 |
| Photo: REUTERS |
Kofi Annan, in Myanmar, Voices Concern over Reported Abuses
of Rohingya
HONG KONG — Kofi Annan, the
former head of the United Nations, said in Myanmar on Tuesday that he was
“deeply concerned” by reports of human rights abuses in the country’s restive
Rakhine State, where dozens of Rohingya Muslims are said to have been killed
since October in a crackdown by the military.
Watch here Times Video: http://nyti.ms/2hgXq5T
Mr. Annan, who leads a
commission that was formed in August to study conditions in Rakhine, spoke to
reporters at the end of a weeklong visit to Myanmar, which included a trip to
the northern areas of northern Rakhine where the army has been conducting a
counterinsurgency campaign. Activists have relayed stories of rapes, arson,
targeted killings and other atrocities said to have been committed against the
Rohingya there by the army since Oct. 9, when insurgents killed nine police
officers in attacks on border posts.
“We stressed in all our meetings
that wherever security operations might be necessary, civilians must be
protected at all times, and I urge the security services to act in full
compliance with the rule of law,” Mr. Annan said on Tuesday.
“We also stressed that security
operations must not impede humanitarian access to the population,” he said. “We
have been given the assurance that humanitarian assistance is allowed access
and trust that all communities in need will receive the assistance they
require.”
Rights groups have reported that
some villages in the area have been sealed off by the military, and that
organizations that provide food aid and other assistance have been denied
access.
Mr. Annan’s commission was
formed with backing from Myanmar’s de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, weeks
before the military crackdown began in October. The panel is expected to make
recommendations to the government in late 2017 for alleviating Rakhine’s ethnic
strife and impoverished conditions.
But the panel has faced
criticism from multiple directions. Some rights groups have accused it of
playing down the Rohingya’s plight, while some critics in Myanmar, formerly
known as Burma, say it has advocated for the Rohingya at the expense of
Rakhine’s Buddhist majority, some of whom clashed with the Rohingya in 2012 in
a spasm of violence further south in the state that left dozens dead.
Perhaps the only point of
agreement among the critics has been that they expect the panel to do little to
improve the dire situation in Rakhine.
Speaking of Mr. Annan, Syed
Hamid Albar, a former Malaysian foreign minister and the special Myanmar envoy
for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, said, “He’s a former secretary
general, a very experienced diplomat and very well accepted, and he does not
want a repeat of Rwanda” in Southeast Asia, referring to that African country’s
1994 genocide.
However, speaking about the
panel’s members, he said, “The perception outside is that, even facing this
serious situation, they don’t seem to be able to move.”
The Advisory Commission on
Rakhine State, as Mr. Annan’s commission is formally known, was created at the
Myanmar government’s behest, and in collaboration with Mr. Annan’s charitable
foundation, as a “neutral and impartial body, which aims to propose concrete
measures for improving the welfare of all people in Rakhine State,” according
to its website. It has six experts from Myanmar and three from overseas,
including Mr. Annan. None of its members are Rohingya.
Some human rights experts said
the commission’s mandate was flawed from the start. Myanmar, they note, has
said that the panel will operate in accordance with a 1982 law that is used to
deny the Rohingya citizenship, on the pretext that they are not among Myanmar’s
recognized “national races.”
Another problem, they said, is
that the commission’s mandate focuses broadly on development and does not take
an investigative approach to human rights violations, which they argue is
essential, especially in light of the recent deaths.
Matthew Smith, the chief
executive of Fortify Rights, a Southeast Asia-based advocacy group that has
monitored human rights violations in Rakhine, likened the commission’s approach
to “sending an ill-equipped plumber to fix an electrical problem.”
“We want the commission to succeed
and we welcomed it, but if the commission isn’t careful, it may inadvertently
participate in a whitewash,” Mr. Smith said in an email.
While the crackdown in Rakhine
began in response to the killings of police officers in October, human rights
groups say the response has been disproportionate to the scale of the threat,
especially because the area, along the border with Bangladesh, has never been a
hotbed of Islamic militancy. Thousands of the Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh,
and the United Nations human rights agency has said that abuses against the
Rohingya may amount to crimes against humanity.
The crackdown has led to
growing international criticism, including by the government of Malaysia, a
Muslim-majority nation, whose Foreign Ministry has called it “ethnic
cleansing.” Prime Minister Najib Razak led a rally on Sunday in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia’s capital, protesting the crackdown in Rakhine.
At the rally, Mr. Najib singled
out Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, as not having done enough to
prevent the bloodshed. “Does she really have a Nobel Peace Prize?” he asked.
On Tuesday in Yangon, Mr. Annan
told reporters that the recent violence in Rakhine had underscored the
“importance and immediacy” of his commission’s work. But some analysts said the
mounting international criticism of the government’s actions in Rakhine made
the commission’s work look even less relevant.
Penny Green, a law professor
and expert on genocide at Queen Mary University of London, said that Ms. Aung
San Suu Kyi had most likely chosen Mr. Annan, a fellow Nobel laureate, to lead
the commission because he was a public figure whose “enormous moral capital”
would portray her government in a positive light. But “his personal reputation
as somebody who has defended human rights should be on the line here, too,”
Professor Green said.
Muhammad Noor, the managing
director of Rohingya Vision, a satellite television broadcaster with offices in
Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, said the panel was overly concerned with diplomacy
at the cost of ignoring what he called a human rights “disaster.”
He said his own information,
compiled from sources within Rakhine, indicated that more than 200 Rohingya had
been killed in the north since October, a far larger number than rights groups
had reported.
“It’s not helping at all,” Mr.
Noor said of the commission.