Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. It is a great privilege to speak following the member for Fowler, who has spent so much time in his parliamentary career advocating for issues like this one. What we are speaking about today is one of the most extraordinary human rights abuses that we have seen in recent decades in South-East Asia. The member for Fowler and I share a mutual passion for the subject. We have big Cambodian and Vietnamese communities, and we have growing Rohingyan communities. That's why it's a real pleasure to be able to express their incredibly strong feelings about the matter that we talking about today.

The escalating human rights crisis in Rakhine state, perpetrated by members of the Myanmar security forces, has been ongoing since August 2017. I have the great privilege of representing somewhere around 1,000 Rohingya people in my electorate of Hotham. I meet with them regularly, and I try to do the things that we do as local members of parliament. I connect them into community organisations, I support them getting active, getting involved and getting organised in their local area. But when I ask them what the most important thing is that I can help them with as a member of parliament, it is doing the thing I am doing right now—providing them with a voice. What they are desperately concerned about is the family and friends, the communities, the villages, that are being devastated by violence, by ruthless extermination of people who are doing nothing else but being of a particular ethnic origin that these security forces don't like. It is gut-wrenching to sit down with these people as they will literally cry tears of pain and talk about the things that are happening and what's going on back home. They want us to speak up as parliamentarians, because this sort of violence is unacceptable. It's unacceptable here; it's unacceptable anywhere in the world. We need to make sure we speak with one voice and make that clear.

The torture and the suffering of Rohingyan men, women and children is still continuing to date. We know that at least 300 villages have been completely destroyed by the military presence there. There is endemic rape and sexual violence against women. In one week 3,000 people were killed and more than 52 villages were burned and destroyed. As you would know, Deputy Speaker, the United Nations tries to speak without making too much fuss, law I suppose you could say, in what it says about issues like this, but it has described the situation in Rakhine state as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. These are extremely strong words to be used by the United Nations. We know that almost 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017, and they're in refugee camps now. There are 200,000 Rohingya who are languishing in these camps, some of whom are living in absolutely intolerable conditions. They have limited access to food, water, shelter, medical treatment and humanitarian assistance. Deputy Speaker, something that I know strikes you in the heart, as it does me, is that a very large majority of the people living in these camps are women and children. They face threats, including that of being human-trafficked and of sexual abuse.

It is a massive humanitarian crisis. Even though we are very well aware of what's going on from our standpoint in Australia, the limited response from the Australian government has been very disappointing. I think $5 million was offered initially for the emergency relief effort. Seven hundred thousand people have been displaced by this crisis, so I think we can agree that $5 million is not going to go too far. In October 2017 the government committed a further $10 million. But it is so clear to me, and so clear to the people who I represent, that we can and we must do more to help with this crisis. This is the fastest-growing refugee and humanitarian crisis in the world right now.

On 13 September last year, the UN Security Council agreed on a pretty strongly-worded statement on Myanmar, condemning the violence in the Rakhine region. It was the first time they'd done so in nine years. The United Nations Association of Australia has called on the Australian government to intensify our diplomatic efforts to try to help resolve this, and I want to join in those calls. As Australians, we have an important, respected voice in this region. We can't stand by while people who are our neighbours in South-East Asia are treated in this way. There are people there who are being treated in ways worse than anything, really, that we could imagine. I think we need to be doing a lot more to speak up, and I do so today on behalf of my Rohingyan residents.

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