UN appeals to Suu Kyi to stop ‘horrors’ in Myanmar

THE top UN human rights official said Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has promised to investigate UN allegations of atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.

Security forces and police have committed mass killings and gang rapes and burnt villages in northern Rakhine state, a UN investigation published at the weekend found.

“I did speak to Aung San Suu Kyi,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said. “I called upon her to use every means available to exert pressure on the military and the security services to end this operation.”

Since the operation began on October 9, about 69 000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. The UN report was based on accounts taken from 220 of them last month.

Witnesses testified to “the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food”.

One woman was raped by soldiers and saw her five-year-old daughter killed.

The report said the actions by security forces probably amounted to crimes against humanity.

Al Hussein said the perpetrators of such “horrors” must be held to account.

Nearly half of those interviewed said a family member had been killed or disappeared, while 101 women reported having been raped or subjected to sexual violence.

Testimonies pointed to “a persecution on ethnic grounds which is similar to what has been, in other contexts, described as ‘ethnic cleansing’ ”, UN mission leader Linnea Arvidsson told a news briefing.

The investigators took evidence including photographs of bullet and knife wounds, burns, and injuries resulting from beatings with rifle butts or bamboo sticks.

The plight of the stateless Rohingya, of whom about 1.1 million live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state, has long been a source of friction between Myanmar and Bangladesh. —