The UN General Assembly on Friday approved a resolution strongly condemning human rights abuses against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims and other minorities, including arbitrary arrests, torture, rape and deaths in detention.
The 193-member world body voted 134-9 with 28 abstentions in favor of the resolution, which also calls on the Burmese government to take urgent measures to combat incitement of hatred against the Rohingya and other minorities in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states.
General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, but they do reflect world opinion.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh, even though their families have lived in the country for generations.
Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless, and they are also denied freedom of movement and other basic rights.
The long-simmering Rohingya crisis exploded on Aug. 25, 2017, when the Burmese military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group.
The campaign led to the mass Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh and to accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings, and burned thousands of homes.
Burmese Ambassador to the UN Hau Do Suan called the resolution “another classic example of double standards — selective and discriminatory application of human rights norms — to exert unwanted political pressure on Myanmar.”
The resolution did not attempt to find a solution to the complex situation in Rakhine state and refused to recognize government efforts to address the challenges, he said.
The resolution “will sow seeds of distrust and will create further polarization of different communities in the region,” he added.
The resolution expresses alarm at the movement of Rohingya Muslims to neighboring Bangladesh over the past four decades — numbering 1.1 million, including the 744,000 who arrived since August 2017 — “in the aftermath of atrocities committed by the security and armed forces of Myanmar.”
The assembly expressed alarm at an independent international fact-finding mission’s uncovering “of gross human rights violations and abuses suffered by Rohingya Muslims and other minorities” by the security forces, which the mission said “undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law.”
The resolution called for an immediate cessation of fighting and hostilities.
It expressed “deep distress at reports that unarmed individuals in Rakhine state have been and continue to be subjected to the excessive use of force and violations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law by the military, and security and armed forces.”
It also called for Burmese forces to protect all people and for urgent steps to ensure justice for all rights violations.
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