Calling on the Government of Burma to Release Burmese Journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo

Floor Speech

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, for reasons well explained by the preceding speakers, I am pleased to join in supporting this resolution and to commend Mr. Chabot for introducing it. I was pleased to introduce it along with him and along with the chair, the ranking member, and several other Members of this House.

This resolution deals with Burma, whose government chooses to call itself Myanmar, but we officially take the position that the country retains its name of Burma. This resolution calls out the Burmese military for their acts of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya and highlights the cases of two journalists who were imprisoned for simply trying to shed light on these historic stories.

One of my priorities as ranking member of the Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee has been to focus attention on the 700,000 Rohingya who have been forced to flee Burma and relocate to Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries.

They have not fled because they wanted to leave home. They have not fled because Bangladesh is someplace where it is easy to make a living. They have fled to refugee camps because they have no choice, for the Rohingya communities have faced widespread attacks, rapes, killings, and burning of villages, all orchestrated by the Burmese military.

Not only that, but the Burmese State takes the position that the Rohingya are not citizens of their country because they can't prove that their great-grandparents were born in the country.

So, if someone is born in Burma, their parents were born in Burma, they could even prove their grandparents were born in Burma, they are denied a Burmese passport.

Now, this resolution uses the term ``genocide,'' not a word we should throw around, but in this case it is clearly a test that has been met.

In reports by the Public International Law & Policy Group and by our own Holocaust museum, the evidence is there that the United Nations' definition of genocide has been met.

The United Nations' Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines ``genocide'' as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That is exactly what the Burmese military is doing, and denying citizenship is just part of that effort.

This resolution sends an important message to the Burmese military, and it also focuses on two Reuters journalists who exposed the mass murder in the village of Indin. Those two journalists are Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were interviewing eyewitnesses to this crime. This is part of the Burmese genocide of the Rohingya.

But instead of applauding their bravery, the Burmese Government arrested them and accused them of violating the Official Secrets Act. Of course, we understand that a government that is committing genocide wants to declare that genocide to be a state secret.

And so, for that as their only crime, these two journalists have been sentenced to 7 years of hard labor in prison.

There is only one just outcome here. State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint must pardon these journalists. They must acknowledge that the Burmese military is committing atrocities against the Rohingya. They must provide the Rohingya papers of citizenship.

We need to pass this resolution, hopefully unanimously, to say that genocide must be stopped and the two journalists must be released.

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