Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that atrocities committed against the Rohingya by the Burmese military and security forces since August 2017 constitute crimes against humanity and genocide and calling on the Government of Burma to release Burmese journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo sentenced to seven years imprisonment after investigating attacks against civilians by the Burmese military and security forces, and for other purposes

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1091) calling on the Government of Burma to release Burmese journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo sentenced to seven years imprisonment after investigating attacks against civilians by Burma's military and security forces, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, with this resolution, the House will take the important step of naming the atrocities committed against the Rohingya people in Burma for what they are. The word for that is ``genocide.''

The Rohingya people, predominantly of Burma's Rakhine State, are often called the world's most persecuted minority. The Rohingya are essentially stateless people, as the Burmese Government refuses to recognize them as citizens, despite the fact that the Rohingya people have lived in Burma for generations. Further, institutional restrictions on the Rohingya have impacted their rights to study, work, travel, access healthcare services, practice religion, and even to marry.

The most recent wave of persecution began in August 2017, when Burmese security forces and civilian mobs began a horrific wave of attacks. Mass murder, rape, and destruction of villages throughout Rakhine State has been well documented. We have talked to the survivors.

These atrocities have driven 700,000 Rohingya from their homes to Bangladesh, bringing the total Rohingya refugee population in that country to nearly 1 million. Bangladesh has been very generous in accepting all these refugees in the face of such dire circumstances.

A year and a half later, the evidence is overwhelming. As I said at our hearing on the subject this past September,

it is time that we take the next step in declaring that these crimes amount to genocide.

In September, the State Department released a report on the stomach- turning, systematic, and widespread acts of violence against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine State, but failed to label these atrocities genocide.

The State Department's investigation revealed countless heart- wrenching pieces of evidence, like the account of one woman who hid in bushes as she watched Burmese soldiers throw infants and toddlers into a river to drown and shot the mothers of these infants who tried to save them.

The United States has a moral obligation to call these crimes genocide. Failing to do so gives the perpetrators cover and hinders efforts to bring those accountable to justice. With this resolution, the House fulfills its part of that duty.

The measure also accomplishes a number of other important goals. It provides a thorough accounting of the crisis, calls out the complicit Burmese Government, urges the Secretary of State to join us in formally declaring genocide, and promotes multilateral agreement on that declaration.

Importantly, the resolution also calls for the immediate pardon and release of two journalists who were framed and jailed by Burmese authorities for shining a light on some of the atrocities by government forces.

Congress has a proud legacy of declaring genocide when warranted, just as we did over 2 years ago when the House voted unanimously to declare ISIS' atrocities against religious minorities in Iraq and in Syria genocide. It is time to take this sober step again.

I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this measure and fulfilling our responsibility to reinforce the universal values we hold dear.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen), the chairwoman emeritus of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is the author of this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I would like to thank my colleagues on the committee for actually, again, speaking with one voice on this issue, especially the author, Representative Chabot, but also Representatives Engel, Schiff, Yoho, Sherman, Comstock, and Crowley for joining as original cosponsors.

Mr. Speaker, this past September our committee convened another hearing to examine the desperate living conditions of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, and again we heard the story of survivors, all describing the same methodical, unthinkable acts of terror perpetrated by the Burmese military and by the security forces. Witnesses had no doubt that, based on all the evidence, genocide had occurred.

It is time Congress, the administration, and the rest of the world called these atrocities by their rightful name, and that is genocide.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this measure.

First of all, I want to thank Mr. Chabot for authoring this resolution. I also want to thank Representative Joe Crowley for his extraordinary dedication to all the people of Burma, including the Rohingya people. I thank Chairman Royce for bringing this resolution forward and for his leadership on this crucial issue throughout the years.

This resolution calls on the Government of Burma to release Burmese Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who have been sentenced to 7 years following their investigation into the attacks on Rohingya civilians by the Burmese military and security forces. There is overwhelming evidence that these journalists were entrapped by the Burmese Government, who targeted them because of their reporting of the military's horrific crimes.

Their jail sentence is a part of a broader issue. Despite elections in 2015 that brought a pro-democracy civilian government to power, the Burmese Government still operates on antiquated laws that lead to locking up prisoners of conscience, even when their only crimes are reporting information that is unflattering or inconvenient for the government or for the military.

This resolution rightly calls on the civilian government in Burma to repeal the laws that have been used to crack down on civil society and free expression and to pardon prisoners of conscience who have been imprisoned under these unjust laws.

We must take a moment and reflect on the context of these arrests.

The journalists were investigating what we now know were the crimes against humanity and genocide of the Rohingya people. They should not be sitting in a prison cell. They should be celebrated for faithfully carrying out their obligation to report the truth.

This resolution does something else that is very important. It states that, in the opinion of the House, the atrocities inflicted on the Rohingya people by the Burmese military constitute genocide.

It is important that we call it by name. It is a critical step towards justice for the victims. So we need to use the word ``genocide.''

I am glad that this resolution urges the Trump administration to call this atrocity what it is and pursue accountability for this heinous violence.

