General Min Aung Hlaing and five other
officers are accused of genocide and other crimes by UN
Myanmar's army chief said the United Nations had no right
to interfere in the country's affairs, a week after a UN probe called for him
and other top generals to be prosecuted for genocide
The actions of General Min Aung Hlaing and other senior
officers against Myanmar's Rohingya minority have attracted widespread
condemnation.
But his defiant response was the military's first public
reaction since a UN fact-finding mission urged the UN Security Council to refer
Myanmar's top officers to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
No country, organisation or group has the "right to
interfere in and make decisions over sovereignty of a country", General
Min Aung Hlaing told troops in a speech on Sunday, according to the
military-run newspaper Myawady.
"Talks to meddle in internal affairs (cause) misunderstanding."
UN
investigators went into horrific detail about the atrocities allegedly
committed by troops last year in their "clearance
operations" against the Rohingya, which forced more than 700,000 of the
stateless Muslims to flee over the border into Bangladesh. https://lnkd.in/gy-fma8
Troops, often aided by ethnic Rakhine mobs, committed
murder, rape, arson and torture, employing unfathomable levels of violence and
with a total disregard for human life, they concluded.
The military has denied nearly all wrongdoing, justifying
its crackdown as a legitimate means of rooting out Rohingya militants.
Myanmar's civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi,
had already rejected the report's finding as "one-sided" and
"flawed" and dismissed a separate decision at the criminal court that
found it had jurisdiction over the crisis.
Read also:
'I saw them with our women, doing whatever
they wanted' https://lnkd.in/g5EaqrB
For the Rohingya, now at least, anger stops
short of militancy https://lnkd.in/gBeegHM
Rohingya find their voice in exile but not an
audience https://lnkd.in/gfN3_dK
How the exiled Rohingya and endangered
elephants learnt to coexist https://lnkd.in/gMu_8aC
Suu Kyi's civilian government shares power with the still
mighty army, which has retained control over a quarter of parliamentary seats
and three key ministries since the nation emerged from direct junta-rule in
2011.
The UN team also criticised the Nobel Laureate's government
for "acts and omissions" that had "contributed to the commission
of atrocity crimes".
Source: The National