Thursday, 4 December 2025

 Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (09:59): On Tuesday morning I returned from the Thai–Burma border region, where I visited, amongst other things, the Mae La refugee camp, a camp that is home to some 30,000 refugees of the murderous thugs running the Burmese regime. That regime continues to engage in the bombing of villages, of schools and of medical centres by air against unarmed civilians. There is an impending urgent and serious economic famine in this region. The withdrawal by the Trump administration of the United States Agency for International Development from the region has meant that those refugee camps, which total some 100,000 residents across the Thai–Burma border region, are about to have no funding whatsoever for food subsistence. That is at a cost of about $1 million a month.

There are 100,000 people who are right now being tipped into famine, but it is an economic famine, a famine induced only by the actions of the Trump administration. For the sake of just $1 million a month those 100,000 people could be receiving subsistence rations of rice, at the bare minimum. I travelled with a group called Sharing Hope, who do fantastic work in this region, including through supporting a school in the region which is doing simply amazing work, including training students to produce prostheses for the very large number of amputee victims. It is fantastic work, and I commend it.