On the recordDecember 11, 2018
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.…
