UN human rights expert condemns Suu Kyi as ‘fig leaf for army atrocities’
A LEADING United Nations human rights investigator has criticised Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s civilian leader, for acting as a “fig leaf for military atrocities” against the Rohingya Muslim minority.
In an interview ahead of tomorrow’s release of a 400-page report on alleged “genocidal” crimes, Australian lawyer Chris Sidoti said Nobel laureate Ms Suu Kyi could not escape responsibility for failing to act over the violence. The report, by three independent experts including Mr Sidoti, provides the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva with harrowing details of mass killings and rape by Myanmar’s military that prompted more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh last year.
“The very first thing she could have done was not provide cover for the military by dismissing the overwhelming number of reports of mass rape as fake,” Mr Sidoti said.
“She could have refused to provide a fig leaf for military atrocities of the most serious kind...she has enormous moral authority, she won 80pc of the popular vote in the 2015 election.”
The presentation of the final investigation to the Swissbased council will mark a crucial step on the long road to obtaining justice for thousands who lost their lives or their homes or who were brutalised during the merciless operation by Myanmar troops.
A preliminary report released last month by Mr Sidoti, Marzuki Darusman, Indonesia’s former attorney general, and Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan lawyer and women’s rights expert, called for Myanmar’s senior generals to be prosecuted for genocide.
Based on 875 interviews with victims and eyewitnesses plus satellite imagery, it documents the shooting and stabbing of children, the scorching of Rohingya villages and gang rape on an enormous scale.
Mr Sidoti said: “The level of trauma in the camps in Bangladesh is beyond anything I have ever seen.”
Last month, the Myanmar government dismissed the UN investigators’ findings as “false allegations”.
However, the UN panel has recommended a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague as an option. (© Daily Telegraph, London)