VOA on 10 July, 2017
UNITED NATIONS —The
United States on Monday called on Myanmar to allow a United Nations
fact-finding mission to investigate widespread allegations of killings, rape
and torture by security forces against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar's Rakhine
state.
The Geneva-based
U.N. Human Rights Council established the inquiry in March, but Aung San Suu
Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar's civilian government and also its foreign
minister, has rejected the allegations and opposes the mission.
A Myanmar official
said on June 30 that the country would refuse entry to the U.N. investigators.
The U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations in New York, Nikki Haley, said, "It is important
that the Burmese government allow this fact-finding mission to do its
job."
"The
international community cannot overlook what is happening in Burma “we must
stand together and call on the government to fully cooperate with this
fact-finding mission," she said in a statement. Myanmar was formerly known
as Burma.
Some 75,000 Rohingya
fled northwestern Rakhine state to Bangladesh after Myanmar's army carried out
a security operation last October in response to deadly attacks by Rohingya
insurgents on border posts.
A U.N. report from
February, based on interviews with some of the Rohingya refugees, said
Myanmar's security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of
Rohingya in a campaign that "very likely" amounts to crimes against
humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.
"No one should
face discrimination or violence because of their ethnic background or religious
beliefs," Haley said.
Myanmar's government
regards the approximately 1 million Rohingya as illegal migrants from
neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship, even though Rohingya
families have lived there for generations.