Report paints bleak picture for Rohingya's future
Kofi Annan warned the Myanmar government that violence in Rakhine state could escalate alongside radicalisation if authorities do not quickly implement the recommendations of the advisory commission he led on the religious and ethnically divided region.
The former UN secretary-general also called on the government and international actors to ensure disagreements over the scale of human rights abuses against the Rohingya Muslim minority population in the region did not hold up moves to improve conditions.
“Unless concerted action – led by the government and aided by all sectors of the government and society – is taken soon, we risk the return of another cycle of violence and radicalisation,” Mr Annan said in the country’s commercial capital Yangon yesterday.
The former UN secretary-general said he believed the recommendations do “stand a chance” of being implemented, but stressed it was the responsibility of the government to put them into action.
The final report of the yearlong investigation by the advisory commission on Rakhine state recommended several significant changes likely to prove controversial in Myanmar.
It called for a revision of the 1982 citizenship law under which many of the country’s 1 million Rohingya Muslim population have been rendered stateless and which the commission said should be brought into line with international standards. It also said the government should address the relationship between ethnicity and citizenship. That is a connection many in Myanmar hold sacrosanct, but which leaves hundreds of thousands of people in the country without basic rights.
The report, Towards a peaceful, fair and prosperous future for the people of Rakhine, also called for an end to the restriction of movement placed on Rohinyga by authorities who widely regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The restrictions severely hamper access to health care, education and livelihoods.
Tensions have been high in the state since violence broke out between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya in the state capital Sittwe in 2012 leaving about 200 people dead and displacing more than 100,000.
The advisory commission was appointed by the country’s de facto head of government, state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in August last year. Its task was not to investigate human rights abuses, but come up with longterm solutions to tensions in the impoverished state.
But just over a month after it was established, a deadly attack on border police posts in northern Rakhine prompted a brutal clampdown by the authorities against Rohingya
communities with allegations of mass rape, murder, torture and large scale burnings of properties.
According to the UN, about 87,000 Rohingya have since fled to Bangladesh, but the Myanmar government, which has refused access to an official UN factfinding mission into the allegations, has consistently denied any largescale abuses occurred.
In Myanmar, reports on the abuses by international civil rights groups, foreign media and the UN were widely regarded as biased, exaggerated or falsified and treated with considerable suspicion.
Mr Annan said the border attacks and subsequent security response had made the commission’s task more difficult but “increased determination” to find a solution.
He said that current tensions between the authorities and international organisations should not get in the way of implementing the recommendations in Rakhine.
“There should not be a stand-off … there is no time to lose,” he said.
The government has not yet released an official response to the findings. Mr Annan said he had spoken to the government about the report and had received an assurance from Ms Suu Kyi that some kind of ministerial mechanism would be put in place to oversee implementation of the recommendations.
He also said he had spoken to the head of the armed forces, Gen Min Aung Hlaing about civilian safety in the Rathedaung area of Rakhine state. Another key concern is the restricted access to Rakhine for aid agencies.