The UN was founded 73 years ago in large part
to address mass atrocities like those committed against the Rohingya.
At a dramatic meeting of the United Nations Security
Council on October 24, the anniversary of the founding of the UN in 1945, the
chair of a special independent investigative commission on Myanmar starkly outlined a campaign of atrocities by the
government’s security forces against the country’s Rohingya Muslims. https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13552.doc.htm
Marzuki Darusman, the chairperson of the Independent
International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (FFM) that the UN Human Rights
Council in Geneva set up last year, briefed council members on the “human
rights catastrophe” faced by the Rohingya from military “clearance operations”
in northern Rakhine State beginning in August 2017. He detailed his mission’s comprehensive documentation of murder, mass rape,
enforced disappearance, arson, looting, torture, and “large-scale massacres
including of women, children, and elderly,” among other brutalities. The mass
abuses have forced over 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh over the past
year. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/MyanmarFFM/Pages/ReportoftheMyanmarFFM.aspx
Darusman told the Security Council that many of the
military’s atrocities amounted to “genocidal acts” and that “genocidal intent
can be reasonably inferred” from senior military leaders’ statements and from
the details and context of the campaign. After the clearance operations, the
Fact-Finding Mission noted, the government consummated the “ethnic cleansing”
by completely destroying Rohingya villages and building new structures for
non-Rohingya populations. The mission separately found that abuses were part of
“a systematic attack on a civilian population” amounting to crimes against
humanity, and that some of the abuses amounted to acts of “extermination.”
Darusman separately outlined how Rohingya remaining in
Rakhine State live in almost complete segregation and ghettoization, with
minimal access to basic government services and facing near-total deprivation
of basic rights, including the right to citizenship. “This systematic
oppression and discrimination” in Rakhine, the mission found, “not only
supports a finding of persecution but may also amount to the crime of
apartheid.”
Many of the mission’s factual findings corroborate
earlier research and findings by Human Rights Watch
and other groups, documenting the military’s use of mortars, heavy and light
weapons, fire-bombing and arson, and close-range shootings, knife and bayonet
attacks, summary executions, and widespread rape. The mission’s report also
outlined grave abuses by the military in Kachin and Shan States, as well as sexual
slavery, enslavement, and forced labor. He also noted earlier abuses against
Rohingya, in 2012 and 2016. https://www.hrw.org/asia/burma
When they invited Darusman to share his report at a
formal meeting, a majority of Security Council members actively affirmed that
they considered the crimes and human rights violations documented by his team
to constitute “an ongoing threat to international peace and security.” The
council also set an important precedent by bridging its work with efforts of
other UN human rights bodies. For the first time in the Security Council’s
history, a body set up by the Human Rights Council provided a direct briefing
to the Security Council.
The same day of the briefing, Darusman joined Yanghee
Lee, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, for
a news conference in which Lee echoed many of the mission’s concerns. Lee also
highlighted the Myanmar government’s continuing denial and obstruction of
international efforts to address the Rohingya crisis, describing “a government
that is increasingly demonstrating that it has no real interest and capacity in
establishing a fully functioning democracy,” or holding anyone accountable for
abuses the UN has documented.
Both Darusman and Lee made a point of noting that the
government’s failures and unwillingness to even acknowledge their abusive
conduct was what made international attention so important.
It has been well over a year since the UN
secretary-general, in a letter sent to the
council in September 2017, first brought the need for action on the
“catastrophic” Rohingya crisis to the Security Council’s attention. The
Security Council urgently needs to consider the mission’s new recommendations,
including that the council should refer the situation in Myanmar to the
International Criminal Court and impose sanctions and a global arms embargo on
the country until it carries out fundamental reforms. https://www.scprocedure.org/chapter-3-section-10c
Unfortunately, such Security Council action is in serious
doubt. Two of the council’s permanent members, China and Russia, were opposed
even to hearing Darusman’s briefing this week and continue to oppose any
resolution that would impose such measures. The United Kingdom, which by UN
tradition drafts and offers all Myanmar documents in the Security Council, has
not advanced any draft resolution to address the Rohingya crisis.
The Security Council members that requested this week’s
briefing should, with the support of other UN member countries, work to isolate
Chinese and Russian obstructionism until it becomes untenable.
The attacks on the Rohingya should not remain unaddressed
by the international community. The United Nations was founded, exactly 73
years ago, in large part to address mass atrocities like those committed
against the Rohingya. It would be a stunning failure of the UN mission to give
up now.
The author, John Sifton is the HRW’s Asia advocacy director.