Myanmar’s Rohingya might be victims of crimes against humanity, the UN’s rights agency said on Tuesday, as former UN boss Kofi Annan arrived in the country for a visit that is to include a trip to northern Rakhine.
The army has carried out a bloody crackdown in the western state and thousands of the Muslim minority people flooded over the border into Bangladesh last month, making horrifying claims of gang rape, torture and murder at the hands of security forces.
About 30,000 have fled their homes and analysis of satellite images by Human Rights Watch found hundreds of buildings in Rohingya villages have been razed.
Myanmar has denied allegations of abuse, saying the army is hunting “terrorists” behind raids on police posts last month.
The government has lashed out at media reports of rapes and killings and lodged a protest over a UN official in Bangladesh who said the state was carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya.
Foreign journalists and independent investigators have been banned from accessing the area to probe the claims.
On Tuesday, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya could be tantamount to crimes against humanity, reiterating the findings of a June report.
More than 120,000 Rohingya have been crammed into displacement camps since sectarian violence in 2012, where they are denied citizenship, healthcare and education and their movements are heavily curbed.
“The government has largely failed to act on the recommendations made in a report by the UN Human Rights Office ... [that] raised the possibility that the pattern of violations against the Rohingya may amount to crimes against humanity,” the office said in a statement.
Burmese State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi in August appointed her fellow Nobel laureate to head a special commission to investigate how to mend bitter religious and ethnic divides that split the impoverished state.
Annan has expressed “deep concern” over the violence in Rakhine, which has seen thousands of people take to the streets across Asia in protest.
However, Aye Lwin, a Muslim member of the Rakhine commission, defended Aung San Suu Kyi’s handling of the crisis.
“What she has inherited is a dump of rubbish, a junk yard,” he said, pointing out the army retains control of security and defense under a constitution written under the former junta.
“Her hands are tied — she can’t do anything. What she is doing is trying to talk and negotiate and build trust” with the army, he added.
China yesterday told Myanmar that they should work together to stabilize their shared border, in the wake of a series of attacks by ethnic armed groups on Burmese security forces and thousands of people crossing into China to escape the violence.
The attacks this month dealt a major blow to Aung San Suu Kyi’s top goal of reaching peace with ethnic minorities, while China is worried about the risk of violence in northern Myanmar spilling onto its side of the border, as it did last year, when five Chinese were killed.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) told a visiting Burmese delegation, led by Myanmar Peace Commission chairman Tin Myo Win, that Beijing was worried by the deteriorating situation and repeated a call for an end to military action and for talks to resolve disputes.
“Both sides should properly use the China-Myanmar high-level diplomatic and military mechanism to jointly maintain the peace and stability of the China-Myanmar border region,” a ministry statement paraphrasing Wang said yesterday.
Wang has expressed support for Myanmar’s internal peace process and Beijing’s readiness to help.
“China is willing, in accordance with Myanmar’s wishes and on the precondition of not interfering in Myanmar’s internal affairs, to play a constructive role in this regard,” Wang said.
The ministry said Tin Myo Win explained the peace process and that Myanmar understood Beijing’s concerns and hoped to get Chinese support for ameliorating the situation.
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