Myanmar vows to block U.N. investigators from entering

HONG KONG — Myanmar said Friday that it would refuse to grant visas to three U.N.-backed experts responsible for investigating recent violence against Muslims in the predominantly Buddhist country, a move that threatens to further strain the government’s relationship with the organization.

“If they are going to send someone with regards to the fact-finding mission, then there’s no reason for us to let them come,” U Kyaw Zeya, the Foreign Ministry’s permanent secretary, was quoted by Reuters as saying Friday. He added that visas would not be issued to members of the mission or their subordinates.

The move is sure to draw condemnation from rights advocates who accuse Myanmar’s de facto leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, of allowing soldiers to brutalize members of the Rohingya ethnic group, a persecuted Muslim minority, with virtual impunity.

Forces waged a fourmonth counterinsurgency in Rakhine state after an attack on a border post in October by hundreds of Rohingya militants left nine police officers dead. Harakah al-Yaqin, a militant group that is believed to have popular support and ties to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, led the assault.

But human rights advocates say the scale and severity of the counterinsurgency far exceeded the threat, and a vast majority of victims were innocent Rohingya civilians.

The United Nations said in a February report on the violence that police officers and soldiers had killed hundreds of citizens of all ages, gang-raped women and girls, and forced as many as 90,000 Rohingya from their homes. Those and other brutal actions were “very likely” crimes against humanity, the report said.

In March, the U.N. Human Rights Council said it planned to send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar to determine the circumstances of the violence, particularly in Rakhine. Fiftynine civil society groups from the country called for government cooperation.

Officials in Ms. Suu Kyi’s administration rejected that resolution from the start, however, saying that a domestic investigation would serve that purpose.

Mr. Kyaw Zeya's comments Friday appeared to show just how intent Myanmar is to prevent the three members of the U.N. mission — who are from Australia, India and Sri Lanka — from setting foot in the country.

U Khin Zaw Win, director of the Tampadipa Institute, a policy think tank that urged Myanmar to cooperate with the U.N.-backed mission, said the government’s position was a “very unseemly and unsightly about-face” for Ms. Suu Kyi. Her government came to power last year, and she had long relied on the United Nations for support during her years under house arrest.

Under military rule, “all of us were fighting for democracy and rights and freedom,” said Mr. Khin Zaw Win, who was jailed for 11 years, often alongside activists who are now officials in Ms. Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy. “But now that the NLD has won handsomely — and they’ve won because of the votes of the people — it’s turning its back on those very values.”