[Since Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi took office in 2016, she has drawn fierce criticism for failing to challenge the military, known as the Tatmadaw, over its atrocities in Rakhine State, home to many Rohingya Muslims. Critics have also assailed her for the repression of political freedoms.]
By Nick Cumming-Bruce
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Myanmar’s
civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, could face prosecution for crimes
against
humanity committed by the military, United Nations investigators said on
Tuesday.
Credit Nyein Chan Naing/EPA, via Shutterstock
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GENEVA
— Myanmar’s civilian leader,
a Nobel laureate once extolled as a champion for democracy, may face
prosecution for crimes against humanity over the military’s attacks on Rohingya
Muslims and other minority groups, United Nations investigators said on
Tuesday.
Their announcement was a new sign of how far
the leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, had fallen from grace since she took office
three years ago.
Back then she was acclaimed as an icon of the
pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, having won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and
endured many years of house arrest. Now she has become an international pariah
for her government’s response to brutal oppression by Myanmar’s military.
In a report to the United Nations top human
rights body in Geneva on Tuesday, investigators said the 660,000 Rohingya
people who remain in Myanmar face systematic persecution.
“Myanmar is failing in its obligation to
prevent genocide, to investigate genocide and to enact effective legislation
criminalizing and punishing genocide,” Marzuki Darusman, the chairman of the
fact-finding mission and a former attorney general of Indonesia said in a
statement.
The policies and practices that laid the
basis for the military and militia campaigns of 2017 are still in place, he
told the Human Rights Council. “Impunity continues. Discrimination continues.
Hate speech continues. Persecution continues,” he said.
Myanmar on Tuesday rejected the fact-finding
mission’s report as “one-sided allegations” and “misinformation.” Its
ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Kyaw Moe Tun, accused the panel of
lacking impartiality and said its reporting would cause economic hardship to
millions of people.
Since Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi took office in
2016, she has drawn fierce criticism for failing to challenge the military,
known as the Tatmadaw, over its atrocities in Rakhine State, home to many
Rohingya Muslims. Critics have also assailed her for the repression of
political freedoms.
Ms. Lee said that under Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi,
the list of political prisoners and people facing politically motivated charges
has increased in recent years, as has the number of people charged with
defaming the military.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had no control over the
actions of the Tatmadaw, but as head of a party that controlled 60 percent of
the seats in Myanmar’s Parliament she led a government that had the power to
change every law except the Constitution, the investigators said. Consequently,
they said, she had extensive responsibilities for the prevailing conditions and
human rights.
The Myanmar armed forces and allied militias
have continued to use torture in operations against Kachin, Shan and other
ethnic minorities in northern Myanmar, the investigators said, and sexual
violence was a prominent part of the campaign.
“The longer this goes on, the more impossible
it is for the civilian side of the government to escape international criminal
responsibility for the human rights situation in Myanmar,” Christopher Sidoti,
an Australian lawyer and panel member, told reporters.
A United Nations fact-finding mission said
last year that Myanmar’s army commander and other top generals should face
trial for genocide and atrocities committed in 2017 against the Rohingya
Muslims, driving nearly three-quarters of a million people across the border
into Bangladesh.
The human rights council also recently heard
from Yanghee Lee, the United Nations expert monitoring developments in Myanmar,
that the military was using helicopter gunships, heavy artillery and land mines
in civilian areas of Rakhine State, as part of their operations against local
rebels.
Violence in the state is escalating, Ms. Lee
said, citing what she described as credible reports that Rakhine men had been
fatally tortured and Rakhine villages burned.
Many Rohingya Muslims remain trapped in camps
where they are cut off from education or health care, cannot make a living, and
remained subjected to discriminatory citizenship laws that amount to a “tool of
persecution,” the fact-finding mission said.
Denying Myanmar’s Muslims access to basic
services such as education was “one element of the crime against humanity of
persecution that we are seeing in Rakhine State against the Rohingyas,” said
Mr. Sidoti, the panel member.
In these circumstances, the return of close
to a million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh was “simply impossible,” said Mr.
Darusman, the mission’s chairman, brushing aside claims by the Myanmar
authorities that they were creating a favorable environment for repatriation.
“There is nowhere safe and viable for them to
return to. Rohingya lands and villages have been destroyed, cleared,
confiscated and built on,” he said.
The mission has identified more than 150
people linked to “numerous international crimes,” he added. It has also turned
over the evidence it accumulated over two years to an investigative
organization responsible for preparing case files for potential criminal
prosecutions.
In the meantime, the panel has called for a
moratorium on investment and development assistance to Rakhine State, and
exhorted international businesses to shun dealings with companies controlled by
the military.
The appeal has led a number of international
companies to disengage from business dealings with military-related ventures,
Mr. Sidoti said. “We are seeing the start of some very positive signs.”
