Myanmar: Religious Minority Persecution

Luke Akehurst Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I commend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing the crisis in Myanmar to our attention and I congratulate the other Back-Bench speakers in the debate so far on their eloquent and important contributions.

I declare my long-standing membership of the Burma Campaign UK. I joined because, about 20 to 25 years ago, I heard testimony from two Burmese refugees at my local Labour party meeting. I asked what I could do, and they said that I should sign up to the Burma Campaign. That is part of the reason I am speaking today, having received their updates and understanding what is going on in the country. I also commend the Burma Campaign on the consistency of its support for human rights. Whatever the changes—the political twists and turns in society in Myanmar, or whichever individuals ended up on different sides of the debate—they have not mattered, because the campaign has consistently advocated for fundamental human rights.

As we have heard, Myanmar is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. Since the military coup in 2021, the Christian and Muslim minority populations of Myanmar have encountered greater violence and tighter restrictions on their freedom. In Rakhine state, about 630,000 Rohingya Muslims remain subject to systematic abuses and crimes against humanity. About 150,000 are held in open-air detention camps. The Rohingya are one of the largest stateless populations in the world, in effect having been denied citizenship since 1982. As we heard from the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam), about 1 million Rohingya live in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, after fleeing Myanmar in 2017, showing the tangible impact of the persecution that we are highlighting, with the displacement of swathes of people, condemning them to a poor quality of life.

As conflict rages in this part of Myanmar, the Rohingya have been caught between the junta and the Arakan Army, which the UN has documented committing multiple violations of international law. Both sides have indiscriminately attacked civilians since hostilities between them resumed in November 2023. I therefore ask the Minister whether she can assure us that aid to Rohingya refugees and the people of Myanmar will not be cut in the context of the overall UK aid budget. The Arakan Army also pursues its agenda of oppression by less direct means. It limits freedom of speech, censors access to international media and communications, arrests journalists, and threatens civil society organisations in the area it controls.

For Christians, the situation is similarly bleak. Believers have been killed and churches have been indiscriminately attacked. Nowhere has that been more intense than in the landlocked state of Chin—the poorest of Myanmar’s 14 states and regions. More and more Christians have been driven out of their homes, finding refuge in churches or displacement camps. Some have even been forced to flee to the jungle, where they are deprived of access to food and basic healthcare. Last year, Myanmar rose two places on the Open Doors world watch list, an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution. It now scores in the extreme category for persecution. That categorisation puts the situation facing Christians in Myanmar on a par with that in places such as Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Myanmar is currently in the process of holding a set of elections that no observer could characterise as free or fair. They will be an opportunity for the Burmese military to rebrand and put forward a false narrative that it is reforming. Frankly, it will not concern the Burmese military that we can see the elections for what they are: a sham. The military junta has said it itself that, in its view,

“Whether the international community is satisfied or not, is irrelevant.”

These elections are vital in understanding this issue. They will be passed off as a front for the appalling human rights abuses and the persecution of minorities we have heard about today. We must stand steadfast against that and reject the idea that these so-called elections give any legitimacy to a malign regime.

In April 2025, the UK supported a Human Rights Council resolution calling for the protection of civilians and all minorities. It has also been clear that it does not regard the military regime in Myanmar as a legitimate Government. I am pleased that the Government have committed to taking any steps they can, including sanctions, to bring about peace. Today is an important chance to strengthen our resolve and stand up for persecuted people who need our protection. Will the Minister therefore explain why it has been more than a year since any new sanctions were imposed to cut off money and arms going to the Myanmar military? Will she assure the House that we will resume imposing such sanctions?

We must not allow the religious minority communities of Myanmar to suffer in silence. I join colleagues across the House in urging the Government to keep standing up for the rights of those persecuted people by expanding targeted sanctions against those committing atrocities, directing humanitarian aid towards those who need it the most and working through international institutions to hold the military junta and other forces waging war in the region to account. Today, we must reaffirm that the UK will never stand by as religious freedom is crushed and human rights are denied.