“The body of information and materials we are collecting
is concrete and overwhelming,” the three experts of the Independent
International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar noted in their interim, oral
report to the 37th Session of the UN Human Rights Council.
“It points at human rights violations of the most serious
kind, in all likelihood amounting to crimes under international law.”
Marzuki Darusman, former Indonesian Attorney-General and
chair of the Fact-Finding Mission, delivered the oral report. He was joined on
the podium by fellow experts Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka and Chris Sidoti
of Australia.
The interim report was based on information gathered from
a series of missions to Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand, where teams of
investigators conducted over 600 in-depth interviews with victims and witnesses
of reported human rights violations and abuses. The teams have also collected
and analysed satellite imagery, photographs and video footage of events.
“The events we are examining in detail in Rakhine, Kachin
and Shan states are products of a longstanding, systemic pattern of human
rights violations and abuses in Myanmar,” report said.
“Any denial of the seriousness of the situation in
Rakhine, the reported human rights violations, and the suffering of the
victims, is untenable,” the experts said. “We have hundreds of credible
accounts of the most harrowing nature.”
The report listed eight major findings in relation to
allegations in Rakhine State where so-called “clearance operations” of the
Myanmar security forces, in response to ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army)
attacks, have driven nearly 700,000 Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh since
August.
“Credible accounts are rife of the State’s various
security forces having committed gross human rights violations in the course of
these operations,” the experts said.
“These operations resulted in a very high number of
casualties,” the report said. “People died from gunshot wounds, often due to
indiscriminate shooting at fleeing villagers. Some were burned alive in their
homes – often the elderly, disabled and young children. Others were hacked to death.”
Satellite imagery shows that at least 319 villages were
partially or totally destroyed by fire after the “clearance operations” began
on 25 August 2017.
“We have hundreds of eyewitness accounts. We have seen
unsettling photographs and satellite images of Rohingya villages flattened to
the ground by bulldozers, erasing all remaining traces of the life and
community that once was,” Darusman said on the margins of the Council meeting,
“not to mention destroying possible crime scene evidence.”
“All the information collected so far points to violence
of an extremely cruel nature,” the report said. “We have ample and corroborated
information on brutal gang rapes and other forms of sexual violence against
women.”
“We have numerous accounts of children and babies who
were killed, boys arrested, and girls raped.”
“The widespread and systematic nature of the State-led
violence,” the report added, “points to prior planning and organisation, which
we are examining in detail.”
“We are analysing the respective roles and command
structures of the security forces and the involvement of others… We will
attribute responsibility where it is due.”
The report highlighted the Fact-Finding Mission’s
concerns over a spike in reported human rights violations and abuses and
violations of international humanitarian law in Kachin and Shan states. These
resulted in significant displacement of population, further exacerbating a
“longstanding humanitarian crisis.”
“Regarding the Myanmar military, we are receiving
credible reports of indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, extrajudicial
killings, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, enforced disappearances,
destruction of property and pillage, torture and inhuman treatment, rape and
other forms of sexual violence, forced labour, and the recruitment of children
into armed forces,” the report said.
Appointed by the UN Human Rights Council last March, the
Fact-Finding Mission accepted a mandate to “establish the facts and
circumstances of alleged human rights violations by military and security
forces, and abuses, in Myanmar.” Their focus is on the States of Rakhine, Shan
and Kachin since 2011.
The Myanmar Government has refused to give the
Fact-Finding Mission access to the country and it has blocked attempts to mount
an independent and impartial investigation.
Darusman noted that the representative of Myanmar has
alluded to a suppression of the “Myanmar narrative.” He responded that the
Fact-Finding Mission is ready to hear that narrative, but regardless “we have
no shortage of credible information.”
The final report of the Fact-Finding Mission will be
presented to the Human Rights Council in September.