Indian Supreme Court advocate Indira Jaising has been replaced as the chairperson of the UN-appointed fact-finding mission in Myanmar, the UN announced in a statement yesterday.
Jaising, along with Sri Lanka’s former human rights chief Radhika Coomaraswamy and Australian human rights advocate Christopher Dominic Sidoti, were appointed to the mission at the end of May. However, Human Rights Council President Joaquín Alexander Maza Martelli announced yesterday that a new chair had been appointed. Coomaraswamy and Sidoti are retaining their positions.
While the official statement made no mention as to the reason behind the decision, sources told Reuters that Jaising was relieved of her position after comments that she made raised concerns about her ‘perceived bias.’
In an interview with Al Jazeera following her appointment, Jaising said: “Minorities all over the world are facing persecution. The situation of the Rohingya community in Myanmar is especially deplorable because they face the risk of a genocide.”
Jaising will be replaced by former Indonesian Attorney General Marzuki Darusman. Previously, Darusman was the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, as well as a member of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea. In 2009, he was part of a three-member UN team that conducted an investigation into the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
The fact-finding mission is tasked with investigating the army’s alleged human rights atrocities in the country, particularly in Rakhine State. When its formation was first announced, an administrator of Maungdaw District, which has a large Rohingya population and was one of the main sites of the October army crackdown, was quoted as saying: “Why do they need to come? We have not released false information. This is an internal issue of a sovereign country. The UN has no reason at all to form a fact-finding mission.”
Jaising, Coomaraswamy, and Sidoti are set to convene in Geneva in August prior to their trip to Myanmar. However, the team might not even make it into the country — last month, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi reiterated that her government would not cooperate with the mission, and Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Kyaw Tin said that the Myanmar government will be denying them visas.
