Last week, the UN’s rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar Yanghee Lee called on the organization to arrange a Commission of Inquiry (COI) to investigate Rohingya abuses within the country, particularly in Rakhine State. The statement was made as part of a report that Lee submitted at the current UN rights council session in Geneva, following a 11-day assessment of Myanmar earlier this year.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein made another appeal yesterday to establish a COI in regards to the ‘longstanding persecution’ of Myanmar’s Rohingya population.
“I therefore urge the Council, at minimum, to establish a Commission of Inquiry into the violence against the Rohingya, particularly during security operations since 9 October 2016,” he said.
However, it seems that Myanmar might ultimately end up dodging such a probe, at least according to a draft resolution written up by the European Union and procured by Reuters yesterday.
The EU, who usually takes charges on council matters relating to Myanmar, noted in the draft that they were aware of “the very serious nature of the allegations” and “current investigations conducted at the domestic level.”
But instead of backing Lee and Zeid’s appeals for the creation of a COI, the draft called on Lee, with Zeid’s assistance, to investigate “allegations of gross human rights violations by military and security forces” in order to “ensure full accountability for perpetrators.”
According to Reuters, EU diplomats stated that “they preferred using an existing mechanism that had received good cooperation and access from Myanmar’s government, rather than a new approach, and to give more time to the domestic process.”
Unsurprisingly, several rights groups have pointed out that past government-led investigations have proven to be futile, biased, and unfair — a claim that conversely, Suu Kyi herself has used to describe Lee’s critique of the NLD government. Mounting international pressure has been placed on the NLD over the past few months Rohingya refugees’ accounts of torture, murder, and gang-rape at the hand of government forces.
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