UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N.'s independent
investigator on Myanmar says it's not safe for hundreds of thousands of
Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to return because Myanmar has failed to
dismantle its "system of persecution" of Rohingyas.
Yanghee Lee said in a report to the General
Assembly circulated Friday that living conditions for the remaining Rohingya in
northern Rakihine state "remain dreadful."
"While this situation persists, it is
not safe or sustainable for refugees to return," said the U.N. special
rapporteur appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
Lee said she "continues to receive
reports of beatings and killings and the burning of houses and rice
stores."
The Rohingya can't leave their villages and
earn a living, she said, making them dependent on humanitarian aid whose access
"has been so heavily diminished that their basic means for survival has
been affected."
Lee also expressed concern that a
household-counting exercise in Rohingya villages "is an effort to erase
the Rohingya from administrative records and make their return less
possible."
She said the government's requirement that
any refugee who returns must be issued "a national verification card"
is not a solution to citizenship for the Rohingya.
Rohingya Muslims demand that Myanmar give
them citizenship, safety, and their own land and homes they left behind. The
Buddhist-majority nation has refused to recognize Rohingya as citizens or even
as one of its ethnic groups, rendering them stateless.
More than 700,000 Rohingya fled across the
border to Bangladesh after Myanmar's military began a harsh counterinsurgency
campaign against them in August 2017 in response to an insurgent attack. The
campaign, which has been called ethnic cleansing, involved mass rapes, killings
and burning of Rohingya homes.
Lee said there are nearly 913,000 Rohingya
refugees in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, near the Myanmar border, including
thousands who fled before 2017 and about 1,100 who arrived between January and
July.
Myanmar's government and military have
consistently denied carrying out human rights violations. They say military
operations in Myanmar's Rakhine state were justified in response to attacks by
Rohingya insurgents.
Lee said the government's conflict with the
Arakan Army, a guerrilla force from the Buddhist ethnic group seeking autonomy
for Rakhine, is also affecting the remaining Rohingya in northern Rakhine.
In April, possibly dozens of Rohingya were
killed when government helicopters fired on them while they were collecting
firewood in south Buthidaung, she said.
The U.N. says 128,000 Rohingya are
languishing in camps in northern Rakhine, which the government says it plans to
close. Lee said she's distressed that families living there who are unable to
register with the government aren't receiving food.
She said the government is constructing
housing for internally displaced people without lifting restrictions on their
movement which means the Rohinga will remain "effectively detained."
While the government has presented this as
part of the implementation of recommendations by the Advisory Commission on
Rakhine headed by the late U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, Lee said those
recommendations called for the Rohingya to be able to move freely and return
home. Therefore, she said, it doesn't appear that closure of the camps will
improve their lives.
Lee urged U.N. member nations to impose
sanctions on companies owned by Myanmar's military and to impose sanctions on
the six senior military commanders and their family members identified by the
independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar as being "most
responsible for the serious violations that have occurred since 2011."
On other issues, the special rapporteur
raised serious questions about the construction of major hydropower projects in
Chin and Rakhine states, and the impact of dams on ethnic minority villages.
She noted that the independent mission said
the government "is making a concerted effort to fundamentally alter the
landscape of northern Rakhine state in the name of development."
Lee also sharply criticized the government's
suspension of mobile internet services on June 21 in parts of Rakhine and Chin
to more than a million people, saying the government "has failed to
justify the blanket shutdown as being necessary."
She said the shutdown, in the context of the
conflict between the government and the Arakan Army, is impacting a huge population's
rights to food, safety, health, education, shelter and livelihood, and "is
likely to amount to collective punishment" in violation of international
law.
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