Myanmar’s army yesterday cleared itself of allegations that troops might have carried out ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, but said a soldier had been jailed for taking a motorbike.
More than 70,000 members of the persecuted minority fled to neighboring Bangladesh after the military launched a widespread crackdown late last year in the north of Rakhine state to hunt down insurgents who attacked police border posts.
UN investigators who interviewed hundreds of escapees documented reports of mass killings, widespread rapes and horrifying accounts of babies being thrown into burning houses.
In a report released in February the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said security forces might have committed atrocities so severe they amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
However, the military yesterday said that the results of its own investigation, led by army chief Aye Win, showed those charges were “false and fabricated.”
“Out of 18 accusations included in the OHCHR report, 12 were found to be incorrect, with [the] remaining six accusations found to be false and fabricated accusations based on lies and invented statements,” a report by the army’s “True News” team carried in state media said.
However, one member of the security forces was sentenced to a year in jail and fined for taking a motorbike without the knowledge of its owner, the statement said.
A village head and several villagers were also whipped and two people sent to prison for failing to help put out a fire, it said.
Both the military and the civilian government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi have denied allegations of widespread atrocities against the Rohingya and refused to allow in a UN fact-finding mission to investigate.
Instead the government, police and military have launched their own probes into the violence. These have been roundly criticized by rights groups as biased and lacking credibility.
The army said its investigators had interviewed 2,875 people from 29 villages, but did not say whether they were ethnic Rakhines or the Rohingya Muslims who make up the majority in northern Rakhine.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in