The Foreign Office is an apologist for genocide

HORRIFYING new evidence has emerged of crimes against humanity in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Government troops are believed to have killed as many as 400 minority Rohingya Muslims in one village alone, burning victims’ faces in an attempt to make sure they were never identified.

This atrocity is alleged to have taken place last August — the same time that the government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, presided over a militaryled persecution of the country’s minority Muslim population (Myanmar’s dominant religion being Buddhism). I have reported from the country on this genocide for the Mail and am sickened by our Foreign Office’s reaction to the killings.

I believe Foreign Office minister Mark Field has disgracefully acted as an apologist for the butchery. When he spoke in the Commons on the subject in September, he appeared to blame the Rohingya Muslims themselves. He said that during one night last August, members of the Rohingya militant group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army ‘attacked numerous police posts’ and he also condemned attacks by Rohingya militants on Burmese security forces.

It seems that Mr Field was blind to the evidence that mounts daily that the Rohingya Muslims have been victims of genocide.

I call on him to apologise in the Commons and, more importantly, to the thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have been raped, murdered and butchered to death.