By Panu Wongcha-um, Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Aukkarapon Niyomyat

Reuters

July 19, 2017

BANGKOK  -- An army general, two provincial politicians and police officers were among 62 people out of a total of 103 defendants found guilty on Wednesday by a judge in Thailand's biggest human trafficking trial. 

The trial, which began in 2015, had been marred by allegations of intimidation of witnesses, interpreters and police investigators. 

Some of those guilty of trafficking were also convicted of taking part in organised transnational crime, forcible detention leading to death, and rape. 

A Bangkok court took more than 12 hours to deliver its ruling which rights groups said showed the government was serious about convicting perpetrators. 

"The court has sentenced 62 defendants on 13 different charges," the criminal court said in a statement on Wednesday. 

In the harshest sentence given by the court, Soe Naing, widely known as Anwar, a Rohingya man who police said was a key figure behind a brutal trafficking network that ran a jungle camp where dozens died, was sentenced to 94 years in prison. 

The defendants, among them Myanmar nationals, were accused of smuggling and trafficking migrants on the Thai-Malaysia border. 

Thailand has historically been a source, destination and transit country for men, women and children who are often smuggled and trafficked from poorer, neighboring countries, including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, to work in Thailand or further afield in Malaysia, often as labourers and sex workers. 

Tier 2 

Last month the U.S. State Department left Thailand on a Tier 2 Watchlist, just above the lowest ranking of Tier 3, in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, because the country did not do enough to tackle human smuggling and trafficking. 

The convictions could help lift Thailand out of Tier 2 next year, said rights groups. 

"This should potentially show that the Thai government will continue to pursue measures that will lift Thailand out of Tier 2 of the U.S. Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report," Amy Smith, an executive director of rights group Fortify Rights, told Reuters.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, head of the ruling junta, asked Thais not to blame the trafficking on military figures, a reference to the army general on trial, Manas Kongpan, the most senior of the officials arrested in 2015. 

"There are many people in this human trafficking network," Prayuth told reporters. "Don't group all soldiers in the country as one." 

Manas was sentenced to 27 years in prison. 

The two convicted politicians, from provinces in the south, Patchuban Angchotipan – a former official in the Satun provincial government better known as "Big Brother Tong" - and Bannakong Pongphol - ex-mayor of Padang Besar in Songkhla - were sentenced to 75 years and 78 years in jail respectively. 

Shallow Graves 

The trial began in 2015 after a Thai crackdown on trafficking gangs following the gruesome discovery of dozens of shallow graves near the Thai-Malaysia border that authorities said was part of a jungle camp where traffickers held migrants as hostages until relatives were able to pay for their release. 

Many never made it out. Some of the dead are thought to have been Rohingya – a persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar's troubled Rakhine State – although Thailand has yet to release a full report on the graves and the results of post-mortem forensic testing. 

Rights groups say trafficking networks were largely left intact by the 2015 crackdown and trial. 

"We believe the crackdown is only a disruption of a trafficking network but that network is still very much well in place," said Smith. 

Sunai Phasuk, senior Thai researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the death penalty could be the heaviest sentence for those convicted of trafficking. 

"The fact that there are very senior officials charged with this crime will help deter criminals in trafficking networks in the future," Sunai, who observed the court proceedings, told Reuters. 

Thailand denies that trafficking syndicates still flourish, saying it has largely stamped out human trafficking. 

In its TIP report last month, the State Department said Thailand did not "convict officials complicit in trafficking crimes" and official complicity continued to impede anti-trafficking efforts. 

Additional reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Michael Perry, Clarence Fernandez and Ken Ferris

By Radio Free Asia

July 19, 2017

A United Nations probe into alleged atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state will “aggravate” tension in the restive and divided region, the government’s national security adviser said on Tuesday.

The U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution in March to send an international fact-finding mission to investigate atrocities that Myanmar security forces allegedly committed against Rohingya Muslims during the four-month security sweep in Rakhine’s northern townships.

The central government, however, disassociated itself from the resolution mandating the mission.

“We dissociated ourselves from the decision because we found that it was less than constructive,” said National Security Adviser Thaung Tun, speaking to U.N. officials and diplomats in the capital Naypyidaw.

“We feel that that mission can only aggravate the situation on the ground,” he said.

Myanmar soldiers carried out a four-month crackdown in parts of Rakhine state following a deadly raid on border guard posts in October 2016, which officials blamed on Rohingya militants in the country’s impoverished and religiously and ethnically divided westernmost area.

The government has denied most of the accusations that security forces, who swept into Maungdaw, Buithidaung, and Rathedaung townships after deadly attacks on border guard stations in October 2016, indiscriminately tortured and killed Rohingya, raped women and girls, and burned their villages.

In late June, Myanmar’s civilian government under de facto leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi informed the council that it was conducting its own investigation into the situation in Rakhine 

and refused to issue visas to three investigators the council asked to send to the region.

A commission led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan that is examining the situation in Rakhine and proposing ways to solve sectarian tensions between Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, although it is not evaluating possible human rights violations.

The government has implemented some of courses of action that the commission recommended in an interim report in March

Another domestic investigation, led by Vice President Myint Swe, is looking specifically into reports of atrocities in the state’s northern townships.

Though the crackdown in northern Rakhine ended in February, government soldiers continue to patrol the townships in the wake of a series of disappearances, murders, and other attacks on security forces that have struck fear in ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, who constitute a minority in the area.

