Myanmar has rejected statements by senior U.N. rights officials that Rohingya are enduring “ongoing genocide” a year after a brutal military campaign drove more than 700,000 members of the Muslim ethnic minority into Bangladesh.
In remarks to reporters before a briefing to the U.N. Security Council that Myanmar had tried to block with the help of China, Marzuki Darusman, chair of the U.N. fact-finding mission on Myanmar, said thousands of Rohingya are still fleeing to Bangladesh and those that remained suffered severe repression.
"It is an ongoing genocide that is taking place at the moment," he told a news conference Wednesday at the United Nations.
"The Myanmar government's hardened positions are by far the greatest obstacle," Darusman told reporters.
"Its continued denials, its attempts to shield itself under the cover of national sovereignty, and its dismissal of 444 pages of details about the facts and circumstances of recent human rights violations that point to the most serious crimes under international law" underscores the need for international action, he said.
Myanmar has rejected the U.N. fact-finding report, issued in late August, and other well-documented accounts of the carnage and set up its own commission to look into the crisis, but Darusman said “accountability cannot be expected from the national processes."
Myanmar’s claim that it wants to repatriate Rohingya from Bangladesh are untenable, he said.
"Remaining Rohingya in Rakhine state are at grave risk," Darusman said, and any repatriation under current conditions would be "tantamount to condemning them to life as subhumans and further mass killing."
Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special investigator on human rights in Myanmar, said Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and de facto leader of the country, "is in total denial" about the brutal military campaign of rape, murder and torture of Rohingya.
"Right now, it's like an apartheid situation where Rohingyas still living in Myanmar ... have no freedom of movement," Lee said. "The camps, the shelters, the model villages that are being built, it's more of a cementing of total segregation or separation from the Rakhine ethnic community."
Darusman said the Security Council should refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or another international tribunal and take other measures against the country and those responsible for atrocities against the Rohingya.
Denial repeated
Myanmar's U.N. ambassador, Hau Do Suan, repeated the same denials Myanmar has offered since the beginning of the crisis.
“This fact‑finding mission’s report is unconstructive and full of prejudice,” he said. “We don’t accept and condemn the calls for referring Myanmar situation to ICC or an independent court.”
Hau Do Suan’s stance was largely echoed by key figures in Myanmar, including by a human rights lawyer.
“It is not good if the U.N. discusses Myanmar according to the fact‑finding mission’s report, because its report is based only on oral testimonies,” said Min Lwin Oo, a lawyer at the Asian Human Rights Commission.
“If the U.N. keeps discussing Myanmar issues according to these two reports, it will be difficult for Myanmar to adhere what the U.N. decides,” he told RFA’s Myanmar Service.
A spokesman for the military-affiliated main opposition party faulted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government — not for the Rohingya crisis, but for listening to international opinions.
“We have suggested and urged the current government repeatedly both inside and outside of parliament not to accept interference from foreign countries,” said Thein Tun Oo, spokesman for the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
“We know what could happen if the Myanmar government listens to this international interference and we have warned about it,” he told RFA.
A former student leader from Myanmar’s abortive 1988 democracy movement, however, urged the government to move beyond denial and actively deal with the issue, which he said “makes Myanmar look ugly internationally.”
“We need to create a situation that is proper by working based on real facts and information instead of constant denial,” said Mya Aye, leader of the National Democratic Force, a political party formed by student leaders.
“Myanmar should resolve this issue together with international community to get fair result and justice,” he told RFA.
Reported by Thiri Min Zin and Khin Khin Ei for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Paul Eckert.
The Burmese Military may not be saint but the Military has done nothing wrong other than the Military was helping and protecting innocent civilian lives of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians when the Middle Eastern religion organization back the Islamic terrorist group the ARSA coordinated attacked on 30 Burmese Border Guard Posts, tens of Police Stations, around 60 Buddhist ethnics villages and Hindu homes on 24/08/2017 and during the operation to find the Islamic terrorists in the Bengali Muslim villages.
The Bengali Muslims fleeing to Bangladeshi Border was ordered and enforced by the Islamic terrorist group the ARSA and the OIC, also they flee to Bangangladeshi border by fear of reprisal the rumors created by the group connection to the Islamic terrorist group the ARSA. The Bengali Muslims had burned down their home because they have been told the Middle East Governments will build bigger and better house for them by the ARSA. Most of Bengali villages were burned down by the Islamic terrorist group the ARSA and then the OIC and the UN OHCHR had accused the Burmese Military and Buddhist Rakhine villagers had torched the Bengali Muslim villages.
The UN Fact Finding Mission was not independent mission after all. The UN, the OIC and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and the Western supporters must understand about what they are doing and must know what kind of result will affect on those peoples from their dishonest and unfair action against Buddhist Burmese peoples and Government.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and the OIC must understand about the independence Islamic state or to establish the UN monitor a Safe Zone for those Bengali Muslims in Northern Rakhine State will never happen. If the UN force or the Islamic force step on the Rakhine soil or Burmese soil and then there will be war. They have to learn Burmese history first before they are going to commit grave error in history.
[This comment has been edited by RFA Editorial staff per our Terms of Use]
Oct 29, 2018 10:24 AM
