Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. It is a pleasure to do so and I congratulate the member for Griffith for moving what is both a timely and important motion on the situation faced by Muslims in Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine State. It is timely because the UN Human Rights Council is currently considering what action it should take following the report from its special rapporteur, but it is also important, because the clear evidence is that a large segment of the Myanmar population—the Muslims in Rakhine—are experiencing systematic discrimination and abuse of their human rights.

Myanmar is a country in transition. After so many decades of military rule, it has seen for the first time the election of a democratic parliament. For many of us around the world, along with its own people, we have watched the progress towards democracy with both concern and inspiration, as we have seen so many Myanmar residents maintain that commitment to see democracy achieved in their own country. Of course, no person has been more central to that than Aung San Suu Kyi, who is genuinely a hero to her own people but also an emblem for all of us around the world who believe that democracy is fundamental to the human rights and dignity of mankind that we all seek to achieve.

We should, however, not assume that the election of a democratic parliament is the end of that process; in so many ways, it is just the beginning and, as the member for Griffith alluded to, there are so many challenges facing this new government. It is effectively seeking to create a new civil administration from scratch after so many years of military rule. It faces a situation where the constitution it inherited still gives extraordinary control to the military, reflected in the fact that they have 25 per cent of the seats in parliament and a guaranteed right to control most of the defence and security departments and ministerial portfolios. It faces the internal conflicts that have racked Burma, and now Myanmar, for so many years and has established a peace process to try and tackle those issues. Most fundamentally, it faces those extraordinary economic and social challenges of lifting a nation that has been isolated for so long back into the path of economic and social development. None of those challenges, however, in any way relinquish the obligations that the new Myanmar government has to work towards ensuring that human rights are extended to all its people. What the international community has seen is clear evidence of the fact that those human rights, to the extent that they exist in Myanmar, are not being extended to the Muslim communities of Rakhine State.

As the member for Griffith mentioned, we had the opportunity to observe this firsthand through those of us who were privileged to be invited by Save the Children fund to travel to Myanmar earlier this year. The delegation's purpose was to look at foreign aid and the work of aid agencies generally, but it was not possible to be there without the issue of Muslims in Rakhine State looming large on our agenda. We had the opportunity to meet with senior officials from the national and the state government of Rakhine, with aid agencies, with the UN personnel on the ground and perhaps, most importantly of all, with many members of the local Muslim community—this instance, some of the 120,000 people currently living in IDC camps across Rakhine State. What was evident from that is that there are systematic human rights abuses occurring, which were reflected in some basic things like access to access to education and health care: members of IDC camps were simply not allowed to use hospital facilities in Sittwe, even in life-threatening circumstances, their movement across the state is restricted and, in many cases, they are deprived of the ability to leave the IDC camps; and members of the Muslim community are completed denied access to the normal institutions of civil society. More dramatically, however, we saw evidence of the systematic misuse of the military's power and the rape and burning of villagers and, in some cases, murder, as the member for Griffith alluded to.

The pathway forward is complicated but there is a pathway forward, and I think the recommendations that were outlined by Kofi Annan in a report released last week provide a blueprint to achieve that. I am pleased that the government of Aung San Suu Kyi has accepted those recommendations. But it is incumbent upon all of us to make sure that she lives up to the promise that she has made.

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