[But the panel has faced criticism from multiple directions. Some rights groups have accused it of playing down the Rohingya’s plight, while some critics in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, say it has advocated for the Rohingya at the expense of Rakhine’s Buddhist majority, some of whom clashed with the Rohingya in 2012 in a spasm of violence further south in the state that left dozens dead.]
By Mike Ives
 |
|
Kofi
Annan, second from right, the former secretary general of the United Nations,
in
Myanmar on Tuesday, where he urged the army to adhere to the "rule of
law"
and
said that "civilians must be protected at all times." By REUTERS.
Photo
by Lynn Bo Bo/European Pressphoto Agency.
Watch
in Times Video »
|
HONG KONG — Kofi Annan, the former head of
the United Nations, said in Myanmar on Tuesday that he was “deeply concerned”
by reports of human rights abuses in the country’s restive Rakhine State, where
dozens of Rohingya Muslims are said to have been killed since October in a
crackdown by the military.
Mr. Annan, who leads a commission that was
formed in August to study conditions in Rakhine, spoke to reporters at the end
of a weeklong visit to Myanmar, which included a trip to the northern areas of
northern Rakhine where the army has been conducting a counterinsurgency
campaign. Activists have relayed stories of rapes, arson, targeted killings and
other atrocities said to have been committed against the Rohingya there by the
army since Oct. 9, when insurgents killed nine police officers in attacks on
border posts.
“We stressed in all our meetings that
wherever security operations might be necessary, civilians must be protected at
all times, and I urge the security services to act in full compliance with the
rule of law,” Mr. Annan said on Tuesday.
“We also stressed that security operations
must not impede humanitarian access to the population,” he said. “We have been
given the assurance that humanitarian assistance is allowed access and trust
that all communities in need will receive the assistance they require.”
Rights groups have reported that some
villages in the area have been sealed off by the military, and that
organizations that provide food aid and other assistance have been denied
access.
Mr. Annan’s commission was formed with
backing from Myanmar’s de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, weeks before the
military crackdown began in October. The panel is expected to make
recommendations to the government in late 2017 for alleviating Rakhine’s ethnic
strife and impoverished conditions.
But the panel has faced criticism from
multiple directions. Some rights groups have accused it of playing down the
Rohingya’s plight, while some critics in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, say
it has advocated for the Rohingya at the expense of Rakhine’s Buddhist
majority, some of whom clashed with the Rohingya in 2012 in a spasm of violence
further south in the state that left dozens dead.
Perhaps the only point of agreement among the
critics has been that they expect the panel to do little to improve the dire
situation in Rakhine.
Speaking of Mr. Annan, Syed Hamid Albar, a
former Malaysian foreign minister and the special Myanmar envoy for the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation, said, “He’s a former secretary general, a
very experienced diplomat and very well accepted, and he does not want a repeat
of Rwanda” in Southeast Asia, referring to that African country’s 1994
genocide.
However, speaking about the panel’s members,
he said, “The perception outside is that, even facing this serious situation,
they don’t seem to be able to move.”
The Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, as
Mr. Annan’s commission is formally known, was created at the Myanmar
government’s behest, and in collaboration with Mr. Annan’s charitable
foundation, as a “neutral and impartial body, which aims to propose concrete
measures for improving the welfare of all people in Rakhine State,” according
to its website. It has six experts from Myanmar and three from overseas,
including Mr. Annan. None of its members are Rohingya.
Some human rights experts said the
commission’s mandate was flawed from the start. Myanmar, they note, has said
that the panel will operate in accordance with a 1982 law that is used to deny
the Rohingya citizenship, on the pretext that they are not among Myanmar’s
recognized “national races.”
Another problem, they said, is that the
commission’s mandate focuses broadly on development and does not take an
investigative approach to human rights violations, which they argue is
essential, especially in light of the recent deaths.
Matthew Smith, the chief executive of Fortify
Rights, a Southeast Asia-based advocacy group that has monitored human rights
violations in Rakhine, likened the commission’s approach to “sending an
ill-equipped plumber to fix an electrical problem.”
“We want the commission to succeed and we
welcomed it, but if the commission isn’t careful, it may inadvertently
participate in a whitewash,” Mr. Smith said in an email.
While the crackdown in Rakhine began in
response to the killings of police officers in October, human rights groups say
the response has been disproportionate to the scale of the threat, especially
because the area, along the border with Bangladesh, has never been a hotbed of
Islamic militancy. Thousands of the Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, and the United
Nations human rights agency has said that abuses against the Rohingya may
amount to crimes against humanity.
The crackdown has led to growing
international criticism, including by the government of Malaysia, a
Muslim-majority nation, whose Foreign Ministry has called it “ethnic
cleansing.” Prime Minister Najib Razak led a rally on Sunday in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia’s capital, protesting the crackdown in Rakhine.
At the rally, Mr. Najib singled out Ms. Aung
San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, for not doing enough to prevent the bloodshed.
“Does she really have a Nobel Peace Prize?” he asked.
On Tuesday in Yangon, Mr. Annan told
reporters that the recent violence in Rakhine had underscored the “importance
and immediacy” of his commission’s work. But some analysts said the mounting
international criticism of the government’s actions in Rakhine made the
commission’s work look even less relevant.
Penny Green, a law professor and expert on
genocide at Queen Mary University of London, said that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had
most likely chosen Mr. Annan, a fellow Nobel laureate, to lead the commission
because he was a public figure whose “enormous moral capital” would portray her
government in a positive light. But “his personal reputation as somebody who
has defended human rights should be on the line here, too,” Professor Green
said.
Muhammad Noor, the managing director of
Rohingya Vision, a satellite television broadcaster with offices in Saudi
Arabia and Malaysia, said the panel was overly concerned with diplomacy at the
cost of ignoring what he called a human rights “disaster.”
He said his own information, compiled from
sources within Rakhine, indicated that more than 200 Rohingya had been killed
in the north since October, a far larger number than rights groups had
reported.
“It’s not helping at all,” Mr. Noor said of
the commission.
Saw Nang contributed reporting from Mandalay,
Myanmar.
