On March 9, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news conference in Geneva that what he suspected were “acts of genocide” against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority should be referred to the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution.
Two days earlier, the UN’s point-person on human rights called for the creation of a new body tasked with preparing criminal indictments over alleged atrocities committed in Myanmar, similar to the panel created to document and deal with crimes against humanity perpetrated in Syria’s conflict.
To buttress the point, Zeid said: “Access for independent human rights monitoring is practically non-existent across Myanmar, but it appears clear that longstanding discriminatory policies and practices also continue against other groups. In Shan and Kachin states, civilian casualties continue to be reported as a result of attacks by the security forces.”
Yanghee Lee, the UN investigator on human rights in Myanmar who has not been allowed access to the country to probe alleged rights abuses, echoed Zeid by saying she was “increasingly of the opinion that the events bear the hallmarks of genocide” and that she would press for prosecutions for crimes committed against entire ethnic and religious groups.
“The government leadership who did nothing to intervene, stop, or condemn these acts must also be held accountable,” Lee said.
An estimated 700,000 Rohingya have fled from northern Rakhine state into Bangladesh since the military launched “area clearance” operations in response to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgent attacks on police outposts last August 25.
Those military operations were by nearly all accounts disproportionate to the threat represented by ARSA’s ragtag, lightly armed fighters.
Médecins Sans Frontières estimates that 6,700 people were killed in the first month of the crackdown; the Myanmar government claims only 400 were killed, nearly all of whom they considered “terrorists.”
According to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), citing data from the Bangladeshi government, 28,300 Rohingya children who fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar have lost at least one parent, while an additional 7,700 children have reportedly lost both parents.
That puts the number of “lost” parents in the refugee crisis as high as 43,700, according to APHR, though the group added it is unclear how many of the children are siblings and may have lost the same parent.
Myanmar’s National Security Advisor, Thaung Tun, is leading the lobbying effort to deny the scale of the violence and improve the government’s badly tainted international image.
At a press conference this week in Geneva he said: “We often heard many accusations that there is ethnic cleansing or even genocide in Myanmar…it is not the policy of the government.”
He added: “Whenever there is clear evidence we will make sure that action is taken against those who have perpetrated any crimes or those who have caused human rights abuses.
“The very fact that Myanmar is willing to take back people who have crossed over the border” to Bangladesh indicates “we are not planning to have them out of the country,” he said, claiming a majority of Rohingya remain in villages in Rakhine and that if there had been an attempt at state-sponsored genocide they all would have fled to Bangladesh.
When asked queried about Thaung Tun’s remarks, Zeid said undiplomatically that Myanmar authorities were “serial deniers of the truth” and “to suggest that nothing serious has happened in Rakhine, I mean it’s preposterous, ridiculous. How can they say such a thing?”
Thaung Tun countered that the Rohingya fled largely because the ARSA armed group had sowed fear and loathing in their communities, accusing the insurgents of forcing villagers to join their attacks on the security forces and implementing a scorched earth policy of burning villages while in retreat.
Independent security analysts estimate the newly formed armed group has around 3,000-4,000 members, though that figure could by now be higher after a vigorous recruiting drive amid the deprivation and desperation in Bangladesh’s refugee camps.
However, Thaung Tun implausibly told the BBC in a recent interview that ARSA could have anywhere between 10,000 to 20,000 members and that with sympathizers and family members the number could be as high as 200,000.
Whatever the figure, pressure is rising on Myanmar’s government to acknowledge the scale of the violence and accept accountability for the crimes. Officials have claimed any abuses were isolated incidents of wayward security forces, including the killings associated with a mass grave discovered at Rakhine state’s Inn Din village.
On March 12, the UN Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Myanmar called directly on Myanmar authorities to stop dismissing reports of serious security forces perpetrated human rights violations committed not only Rakhine but also in conflict-ridden Kachin and Shan states.
