Actions: Crisis in Arakan State – Write to The Foreign Secretary

Dear Foreign Secretary

Dear Foreign Secretary

Since 2012 there has been a downward spiral in the human rights and humanitarian situation of the ethnic Rohingya in Burma.

Even before this downward spiral, the situation of the Rohingya was unacceptable, with their being denied citizenship and facing the most persecution of any ethnic minority in the country.

Today, 140,000 Rohingya live in squalid camps with no prospect of returning home and where children are dying because of a lack of basic healthcare.

Rather than repealing the 1982 Citizenship Law, new laws are being passed and proposed which further strip the Rohingya of what few rights they had.

Now a new plan proposed by the Burmese government will further increase discrimination and could result in hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people being interned in what amount to concentration camps.

The draft Rakhine State Action Plan is completely unacceptable, violates international law, and must be rejected by the British government and rest of the international community.

As current approaches are clearly failing to significantly influence the Burmese government to improve the situation for the Rohingya, new approaches must now be tried.

I urge you reject the Rakhine State Action Plan in its entirety and instead support the following two steps as ways to start to make progress in addressing some of these problems:

• Support UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon personally taking the lead in negotiating a comprehensive agreement to ensure free international humanitarian access in Rakhine State.
• Support the establishment of an independent international investigation into violations of international law in Rakhine State, and into government laws and policies which target the Rohingya.

Yours sincerely