YANGON, 4 April 2017
By Sara Perria/IRIN
The UN’s main human
rights body is assembling a team to probe alleged atrocities against Myanmar’s
Rohingya, even as the government appears set to deny investigators access to
areas where crimes against humanity may have occurred.
While the resolution
sponsored on 24 March by the European Union at the UN Human Rights Council
called for “ensuring full accountability for the perpetrators and justice for
victims”, Myanmar has no obligation to cooperate with the fact-finding mission
and has strongly signalled that it won’t.
The Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights has told IRIN it is putting together the
team anyway.
“It is now up to the
council president, Ambassador Joaquin Alexander Maza Martelli (El Salvador), to
appoint members of the mission; this is expected to happen in the coming
weeks,” Rolando Gomez, a spokesman for the Human Rights Council, said in an
email.
In the meantime,
letters to the Myanmar government are being prepared and a team of specialists
– including experts in forensics and gender-based violence – will be assembled
in Geneva to support the mission in establishing the facts and circumstances of
alleged human rights violations by security forces in Rakhine State.
The resolution says
the scope of the probe will include, but not be limited to, “arbitrary
detention, torture and inhuman treatment, rape and other forms of sexual
violence, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, enforced disappearance,
forced displacement and unlawful destruction of property”.
“It is the hope of
the Human Rights Council that the mission will be facilitated by the government
of Myanmar through unfettered access to the affected areas,” Gomez said.
However, this sort
of access seems highly unlikely.
At the Human Rights
Council in Geneva, Myanmar “disassociated” itself from the resolution to create
a fact-finding mission.
Three days later, on
Armed Forces Day, Myanmar’s military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, gave a speech
rejecting “political interference” and claiming that the Rohingya are illegal
immigrants from Bangladesh. Myanmar’s civilian leader, Nobel laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi, also rejected the UN decision, saying in a televised address: “It is
not suitable for our country.”
Even if Aung San Suu
Kyi agreed with the UN mission, there would be little she could do to
facilitate it. The elected, civilian administration she leads has a tenuous
relationship with the military, which enforced absolute rule over Myanmar for
almost half a century before enacting reforms in 2011. The reforms allowed
political freedom, but Aung San Suu Kyi has no power and limited influence over
the military.
The Human Rights
Council has no legal powers of enforcement and is in no position to punish
Myanmar if it fails to cooperate.
Should the
government and military deny access, the UN mission is expected to begin
detailed investigations among the tens of thousands of Rohingya who fled across
the border into Bangladesh after Myanmar’s military launched counter-insurgency
operations late last year.
"If access is
barred, the mission will try to reach witnesses wherever they are, including
Bangladesh," said a UN source on condition of anonymity, as they were not
authorised to speak to media on the subject.
Groups, including
the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have already collected
testimonies from Rohingya in Bangladesh, and OHCHR's
February report suggested it was
“very likely” that security forces committed crimes against humanity. The
mission will consider that report and aims to use the specialised forensic and
investigative tools of a team with experience in international law, military-
and gender-based violence to ascertain the facts. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21142&LangID=E%C2%A0
Myanmar has denied
that atrocities took place during the counter-insurgency operations, but has
prevented any outside scrutiny by sealing off the conflict zone in northern
Rakhine State. Aid deliveries were also completely blocked for about two
months, and the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, said on Monday that
humanitarian access is still “severely limited”. http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ROAP_Snapshot_170403.pdf
Little
pressure
Rights advocates had
hoped the Human Rights Council would instead approve a weightier Commission of
Inquiry, which would have had a broader mandate and could have put greater
pressure on Myanmar to accept it. The international community could lean on
Myanmar to accept the weaker fact-finding mission, but there is no evidence of
any serious attempt so far.
Myanmar’s two
powerful neighbours, China and India, both “disassociated” themselves with the
resolution. Indonesia has been outspoken about the crisis facing the Rohingya,
but its embassy in Yangon told IRIN that – in rejecting the resolution –
Myanmar’s government was acting “within the framework of upholding law as a
sovereign country”.
European governments
are insisting that Myanmar cooperate with the UN mission, but their language is
hardly threatening – public statements stress the need to promote the country’s
“democratic transition”.
Roland Kobia, EU
ambassador to Myanmar, told IRIN the EU would “look forward to Myanmar's full
cooperation with the fact-finding mission” and “confirmation of the country's
cooperative approach with the international community”.
But there was no
suggestion of any steps that might be taken to twist Aung San Suu Kyi’s arm or
press the military into opening the door to the investigation team.
SEE: The denied oppression of Myanmar’s Rohingya people: http://www.irinnews.org/in-depth/denied-oppression-myanmar%E2%80%99s-rohingya-people
Possible
trade-offs
Despite what could
evolve into a diplomatic stand-off between the UN and Myanmar (if it continues
to push back), analysts say the fact-finding mission may still serve a purpose.
Charles Petrie, a
former UN resident coordinator in Myanmar and author of a landmark report on
the failure of the UN to protect civilians during Sri Lanka’s civil war,
admitted that the chances of investigators gaining access were “pretty slim”.
But he told IRIN that the UN resolution could boost the prospects of Myanmar’s
government implementing the recommendations made by an advisory commission on
Rakhine.
That commission was
appointed by Aung San Suu Kyi last August and is headed by former UN
secretary-general Kofi Annan. The Geneva resolution should be seen in the
context of Annan’s interim report released on 16 March, Petrie said, describing
them as “closely linked”.
Annan’s panel
recommended closing the displacement camps that have been holding some 100,000
people since violence erupted between ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority
communities and the Buddhist ethnic Rakhine majority in 2012, killing hundreds.
The vast majority of the victims were Rohingya.
The panel also said
the government should launch a new citizenship process and allow freedom of
movement. Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration quickly welcomed the proposals, in
a sign, according to Petrie, that it is trying to “gain political capital from
it”.
“So, right now, the
best-case scenario is that they will focus on one [Annan] to try and defuse the
other [Geneva],” said Petrie. “They will implement the recommendations of the
Annan report as a means to deflect or reduce the significance of the human
rights mission.”
Establishing
citizenship is a crucial issue for the Rohingya, who number about one million
people in Rakhine and are mostly denied freedom of movement and severely
restricted in their access to jobs, healthcare, and education through an
institutionalised policy of segregation.
This denial of
rights and the 2012 violence led to the rise of militancy among some Rohingya,
according to a report by the International Crisis Group. Rohingya
insurgents calling themselves Harakah al-Yakin [Faith Movement in Arabic]
struck first on 9 October, attacking police posts on the border with Bangladesh
and killing nine officers. The attacks triggered the military’s crackdown,
which rights groups say was brutal and targeted entire communities. https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/283-myanmar-new-muslim-insurgency-rakhine-state
Despite its
limitations – notably the likelihood that investigators will be barred from
visiting crime scenes inside Myanmar – the fact-finding mission could also
still play a useful legal role, according to Irene Pietropaoli, a Yangon-based
human rights consultant.
Even if
investigators are prevented from visiting areas inside Myanmar, they can
collect evidence from witnesses and survivors of attacks who fled to
Bangladesh.
“You are still going
to have a United Nations report establishing what happened, which will in turn
come useful in political and advocacy terms,” she said. “But also from a legal
perspective, if a victim will want to seek justice, this will represent an
important document.”
Although the mission
cannot bring perpetrators of rights abuses to justice, its detailed findings,
recommendations, and possible identification of offenders could lay important
foundations for future action.
The process may
hopefully also serve as a deterrent against future atrocities, Pietropaoli said.