The Rt Hon Mark Field MP

Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

23^rd April 2018

Dear Mark,

I recently met with two local residents who told me about the risks facing indigenous women in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region of Bangladesh and raised their concerns about the authorities’ systematic failure to both prevent sexual and other violence and facilitate access to justice for survivors. They told me about Rani Yan Yan, who is the sister in law of one of the women I met and who was assaulted by military and plain clothes police in Rangamati hospital on 15 February. Rani Yan Yan was in CHT with other Human Rights Defenders to support a 14 year old girl and her 19 year old sister, one of whom had been raped and the other sexually assaulted at gunpoint by military personnel on 22 January, and both were then unlawfully confined in the hospital.

This is just one of many cases and I have pasted below a statement from the Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development which provides a useful summary of the wider situation.

It makes clear how indigenous women and children are routinely targeted and subjected to systematic sexual violence. I understand that men speaking against military and settlers’ atrocities in the CHT risk being killed, and witnesses, or those who try to help, risk being abducted, beaten and criminalised. Dayasona Chakma and Monti Chakma are the most recently abducted women activists, released just last week after a month whilst Kalpana Chakma, abducted 22 years ago, remains missing. Perpetrators meanwhile enjoy impunity.

According to a report from Amnesty International, in 2014 alone there were 117 reported cases of physical and sexual abuse against indigenous women and girls, 57 per cent of them children. Twenty-one were raped or gang-raped and seven were killed afterwards. The unreported cases are expected to be much higher.

Please can you tell me what discussions you have had with the authorities in Bangladesh or Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina about human rights abuses in the CHT; whether you have raised the role of the security forces, who are reported as colluding in abuses; whether you will publicly call for the safe return of all abducted women activists, a full investigation into human rights in the CHT and for perpetrators to be brought to justice. The UK Government can also help protect indigenous women by calling on Bangladesh to implement in full the 1997 CHT Peace Accord in the run up to their 21^st anniversary this December and for the demilitarisation of the CHT and removal of the army camps in accordance with the Accord.

In the last 3 years UK military export licences for Bangladesh have been granted to  companies that sell sniper rifles, 40mm grenades, mortar shells, naval munitions, detonators, military helicopters, fighter aircraft, drones, missiles, naval guns, artillery and armoured combat vehicles – all despite it being an FCO country of concern. Please will you tell me what steps you have taken to ensure that no UK exports are at risk of being used to commit human rights abuses in CHT, including by security forces that might be complicit by turning a blind eye to such abuses, for example?

The behaviour of the military and security forces has been highlighted by numerous human rights groups and, given the Bangladesh army is currently the second-largest troop-contributing country to UN peacekeeping forces, this aspect needs particular attention. Please can you tell me whether this has been raised by the FCO and whether the Government has a policy on an army whose soldiers commit such violence against women (and which allows settlers to commit violence with impunity) should be permitted to take part in peace keeping missions.

I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,