With this resolution, Congress continues to assert our leadership and show that we stand with the Rohingya people. We will not be silent as the Burmese Government allows or tacitly encourages attacks on the press and on civil society. We will call out injustice when we see it.

So I support this measure, and I urge all Members to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), who retires this year and leaves an extraordinary legacy in this Chamber.

(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman), a senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the ranking member of the Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Speaker, I want to, again, thank my colleagues and Chairman Royce for their hard work on this measure, as always. This is an important resolution. It gives a name to the atrocities that occurred in Rakhine State, calling them genocide, and urges the Trump administration to take appropriate action to hold the Burmese military accountable for these crimes.

I agree with what everybody has mentioned. The resolution also calls for the release of two journalists wrongly imprisoned in Burma; and by passing this resolution today, we not only speak on behalf of these two journalists, but call for an open, civil, transparent, and increasingly democratic society in Burma.

Mr. Speaker, I hope all Members will join me in supporting this measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel for their leadership on this issue, H. Res. 1091, which I introduced to commit the House to a determination that the Burmese military's atrocities against the Rohingya minority in Rakhine State were genocide and to call for the release of the two Reuters journalists who have been unjustly imprisoned by the Burmese government for their investigation into these atrocities.

On August 25 last year, the Burmese military began a barbaric campaign against the Rohingya people in Rakhine State. This premeditated operation resulted in 700,000 Rohingya fleeing from Burma into Bangladesh. In September, Congressman Crowley and I wrote to then- Secretary Tillerson to raise our serious concerns about the violence.

Since then, sufficient evidence has been brought to light to fill in many gruesome details of what exactly happened. Much of this evidence is contained in two reports released in September.

First, the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar released its final report that argued that the Burmese military had genocidal intent against the Rohingya.

Second, the State Department released a report summarizing a survey of Rohingya survivors in Bangladesh that it had commissioned. The State Department's report is particularly disturbing. It calls the violence extreme, large-scale, widespread, and states that ``the scope and scale of the military's operations indicate they were well planned and coordinated.''

Of the 1,000 Rohingya interviewed, about 80 percent witnessed killings and the destruction of villages. In total, 400 villages were burned to the ground. About half of those surveyed witnessed a rape.

I could go on, but the gruesomeness of the eyewitness accounts I would rather not repeat in a civilized setting.

Senior administration officials and numerous Members of Congress have all condemned these atrocities in harsh, unmistakable terms. In light of this evidence, I am asking my colleagues today to join me in making a legal determination by labeling these crimes what they were: genocide and crimes against humanity.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I also urge the administration and the Senate to make determinations similar to the one in this resolution so that we send a clear, unequivocal message to the Burmese Government and to the world that these barbaric and vicious atrocities will not be tolerated.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, as co-chair of the House Freedom of the Press Caucus, I also want to draw attention to the second half of the resolution, which condemns the Burmese Government's decision to jail two Reuters journalists for trying to uncover the facts about the massacre in Rakhine State.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of their arrest, so it is especially timely that we are considering this resolution and calling for their release.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution calling for the release of the two journalists imprisoned after investigating attacks against the Rohingya ethnic minority in Burma, also known as Myanmar.

As I said in the resolution I introduced in early September calling for their release: ``The Burmese police captain involved in their arrest reportedly admitted during the trial that his superior ordered him to entrap the journalists.''

The atrocities committed against the Rohingya--mass killings; rape perpetrated on a massive scale; whole villages burned to the ground, with people being burned alive in their homes; and over 700,000 fleeing the violence to neighboring Bangladesh--have been so extreme that the United Nations issued a report earlier this year calling for Burma's military leaders to be investigated and prosecuted on the charges of genocide. There can be no doubt about the culpability of Burma's military in the oppression and violence inflicted on the Rohingya.

I had the privilege of meeting Aung San Suu Kyi a few years ago as part of a delegation led by Nancy Pelosi, joining in admiration for her perseverance and triumph over oppression. There has been a hesitation by some to criticize Suu Kyi, worrying that it could make it more likely the military would take over the civilian government she leads. But her words and actions in the face of what, in reality, has been genocide have been deeply disturbing, contrary to her past example as a beacon of freedom.

In 2017, the late John McCain and Richard Durbin introduced in the Senate and I introduced in the House a resolution that encouraged ``Aung San Suu Kyi to live up to her inspiring

words upon receiving the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize with respect to ethnic reconciliation in Burma, and in particular to address the historic and brutal repression of the Rohingya in Rakhine State.''

Unfortunately, that resolution was not acted upon.

When Aung San Suu Kyi later said: ``We believe that, for the sake of long-term stability and security, we have to be fair to all sides,'' it was a disturbing message of minimization.

Suu Kyi later said: ``In a way we can say that we understand our country better than any other country does, and I'm sure you will say the same of yours, that you understand your country better than anybody else.''

As Bishop Desmond Tutu said in a letter to Suu Kyi: ``My dear sister: If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep.''

This resolution speaks out against the genocide and crimes against humanity that occurred in Rakhine State. All of humanity must speak out clearly and decisively.

Mr. Speaker, I urge unanimous support for this resolution.