[The United Nations said in a February report on the violence that police officers and soldiers had killed hundreds of citizens of all ages, gang-raped women and girls, and forced as many as 90,000 Rohingya from their homes. Those and other brutal actions were “very likely” crimes against humanity, the report said.]
By Mike Ives
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Rohingya refugees at a
camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in February. The United
Nations said in May that more
than 168,000 Rohingya had fled Myanmar in the last
five years because of violence
and desperation. Credit Allison Joyce/Getty Images
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HONG KONG — Myanmar said on Friday that it
would refuse to grant visas to three United Nations-backed experts responsible
for investigating recent violence against Muslims in the predominantly Buddhist
country, a move that threatens to further strain the government’s relationship
with the organization.
“If they are going to send someone with
regards to the fact-finding mission, then there’s no reason for us to let them
come,” U Kyaw Zeya, the Foreign Ministry’s permanent secretary, was quoted by
Reuters as saying on Friday. He added that visas would not be issued to members
of the mission or their subordinates, Reuters reported.
The move is sure to draw condemnation from
rights advocates who accuse Myanmar’s de facto leader, the Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, of allowing soldiers and security personnel to
brutalize members of the Rohingya ethnic group, a persecuted Muslim minority,
with virtual impunity.
Forces waged a four-month counterinsurgency
in Rakhine State after an attack on a border post in October by hundreds of
Rohingya militants that left nine police officers dead. Harakah al-Yaqin, a
militant group that is believed to have popular support, as well as ties to
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, led the assault.
But human rights advocates say that the scale
and severity of the counterinsurgency far exceeded the threat, and that a vast
majority of victims were innocent Rohingya civilians.
The United Nations said in a February report
on the violence that police officers and soldiers had killed hundreds of
citizens of all ages, gang-raped women and girls, and forced as many as 90,000
Rohingya from their homes. Those and other brutal actions were “very likely”
crimes against humanity, the report said.
In March, the United Nations Human Rights
Council said in a resolution that it planned to dispatch a fact-finding mission
to Myanmar to determine the circumstances of the violence against civilians in
Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine. Fifty-nine civil society groups from the
country called on the government to cooperate.
Officials in Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s
administration rejected that resolution from the start, however, saying that a
domestic investigation of recent violence by senior political and military
officials in the state would serve that purpose.
“We are disassociating ourselves from the
resolution because we don’t think the resolution is in keeping with what is
actually happening on the ground,” Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said during a trip to
Brussels in May.
Mr. Kyaw Zeya’s comments on Friday appeared
to show just how intent Myanmar is to prevent the three members of the United
Nations mission — who are from Australia, India and Sri Lanka — from setting
foot in the country.
U Khin Zaw Win, the director of the Tampadipa
Institute, a policy think tank that urged Myanmar to cooperate with the United
Nations-backed mission, said that the government’s position was a “very
unseemly and unsightly about-face” for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi. Her government
came to power last year, and she had long relied on the United Nations for
support during her years under house arrest.
Under military rule, “all of us were fighting
for democracy and rights and freedom,” said Mr. Khin Zaw Win, who was jailed
for 11 years, often alongside activists who are now officials in Ms. Aung San
Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy. “But now that the N.L.D.
has won handsomely — and they’ve won because of the votes of the people — it’s
turning its back on those very values.”
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi helped form a commission
in August to study conditions in Rakhine. The commission is led by Kofi Annan,
a former United Nations secretary general, and includes six experts from
Myanmar and three from overseas, including Mr. Annan. It is expected to make
recommendations to the government this year about how to alleviate poverty and
ethnic strife in the state.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has not traveled to
Rakhine State since violence erupted there in October, though, and few experts
expect the commission or the government’s separate investigation of recent
violence to have much of an impact.
Some analysts have speculated that Ms. Aung
San Suu Kyi is reluctant to engage more forcefully in the state for fear that
doing so could antagonize Myanmar’s small but vocal fringe of hard-line
Buddhist nationalists. Others say that her hands are effectively tied because
the military-drafted Constitution grants the armed forces wide powers over
domestic security.
But Mr. Khin Zaw Win said that he believed
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s primary concern was that the United Nations mission
would embarrass her government by concluding that it had mishandled the
situation in Rakhine.
A spokesperson for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s
office could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday, and a spokesman
based in Thailand for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights did not respond to repeated emails or text messages.
In 2012, a spate of sectarian violence in
Rakhine left dozens dead and drove more than 100,000 Rohingya from their homes
and into refugee camps. The United Nations said in May that more than 168,000
Rohingya had fled Myanmar in the last five years because of violence and
desperation.
U Aung Win, a Rohingya activist in Sittwe,
the capital of Rakhine, said by telephone on Friday that people in his
community had seen no improvement in their lives since the violence of 2012 and
had lost hope that the situation would ever change.
“We feel like caged birds,” he said.
Saw Nang contributed reporting from Mandalay,
Myanmar.