UN Rohingya probe will increase tension, says Suu Kyi

STOCKHOLM: A UN probe into alleged human rights abuses by Myanmar’s military against the minority Rohingya people last year would inflame ethnic tensions, the country’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said.

Last month, the UN appointed experts to lead a fact-finding mission to investigate widespread allegations of killings, rape and torture by security forces against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority that have faced discrimination in largely Buddhist Myanmar for generations.

Myanmar has rejected the mission.

“It would have created greater hostility between the different communities,” Suu Kyi told reporters in Stockholm after a meeting with Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.

“We did not feel it was in keeping with the needs of the region in which we are trying to establish harmony and understanding, and to remove the fears that have kept the two communities apart for so long.”

The 71-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has said she would only accept recommendations from a separate advisory commission led by Kofi Annan, former UN chief.

“I think we should really give the commission a chance to show whether or not they have done their work properly instead of condemning from the beginning,” she said.

A UN report in February said Myanmar’s security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes in a campaign that “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

The report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was based on extensive interviews with Rohingya survivors in Bangladesh.