UN Experts 'Deeply Disturbed' by Rohingya Reports of Atrocities

Marzuki Darusman, President of the Myanmar Fact Finding Mission.

Dhaka, MINA – After a visit to a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, three United Nations human rights investigators said on Friday that they were “deeply disturbed” by reports of mass atrocities by Myanmar security forces.

The investigators, appointed last March as part of a fact-finding mission to examine alleged abuses, said that the accounts were among the worst that they had ever heard from conflict zones around the world.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled northern Rakhine state for Bangladesh since violence broke out on August 25.

“We are deeply disturbed at the end of this visit,” SPA reported, quoting Marzuki Darusman, former Indonesian attorney general and head of the mission, in a statement.

“We have heard many accounts from people from many different villages across northern Rakhine state. They point to a consistent, methodical pattern of actions resulting in gross human rights violations affecting hundreds of thousands of people.”

Another expert, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said that the accounts of sexual violence “are some of the most horrendous I have heard in my long experience.” Myanmar, which denies any atrocities and says that it has been fighting Rohingya militants who staged attacks on dozens of police posts across northern Rakhine state on August 25, has not yet approved access for the fact-finding mission.

The UN said that government claims regarding the militants could only be established “when the government presents the information that has led it to draw this conclusion.” (T/RS5/RS1)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)