UNITED NATIONS — US Ambassador Nikki Haley denounced
Myanmar’s government on Tuesday for continuing to make life for Rohingya
Muslims “a death sentence,” citing the reporting of mass graves by The
Associated Press and other news organizations.
She started her speech to the Security Council by
recounting how a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, Noor Kadir, told AP about
surviving an attack by soldiers on 14 friends trying to choose sides for a
local soccer-like game in the village of Gu Dar Pyin in Myanmar’s Rakhine
state.
Haley said only Kadir and two friends survived, and six
days later he found teammates partially buried in mass graves - reportedly
among five mass graves. Survivors reported that more than 200 soldiers
descended on the village, shooting and burning homes, she said.
Myanmar’s government “regularly denies the existence of
massacres and mass graves and claims to be fighting ‘terrorists,’“ Haley said.
“But what Kadir found that day indicated that the military knew what it was
doing was wrong and didn’t want the world to know.”
She also cited evidence of “another massacre and mass
grave” in the fishing village of Inn Din, discovered by two Reuters reporters
who are now imprisoned.
Haley said they reported that police ordered villagers
“to participate in the killing, dismemberment and burial in a mass grave of 10
Rohingya men and boys.” She called for the reporters’ immediate release, saying
“unhindered media access is vitally important.”
During the council meeting, many countries including
Britain, Netherlands, France, Kazakhstan and Sweden raised the reports of mass
graves and the imprisoned journalists.
“Numerous reports of systematic widespread and
coordinated acts of violence strongly indicate that crimes against humanity
have been committed in Rakhine,” said Sweden’s deputy UN Ambassador, Carl Skau.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar doesn’t recognize the Rohingya
as an ethnic group, insisting they are Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living
illegally in the country. It has denied them citizenship, leaving them
stateless.
The recent spasm of violence began when Rohingya
insurgents staged a series of attacks Aug. 25. Myanmar security forces then
began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages that the UN and human
rights groups have called a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar Ambassador Hau Do Suan told the council that AP
and BBC reports of mass graves in Gu Dar Pyin were investigated by a 17-member
team. He said that “no mass grave was found” and that village elders “confirmed
there were no such incidents,” but the state government “is extending the
investigation to nearby villages.”
As for the mass grave in Inn Din, Suan said the
military’s investigation found that 10 members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation
Army — the Rohingya insurgent group that carried out attacks on security forces
Aug. 25 — were arrested Sept. 1. He said the next day they were executed and
buried.
Suan said 16 people including army and police officers
and some villagers are facing unspecified “action” for violating “standard
operating procedures and rules of engagement.”
Haley said powerful forces in Myanmar’s government have
denied ethnic cleansing in Rakhine, and “to make sure no one contradicts their
preposterous denials, they are preventing access to Rakhine to anyone or any
organization that might bear witness to their atrocities, including the UN
Security Council.”
She posed a challenge for Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu
Kyi, the Nobel laureate celebrated in the past “for her commitment to peace and
her fellow man.”
“If any of that love of humanity can be found in the
government,” Haley said, the least it can do is allow humanitarian groups to
get “food to the starving, medical care to the wounded, and psychological
services to the sexually abused” Rohingya still in Rakhine state. — AP