“The body of information and materials we are collecting is concrete and overwhelming,” the three top experts on the FMM said in their interim oral report to this week’s 37th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. “It points at human rights violations of the most serious kind, in all likelihood amounting to crimes under international law.”
Still, the task of bringing the perpetrators to justice – in this instance the Myanmar military and its top commanders, including Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing – will not be easy due to the geopolitics of the United Nations Security Council, where Myanmar allies China and Russia can veto any proposal to impose sanctions.
But the noose is nonetheless tightening on Myanmar’s government and military as the UN says the violence in Rakhine state likely constituted acts of genocide, a characterization that will cause many Western nations that recently dropped their previous sanctions against Myanmar’s chronic abuses to consider their re-imposition.
The United Nations Organization, which is supposed to be icon of morality and impartiality, is suffering from credibility problem as it now buckled under pressure of the OIC comprising of 57 Muslim nations and European Union of 28 Christian nations, let alone being bypassed by regional groups such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or used as a tool by powerful nations to advance their political agenda. Recently, US President Trump threatens to cut aid to Countries who betray the US at U.N. He said "They take hundreds of millions of dollars and then vote against us."
In Feb 26, 2018 article in Asia Times – "UN Human Rights Council’s (HRC) .. persisted in privileging the Rohingya in its statements… effectively relegating the systematic abuses against Rakhine Buddhists, ethnic Mro and Hindus.." There could only be one conclusion, according to UNHRC, human rights is only for Bengali muslims (migrated to Myanmar from overpopulated muslim Bangladesh and known falsely as rohingya)… no rights for non muslims …
United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is chaired by "the mother of islamic terror" Saudi Arabia. John McKissick, head of the UNHCR in the Bangladeshi border town of Cox’s Bazar, has been caught lying and UNHCR headquaters has retracted many of his fake stories. The UN’s World Food Programme has confirmed that their food is going to the ARSA terrorists. And photos have emerged of NGOs meeting the terrorists.
The recent main terorism attacks are summarized below:
1) The attack by Bengali muslims, as confirmed by International Crisis Group (ICG), on 9th October when they raided Myanmar’s armory and subsequently a dozen of Myanmar security forces were killed and arms and ammunition were looted.
2) The August 25, 2017 attack that killed hundreds of Buddhists and Bengali Hindus (who speak the same language and dialect as Bengali Muslims) and buried in mass shallow graves. Read more from independent journalists such as Rich Heizman (visit his FB, see his videos recording interviews with victims and his reports posted in scribd)
Thus, the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) disagrees with UNHRC has called for the removal of Professor Yanghee Lee as UN Special Rapporteur due to serious violations of the UN Human Rights Council’s Resolution 5/2 ‘Code of Conduct for Special Procedures Mandate-holders of the Human Rights Council- article 3 General Principles of conduct.’ . Also, former US chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Burma, Pricilla Clapp said that the Bengali muslims were responsible for the burning of villages as well as laying land mines. ASEAN, China, India, Russia, Japan Australia and many in the US administration are right to be concerned about islamic terrorism and not fooled by the fake news and muslims playing the victim hood card with the complicity of muslim dominated UN and mercenary "human rights" organizations.
On the other hand but unreported in main stream media, murders and rapes of Buddhists and Hindus by Bengali muslims are regularly documented in Bangladesh, where the growing Wahhabi death cult is receiving copious funding from Saudi Arabia.
Thus, the UN and UNHRC along with main stream media (MSM) which are shaping the false international media narrative have simply relayed accusations of genocide made by the very organisations committing atrocities, namely the Bengali muslims (migrated from overpopulated muslim Bangladesh and known falsely as rohingya) and jihadists from Pakistan, Chechnya and Malaysia.
"nothing serious has happened in Rakhine" is a joke!
You people soon see your end like what was happened earlier with Japan.
I think they are not able to find out what is justice and humanity.Sooner or latter god will make them to pay for allowing any country to survive after that much cruel act.This is shameful for these two country.Even China already suffered such pain in past by Japanese but they don’t learnt thier lesson.
