British Foreign
Secretary Jeremy Hunt will arrive in Myanmar on Wednesday for a two-day visit
during which he will have talks with the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the
Foreign Office said.
Ahead of the trip,
Hunt said Britain would increase its support to gather evidence for Rohingya
victims who have suffered sexual violence at the hands of the military in
Rakhine state.
UN investigators
said last month that Myanmar’s military carried out mass killings and gang
rapes of Rohingya with “genocidal intent”, and that the commander-in-chief and
five generals should be prosecuted under international law.
“The United Nations
fact-finding mission exposed terrible suffering in Burma, and in the face of
such serious allegations, no country that considers itself humane can stand
back and do nothing. We are determined to do all we can to provide security,
dignity and justice to the victims,” Hunt said in a statement.
“Together with our
international partners, we will increase our support for those who have been victim
of these heinous acts.”
The support will
include additional deployment of experts in preventing sexual violence by the
end of the year and development of a code of conduct for gathering evidence, he
said.
Hunt will visit the
Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners to talk to human rights
defenders, and will also go to northern Rakhine, the Foreign Office said. He
will hold talks with Suu Kyi on Thursday.
Western criticism
has mounted of Suu Kyi’s failure to speak out against military treatment of the
Rohingya. She has said that in hindsight, her government could have handled the
Rakhine State situation better.
Hunt said this month
he would also use the visit to raise the case of two Reuters journalists jailed
for their reporting of the Rohingya crisis.
Source: Reuters