Myanmar army chief defiant after UN probe into Rohingya crisis

Myanmar’s powerful army chief says the United Nations has no right to interfere in his country’s sovereignty, a week after UN investigators called for him and other top generals to be prosecuted for “genocide” against the Rohingya.

Min Aung Hlaing’s comments to an army newspaper were his first public reaction since a UN fact-finding mission urged the Security Council to refer the top military brass to the International Criminal Court (ICC). They came as the UN General Assembly prepares to discuss the crisis in New York.

Min Aung Hlaing also shrugged off demands from UN investigators for the army to withdraw from politics in Myanmar, where it remains hugely influential despite a nominal transition to civilian rule in 2011.

No country, organization or group has the “right to interfere in and make decision over sovereignty of a country,” military-run newspaper Myawady quoted him as telling troops in a speech on Sunday. “Talks to meddle in internal affairs [cause] misunderstanding.”

The 444-page UN probe report, compiled over 18 months, said the Rohingya people started fleeing the country since August last year.

More than 700,000 of the stateless Muslim minority took refuge in Bangladesh, where they remain fearful of returning to mainly Buddhist Myanmar despite a repatriation deal between the two countries.

The military has denied nearly all wrongdoing, justifying its crackdown as a legitimate means of rooting out Rohingya militants.

Further pressuring Myanmar, the ICC independently ruled that it had jurisdiction to open a preliminary investigation, even though the country has not signed the treaty underpinning the court.

Myanmar’s civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi rejected the UN report’s findings as one-sided and flawed and dismissed the ICC’s authority.

In a rare, if understated, criticism of the military, Suu Kyi recently said the situation “could have been handled better.”