China and Russia not able to find out what is justice and humanity.Sooner or latter god will make them to pay for allowing Myanmar to survive after that much cruel act.This is shameful for these two country.Even China already suffered such pain in past by Japanese but they don’t learnt thier lesson.But sooner China will disappear from world map any many other country which justify cruel act on innocent people in the name of terrorism.
Since I am just a layman in legal matters I cannot make any comments on the legal terms and statistics mentioned in this article. But if we look at the human records of the succssive military governmets starting from 1962 throughout the country, one can very easily assume that there could be a strong creditability with the UN’s and various human rights organizations’ standpoints. The following are just a handful examples:
On July 7, 1962, the governmet troops opened fire under the direct order of Gen. Ne Win at the demonsrating Rangoon University students. Officialy, only 15 were killed. But inoffically it was estimated at some 300.
On June 6, 1974, demonstrating dock, oil field workers and university students were kille3d by the police. They demonstrated against food shortage. Officially, 22 were killed and 80 wounded. But unoffically, at least more than 300 are believed to have been killed.
Between March 13 and September 19, 1988, between 3,000 and 10,000 peaceful demonstrators throughout the country are believed to have been massacred by government troops. They exploded because the UN had to catagorize the country as a Least-Developed-Country (LCD). Extreme poverty was everywhere. The country’ foreign currency reserves at that time were a mere USD 28 million!
And then the Saffron Revolution of 2007 in which several Buddhist monks lost their lives at the hands of government troops and police.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/special/saffron/
There are still more than 100,000 regugees in a number of regugee camps in Thailand. There are more than 100,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) within the country, excluding those in Rakhine State.
One-third of the totally populati8on lives in poverty.
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/third-myanmars-population-living-poverty.html
4 million children throughout the country are without schooling.
http://www.rfa.org/burmese/news/nearly-four-million-children-cannot-go-school-10222015232600.html
And there are also other countless victims among the so-called indigenous peoples during one of the most ruthless and longest civil wars in the world.
Arjumand Nabi নারীদের ফুটবল খেলা বন্ধে বিক্ষোভ মিছিল
Thein Maung , Are you Myanmar secret service agent ?
I made the following comment a few days ago. Although it still appears on my computer, on the computers of four friends of mine it cannot be seen. So, I repost it now to see if it happened because of technical problem, or through censorship:
Since I am just a layman in legal matters I cannot make any comments on the legal terms and statistics mentioned in this article. But if we look at the human records of the successive military governments starting from 1962 throughout the country, one can very easily assume that there could be a strong creditability with the UN’s and various human rights organizations’ standpoints. The following are just handful examples:
On July 7, 1962, the government troops opened fire under the direct order of Gen. Ne Win at the demonstrating Rangoon University students. Officially, only 15 were killed. But unofficially it was estimated at some 300.
On June 6, 1974, demonstrating dock, oil field workers, and university students were kille3d by the police. They demonstrated against food shortage. Officially, 22 were killed and 80 wounded. But unofficially, at least more than 300 are believed to have been killed.
Between March 13 and September 19, 1988, between 3,000 and 10,000 peaceful demonstrators throughout the country are believed to have been massacred by government troops. They exploded because the UN had to categorize the country as a Least-Developed-Country (LCD). Extreme poverty was everywhere. The country’ foreign currency reserves at that time were a mere USD 28 million!
And then the Saffron Revolution of 2007 in which several Buddhist monks lost their lives at the hands of government troops and police.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/special/saffron/
There are still more than 100,000 refugees in a number of refugee camps in Thailand. There are more than 100,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) within the country, excluding those in Rakhine State.
One-third of the totally populati8on lives in poverty.
https://www.irrawaddy.com/…/third-myanmars-population…
4 million children throughout the country are without schooling.
http://www.rfa.org/…/nearly-four-million-children…
And there are also other countless victims among the so-called indigenous peoples during one of the most ruthless and longest civil wars in the world.