By REUTERS
27 July 2017
YANGON — The UN
Human Rights Council has replaced the chairwoman of a team investigating
allegations of killings and rape by Myanmar’s security forces, it said on
Thursday, amid concerns over her perceived bias.
Indian Supreme Court
advocate Indira Jaising was initially named to chair the fact-finding mission,
which has a focus on the western state of Rakhine that is home to the stateless
Rohingya Muslim minority.
Council president
Joaquín Alexander Maza Martelli had decided to replace Jaising with Marzuki
Darusman, a former attorney-general of Indonesia who has previously conducted
rights investigations on North Korea, the council said in a statement from its
headquarters in Geneva.
Jaising was
appointed to lead the panel in May, after a resolution passed by the Human
Rights Council in March calling for a team to be sent to look into the abuse
claims.
The panel’s two
other members, Harvard-trained Sri Lankan lawyer Radhika Coomaraswamy and
Australian consultant Christopher Dominic Sidoti, remain in place.
Myanmar has said it
will refuse visas to the commissioners, arguing the mission would aggravate
tension in Rakhine.
“As in all such
cases, the mission will make it a priority to reach out to and engage
constructively with the government and other relevant interlocutors,” the
council said.
“The Human Rights
Council reiterates its hope that the government of Myanmar will grant the
mission unfettered access to affected areas.”
The statement did
not give any reason for the change of personnel, but a UN official told Reuters
Jaising agreed to step down after the council president raised concerns about
public comments she made that could be seen as indicating bias.
The official
requested anonymity, in the absence of authorization to speak to reporters.
The panel was formed
after the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights said Myanmar security forces
probably committed crimes against humanity, and possibly, ethnic cleansing of
Rohingya civilians.
Rohingya militants
killed nine border guards in October, sparking a response in which the army was
accused of raping Rohingya women, shooting villagers on sight and burning down
homes, sending an estimated 75,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.
Many in Myanmar see
the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although about 1.1 million
of them live in Rakhine and say their roots in the region go back generations.
‘Perceived
Bias’
The UN official and
a human rights advocate familiar with discussions around the mission told
Reuters that Jaising’s comments had stirred concern among UN officials in
Geneva that she would not be considered impartial.
After her
appointment, Jaising was quoted by broadcaster Al Jazeera as saying the
Rohingyas’ situation in Myanmar “is especially deplorable because they face the
risk of genocide.”
“If there’s any
perceived bias…it undermines the credibility of the mission before it has
started,” said the UN official.
Jaising declined to
comment when contacted by telephone on Thursday.
The panel will meet
in Geneva in August, the statement said, and is expected to give a verbal
update on its progress to the Human Rights Council in September before a final
report in March.
Darusman is a
veteran UN human rights investigator, having served as special rapporteur on
human rights in North Korea and taken part in a landmark Commission of Inquiry
on the North.
He also chaired a UN
panel of experts on war crimes committed in the final months of Sri Lanka’s
long civil war.
Also read here: New
chair appointed to UN mission probing Burma abuses- DVB Multimedia Group: http://www.dvb.no/news/new-chair-appointed-un-mission-probing-burma-abuses/76647