UNITED NATIONS
investigators have released a damning report which says Myanmar’s military had “genocidal
intent” in dealing with the Muslim Rohingya population. So what does UN report
say? Why has Facebook banned the army chief?
By KATE WHITFIELD
The UN’s Independent
International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar was set up in March 2017 to
investigate allegations of human rights abuses in Myanmar (also known as
Burma).
The fact-finding
work began before the military began a large-scale operation in the country’s
Rakhine state in August 2017, in response to deadly attacks carried out by
Rohingya militants on police posts.
Since then,
thousands of people have died, more than 700,000 Rohingya have fled abroad and
widespread allegations of humans rights abuses including arbitrary killing,
rape and burning of land have been reported.
The report is the
most damning UN condemnation of the military operations so far, and implicates
senior military figures including Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing and his
deputy, as well as de facto leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu
Kyi.
What does
the report say?
Myanmar is a
Southeast Asian nation of more than 100 ethnic groups, bordering India,
Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand, with a long and marred history of human
rights violations.
The report calls the
army’s tactics “grossly disproportionate to actual security threats.”
The UN mission
didn’t have access to Myanmar for the report, and relied on hundreds of
eyewitness interviews, satellite imagery, photographs and videos for
fact-finding.
The findings name
six senior military figures who should go on trial and criticises Aung San Suu
Kyi for failing to intervene to stop the attacks.
It calls for the
case to be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC), but this could
be tricky as Myanmar is not a signatory to the Rome Statue that established the
court.
The
report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar PDF: https://lnkd.in/gFMQ9Q7
The report states
the crimes documented are "shocking for the level of denial, normalcy and
impunity that is attached to them.”
"Military
necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping women,
assaulting children, and burning entire villages," the report says.
The situation was a
"catastrophe looming for decades", the report states, and was the
result of "severe, systemic and institutionalised oppression from birth to
death".
The crimes
documented in the report were alleged to have occurred in Kachin, San and
Rakhine, and included murder, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery,
persecution and enslavement.
The UN report says
the crimes "undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international
law.”
In Rakhine state,
the report also found evidence of population extermination and deportation
"similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal
intent to be established in other contexts.”
The report finds
Aung Sang Suu Kyi "has not used her de facto position as Head of
Government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events in
Rakhine.”
A more detailed
report will be released on September 18, but for now, Myanmar has rejected the
findings.
U Hau Do Suan,
Myanmar’s Permanente Representative to the UN, told BBC Burmese: "As we
did not accept the idea of a fact-finding mission from the beginning, we reject
their report.
"The human
rights abuses are one-sided accusations against us. This is designed at putting
pressure on us by the international organisations.
“Their report is
based on one-sided information from the people who fled to Bangladesh and the
opposition groups."
Why has
Facebook banned army chief?
The UN report showed
“Facebook has been a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate, in a
context where for most users Facebook is the Internet.”
In response,
Facebook removed 18 accounts linked to Myanmar, 52 Facebook pages, and one
Instagram account, with almost 12 million followers between them.
Facebook said in a
statement they were trying to “prevent the spread of hate and misinformation.”
They claimed to have
been “too slow to act” but are now taking action to “prevent [the accused] from
using our service to further inflame ethnic and religious tensions.”
This is the first
time Facebook has banned a country’s military or political leaders, according
to Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja.
She added the bans
cannot be appealed.