Military Threatens Rohingya Villagers amid the Visit of UN
Human Rights Rapporteur
By Rohingya Eye and Rohingya Mirror
Maungdaw — The Myanmar military have threatened and ordered
the Rohingya villagers in northern Maungdaw to refrain from meeting Ms. Yanghee
Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, who is currently on
a four-day visit in the violence-hit Arakan State, it has been reported.
The locals in Northern Maungdaw desperately willing meet the
U.N. Human Rights Rapporteur also express fears of more physical and sexual
violence by the military after she leaves the region as a military commander
has threatened the locals with reprisals in case of meeting with her.
“The commander of the Battalion 551 in Northern Maungdaw
summoned the administrator of ‘Oo Shye Kyar’ village and warned him to not let
any of his villagers meet with any outsider (referring to Ms. Yanghee Lee) in
the absence of his knowledge/permission and ordered him (The village
administrator) to ask other village administrators in the region to do the
same. He said failures to follow his order would result in significant
punishments” said U Aye Myint, a human rights activist based in Maungdaw.
During the time of Tomas Quintana, the former UN Special
Rapporteur to Myanmar and predecessor of Ms. Yang, the Myanmar military and
other security forces in Arakan used similar same terror tactics to suppress
the voices of the victims of the state-sponsored violence back in 2012.
Ms. Yanghee Lee arrived in Sittwe (Akyab) on Friday evening
(Jan 13) and met the Rohingya elders in Quarter and this (Jan 14 morning), she
visited Koetankauk and Shilhali villages in Rathedaung Township, where she
visited the Koetankauk BGP post and met with local villagers and displaced
people (IDP) and also with some local Rakhines in the region.
This afternoon, she left Rathedaung for northern Maungdaw
and after that, she is due to visit Buthidaung Prison on January 15.
In Northern Maungdaw, she is set to visit the Rohingya
villages — such as Kyikanpyin, Wapeik, Kyet Yoe Pyin and Ywa Ma etc — that have
come under indiscriminate attacks of the Myanmar military since October 2016
and ‘Shwe Baho’ monastery in Maungdaw.
After visiting ‘Shwe Zedi’ monastery and the Sittwe Prison
tomorrow (on January 16), she will conclude her visit to observe human rights
situation in Arakan State.
Ms. Yanghee Lee is on a 12-day visit to Myanmar to assess
human rights situation in the country. Earlier, she visited the war-torn Kachin
state, where Burmese military have been waging wars with Kachin Independence
Army (KIA) and assaulting civilians for years. She will submit the reports of
her assessments on human rights situation in Myanmar to UN Human Rights
Assembly in March, 2017.
Update: in Koetankauk and Shilhali in Rathedaung, Ms.
Yanghee Lee only selectively met with some Rohingya women. No male members of the
Rohingya community were able to approach her.
However, the local Rohingyas are pretty confident that she
got some true accounts from the women of the atrocity crimes by the Myanmar
armed forces against the Rohingya community.