Myanmar is "unable and unwilling" to
investigate its abuses against Rohingya Muslims, a UN rights envoy has said,
bolstering calls for the country's generals to be hauled before an
international court.
A UN fact-finding mission has called for Myanmar's top
brass to be investigated for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes
over a brutal crackdown against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state that forced
more than 720,000 of the beleaguered minority to flee the country to
Bangladesh.
Myanmar has dismissed the allegations, slamming the UN
body as biased, and the government has set up its own committee to investigate
the crimes.
But UN special rapporteur to Myanmar Yanghee Lee -- who
has been barred from entering the country since December -- said the government
has shown little capacity for an unbiased probe into the violence, saying it
has taken "limited and insufficient steps".
"[Myanmar] is unable and unwilling to discharge its
obligation to conduct credible, prompt, thorough, independent and impartial
investigations and prosecutions," Lee said in a report she published via
her Twitter account on Monday.
Given Myanmar's refusal to hold itself accountable, she
added, it was up to international courts to seek justice.
"The onus is on the international community to take
action," she warned. "Any delay in instituting justice will only
result in more violations."
In her conclusions she recommended the UN should
"refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court
immediately".
The northern part of Rakhine has been on lockdown since
the violence broke out last August, with journalists and observers only allowed
to visit on short, chaperoned trips.
UN investigators -- who authored the explosive
fact-finding report -- were not allowed into the country while Lee has been
barred from entering Myanmar since December for her sharp criticisms of the
government's treatment of the Rohingya.
Lee said she had asked India for permission to meet
Rohingya refugees there but received no response from Delhi.
Myanmar's de facto leader Suu Kyi -- once lionized by the
international community as a democracy icon -- has seen a sharp fall from grace
following her refusal to speak out against the military.
The UN fact-finding mission has pointed out that her government's
attempts to whitewash facts had worsened the situation for the embattled
Rohingya.
Lee also raised alarm over declining press freedom in
Myanmar after Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were jailed for seven
years each after reporting on the military's role in the massacre of 10
Rohingya men in Inn Din village in northern Rakhine.
Describing their prosecution as "spurious", she
called for the pair to be released immediately.
The military has denied almost all accusations of
genocide levelled against it, insisting that "clearance operations"
were necessary to fight Rohingya militants.
The International Criminal Court has ruled that an
investigation will go ahead as Bangladesh -- which has received the Rohingya
refugees fleeing across the border -- is a signatory of the Rome statute that
created the court.
Myanmar has not signed the statute, and a minister told
the UN General Assembly that his government rejected the "dubious intervention".
Source: AFP & DT