Myanmar’s top military figures must be investigated and prosecuted for genocide as well as for crimes against humanity and war crimes, according to a UN fact-finding mission.
In a report handed down on Monday, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said it found patterns of “gross human rights violations and abuses” committed in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan States which were perpetrated principally by Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, as well as other security forces.
“Military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children, and burning entire villages,” the report says. “The Tatmadaw’s tactics are consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats, especially in Rakhine State, but also in northern Myanmar.”
It adds that the crimes are “shocking for the level of denial, normalcy and impunity that is attached to them”. “The Tatmadaw’s contempt for human life, integrity and freedom, and for international law generally, should be a cause of concern for the entire population.”
The report says the crimes committed in the three states include murder, imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and sexual slavery and that there was “sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw chain of command, so that a competent court can determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine State”.
The report names six top military figures as alleged perpetrators, including Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, and also notes that “through their acts and omissions, the civilian authorities have contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes”.
“The State Counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has not used her de facto position as Head of Government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events in Rakhine State,” the report states.
Australian human rights consultant Christopher Sidoti, one of the three investigators – the other two being Marzuki Darusman, a former Attorney-General of Indonesia, and Radhika Coomaraswamy, a former UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, told reporters in Myanmar there was a “very clear chain of command”.
“There is no doubt in our minds whatsoever that what we saw happen in Rakhine as a whole, would not have happened without it, firstly, being within the knowledge of the senior military leadership and secondly, under their effective control,” he said. “And it’s because of the clarity of the chain of command in Myanmar that we have recommended the investigation and prosecution of these six.”
Coomaraswamy said she was shocked by what she had found.
“The scale, brutality, and systematic nature of rape and violence indicate that they are part of a deliberate strategy to intimidate, terrorize, or punish the civilian population,” she said. “They’re used as a tactic of war that we found include rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, forced nudity and mutilations.”
The mission was established by the UN Human Rights Council in March, 2017. It looked at the circumstances which have led to more than 700,000 Rohingya people fleeing Myanmar to Bangladesh since August last year. The team interviewed almost 900 victims and witnesses in Bangladesh in compiling the report. A fuller report will be presented to the Human Rights Council on 18th September.
Myanmar’s Government has reportedly rejected the findings as “one-sided” and “biased”.
