By Nicola Smith
Geneva: A leading United Nations human rights
investigator has criticised Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's civilian leader, for
acting as a "fig leaf
for military atrocities" against the Rohingya Muslim minority. https://www.smh.com.au/link/follow-20170101-p503r0
In an interview ahead of Tuesday's release of a 400-page
report on alleged "genocidal" crimes, Australian lawyer Chris Sidoti
said that Nobel laureate Ms Suu Kyi could not escape responsibility for failing
to act over the violence. The report, by three independent experts including Mr
Sidoti, provides the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva with harrowing details
of mass killings and rape by Myanmar's military that prompted more than 700,000
Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh last year.
"The very first thing she could have done was not
provide cover for the military by dismissing the overwhelming number of reports
of mass rape as fake," Mr Sidoti said. "She could have refused to
provide a fig leaf for military atrocities of the most serious kind... she has
enormous moral authority, she won 80 per cent of the popular vote in the 2015
election."
Sidoti is a former Human Rights Commissioner and
ex-commissioner of the Australian Law Reform Commission.
The presentation of the final investigation to the
Swiss-based council will mark a crucial step on the long road to obtaining
justice for thousands who lost their lives or their homes or who were
brutalised during the merciless operation by Myanmar's troops.
A preliminary report released last month by Sidoti,
former Indonesian attorney-general Marzuki Darusman and Sri Lankan lawyer and
women’s rights expert Radhika Coomaraswamy, called for Myanmar’s senior
generals to be prosecuted for genocide.
Based on 875 interviews with victims and eyewitnesses
plus satellite imagery, it documents the shooting and stabbing of children, the
scorching of Rohingya villages and gang rape on an enormous scale. Mr Sidoti
told The Daily Telegraph: "The level of trauma in the camps in Bangladesh
is beyond anything I have ever seen."
Last month, the Myanmar government dismissed the UN
investigators' findings as "false allegations". However, the UN panel
has recommended a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The
Hague as an option, which has already won support from some quarters. Last
week, more than 160 British MPs signed a letter urging Prime Minister Theresa
May and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to refer Myanmar's military to the court.
An ICC trial was only one way to push for justice, Mr
Sidoti added, explaining that other options could include a specialised
criminal tribunal or an individual country exercising its rights to universal
jurisdiction for crimes of this magnitude.
Tuesday's report will also remind the international
community of its obligations to take action, and will explicitly include a call
for a ban on arms sales and on "high level exchanges and training"
with the Myanmar military until it has been reconstituted.
According to Mr Sidoti, the reluctance of the
international community to act sooner is "the most haunting question of
all".
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