that articles and reports written 
about what has happened are not the same as hearing firsthand and face-
to-face the stories of the atrocities the Rohingya refugees have 
suffered. At Balukhali, Senator Durbin and I went into a temporary 
classroom with tarp over the top where women had gathered to learn 
about sanitation and disease prevention, and I asked the interpreter 
who was with us: Would you ask these women if they have stories they 
would like to share? I wasn't sure these Muslim women, covered in 
traditional Muslim clothing, would be willing to share a story with an 
outsider, but they immediately responded. One woman jumped up, and she 
pulled the cloth off her arm to show the scars from the burns she had 
as her village hut came down around her as she tried to escape. Then 
other women jumped up to tell other stories--of a child being killed in 
front of her, of a husband being slaughtered, of the trials and 
tribulations of trying to escape the assault from the military. Every 
person in that room had tragic and horrifying stories to share--entire 
villages burned to the ground, entire villages fleeing for the border, 
being shot at by solders as they tried to cross the border into 
Bangladesh. They themselves did not share stories about the rapes, but 
they shared those stories with the doctors and others who shared the 
stories with us.
  As you walk around the camp, you see a lot of young kids, a lot of 
children. Some are helping out with their families. Some are orphans. 
Some are kicking balls around. I watched one young man run with a 
little sheet of plastic that he had put split bamboo on to create a 
little tiny kite, and they could get that thing about 10 feet in the 
air. He had a smile on his face, and you could almost envision these 
were regular children growing up like others around the world.
  Then I went and visited with a group of the children who were doing 
drawings, and when you saw their drawings, you realized what they had 
been through. Here I am talking to a young boy who is showing me his 
drawing of a helicopter and a military vehicle coming into the village. 
Here is one of the drawings that was held up. You see the helicopter 
shooting at the village and the drawing of the machineguns. The village 
house is under assault. Here is another child's drawings, and again 
there are helicopters. You see the houses built on stilts. Here is a 
military man on the ground shooting at them as they are playing. These 
children have been through horrific, horrific trauma. Their families 
have been fractured, they may not have a mother or father, and somehow 
they are going forward in life.

  I would like to say that the situation has improved since our trip, 
but the situation is still extremely bad. Take a look at this map from 
Human Rights Watch. These red dots are villages that have been burned--
all of these, these two lines of villages. At last count, 354 villages 
burned, and it wasn't just in August and September but the burning 
continued. The Human Rights Watch said in October and November, another 
40 villages were burned. In fact, one was burning on November 25 right 
after our delegation returned to the United States of America.
  Is it any wonder the Burmese Government didn't want us going in to 
see any of these sites firsthand? We are not the only ones who were 
denied access. All of the U.N. organizations, including a factfinding 
mission and an investigator named Yanghee Lee, were stopped from 
visiting these afflicted areas. International aid groups like the Red 
Cross were denied access.
  A mass grave containing the bodies of a group of Muslims was 
uncovered in Rakhine State's Inn Din village just north of Sittwe, the 
capital where we were. In a rather shocking first, the Burmese military 
actually accepted responsibility for the deaths, claiming that soldiers 
and villagers reacted to provocation from terrorists and that those who 
were involved would be punished. Do you think they are really going to 
be punished? I will tell you who gets punished. It is reporters, and 
these are the two reporters who reported it. Where are they? They are 
in prison--Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two reporters for Reuters. 
Shouldn't the United States and the international community demand that 
they be set free and demand those who perpetrated these crimes against 
humanity be the ones in prison? These two young men have been charged 
with violating the country's Official Secrets Act and are facing 14 
years in prison for ``illegally'' acquiring information and sharing it 
with foreign media. It sounds to me like these two reporters were doing 
exactly what Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate, said: Come and see.
  There is a continuing cycle of violence and radicalization. Burma 
justifies their actions as a response to attacks by ARSA, but let's 
recognize a very small group of attacks occurred, and then the response 
was hundreds of thousands of people had their villages burned to the 
ground and were driven out of the country.
  Well, there is going to be perpetuation of a cycle of violence unless 
the mindset of the Government of Burma changes dramatically. Right now, 
we need to be engaged in the possibility of repatriation because it is 
urgent that these refugees get a chance to return to their villages and 
rebuild them, but it will not happen unless we insist on deep 
involvement by the United Nations.
  Reflecting on the Rwandan genocide 4 years afterward, President 
Clinton said:

       We owe to those who died and to those who survived who 
     loved them, our every effort to increase our vigilance and 
     strengthen our stand against those who would commit such 
     atrocities in the future here or elsewhere.
       Indeed, we owe it to all the peoples of the world who are 
     at risk because each bloodletting hastens the next as the 
     value of human life is degraded and violence becomes 
     tolerated, the unimaginable becomes more conceivable.

  For the thousands of Rohingya slaughtered and the hundreds of 
thousands more who survived and fled, the unimaginable has become all 
too conceivable. Five months after these atrocities began, 5 months 
tomorrow, in fact, the world has not heard from our President about 
this horrific ethnic cleansing.
  I encourage President Trump to weigh in on this, to speak with moral 
clarity, to condemn the Burmese Government for executing this horrific 
case of ethnic cleansing, to praise and support Bangladesh for opening 
its doors, to call on the world to provide Bangladesh with 
international resources to help address the plight of the refugees, to 
demand the safe and internationally monitored opportunity for the 
Rohingya refugees to return to their villages, rebuild their homes, and 
rebuild their lives.
  We in the Senate must not be silenced. Thank you, again, to my 14 
colleagues who have already signed on to this resolution. Our 
repatriation resolution calls on Nobel laureate and head of state Aung 
San Suu Kyi and Burma's other civilian leaders and military leaders to 
recognize that longstanding prejudices haunt Burma and commit to 
implementing all the recommendations of Kofi Annan's Advisory 
Commission on Rakhine State, which seeks to end the discrimination 
against the Rohingya and reduce the tension with other minorities.
  The Burmese Government could begin doing so immediately by lifting 
restrictions on the IDP camps and the Aung Mingalar, while planning to 
shut down the IDP camps entirely and restoring the opportunity for full 
participation in society.
  We call upon Burma to work with Bangladesh and the U.N. High 
Commissioner for Refugees to ensure the voluntary and safe repatriation 
of refugees. Safety must be assured for these refugees. There must be 
no forcible repatriation. It must be voluntary, it must be safe, and it 
must be monitored by an international organization. We can make sure 
they get assistance in returning to rebuild their homes and their 
lives.
  We must call on Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi to embrace transparency, 
to grant humanitarian aid groups access, to release the two journalists 
in prison for doing their jobs. Finally, we

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must call on the international community to invest in the future of the 
Rohingya people. Everyone has a part to play in the economic 
development of the Rakhine State--the poorest state in Burma--for the 
benefit of all.
  In closing, anyone who looks at the events that have occurred since 
last August can plainly see the massive scale of human catastrophe. Let 
it not continue. The world that cried out ``never again'' so 
passionately decades ago, that rallied against the war crimes of 
Kosovo, that condemned the Rwandan genocide has an obligation to stand 
up once again--this time in Burma--for the universal right of every 
human to live in peace, free from fear and free from persecution.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.