Thaung Tun told diplomats that Myanmar had a “clear right to defend the country by lawful means” as it combats “increasing terrorist activities.”

Reported and translated by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

By Poppy McPherson

IRIN

July 17, 2017

When Tomás Ojea Quintana made his last visit to Myanmar as UN human rights envoy in 2014, the head of the UN country mission picked him up at the airport. In the car, Quintana mentioned travelling to Rakhine State, where tensions still simmered after hundreds of people were killed in violence between Buddhists and Muslims two years earlier.

To his surprise, UN resident coordinator Renata Lok-Dessallien advised against it.

“She suggested to me not to visit Rakhine State, offering no reasons why I shouldn’t go there,” Quintana told IRIN in a recent interview. “And then she tried not to be associated with any human rights approach to the situation.”

Lok-Dessallien’s advice at the time sums up a schism that has plagued the UN in Myanmar throughout her tenure, and has contributed to a divided and “glaringly dysfunctional” mission, according to internal UN documents provided to IRIN.

While Lok-Dessallien leads the camp that advocates working with the government and focusing on development as a solution to Myanmar’s problems, others argue that the government has done little to address many human rights issues – most significantly those affecting minority ethnic Rohingya Muslims – and they say the UN needs to stand up to the government.

The UN recently said that Lok-Dessallien will be rotated out of Myanmar, even though she is only three and a half years into a term that usually runs for five years or more. But the UN denied reports she was being fired due to her performance, announcing instead the “elevation” of her position to that of an assistant secretary-general. 

Interviews with former and current UN staff, as well as reviews of two internal documents, indicate that the new UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has decided to change the leadership structure to allow the Myanmar mission to put forward a more united front – a position that would take into account both development and human rights concerns.

A spokesperson for the office of resident coordinator Lok-Dessallien said she had “provided full support” to Quintana’s visit and added: “We have prioritised human rights as well as the other pillars of the United Nations, namely peace and security, development and humanitarian assistance.”

Former and current UN staff members disputed that, and internal reports documented dissension within the UN mission over its failure to stand up for human rights.

“It’s no secret that Renata was prioritising the development side, to the frustration of individuals within agencies whose mandate is humanitarian protection,” said one former UN staffer who requested anonymity.

Development vs human rights

In recent years, friction and antipathy within the UN team have been something of an open secret in Myanmar. Humanitarians, who see rights abuses at the root of crises that involve displacement, hunger, violence, and statelessness want to raise the alarm, according to several insider sources. They voice resentment about development people who keep quiet for the sake of relationships with the government, which they have to work with to improve people’s lives. Each thinks the other is morally bankrupt, naive, or both.

At the heart of much of the infighting has been the plight of the Rohingya in Rakhine, a state on the western border with Bangladesh. They are denied citizenship, live under virtual apartheid, and have been interned in displacement camps in their tens of thousands since 2012. Rohingya accounted for the vast majority of those who were killed or were chased from their homes during violence that year involving majority ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

During the more than three years that Lok-Dessallien has been at the helm of the Myanmar team, she has favoured a passive approach. Others – especially as the situation for the Rohingya drastically worsened – have urged action and accountability.

Tensions between UN agencies that focus on development, and those that focus on human rights and humanitarian crises – such as the human rights agency, OHCHR, and the emergency aid coordination body, OCHA – have grown so bitter that the UN mission was condemned to “irrelevance” in a memo sent to Guterres.

Under the former secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, these divisions went unresolved, insiders say. Lok-Dessallien, until early this year, had a strong ally in her boss Helen Clark, the former head of the United Nations Development Programme.

Senior officials have now opted for a radical restructuring of the Myanmar country team that would remove Lok-Dessallien and replace her with someone with more political clout. Whoever fills the new position of assistant secretary-general will report directly to Guterres.

The leaked documents and interviews with current and former UN staffers, describe a country team that became so internally fractured, specifically but not exclusively over the crisis in Rakhine State, that a major shake-up was deemed necessary.

‘Growing irrelevance’

“The United Nations in-country presence in Myanmar continues to be glaringly dysfunctional,” stated an April 2017 memo sent to Guterres. “Strong tensions exist within the UN country team, the humanitarian parts of the UN system find itself having to confront the hostility of the development arm, while the human rights pillar is seen as complicating both.

“The impact of this dysfunctionality is a growing irrelevance of the UN in guiding and defining the international community’s efforts to address the challenges confronting Myanmar,” it continued, adding that donors were turning elsewhere.

The memo put the dysfunctionality down, in part, to structural problems. The role of resident-coordinator is inherently flawed, it argued: he or she does not report directly to the UN secretary-general’s office but to the UNDP, and is therefore more focused on development than politics.

“Unfortunately, the position of coordinator of the UN’s development efforts lacks the mandate, the capacity, the expertise and thus the credibility to be taken seriously as a political player,” it said.

Lok-Dessallien’s defenders stress that any resident-coordinator has a complex job, tasked with overseeing the work of numerous agencies, each with different mandates. But she was also widely described as unapologetic in the exclusion of politics from her work.

A confidential 2015 report commissioned for OHCHR described a culture of secrecy where agencies refused to share crucial information with each other, let alone make it available to the public. The report accused Myanmar’s UN team of excessive subservience to the government, and recommended the team take a stronger public stance on rights.

“Myanmar as a state has plenty of capacity to resolve the situation in Rakhine, but it is not choosing to do so,” said the internal report. “Addressing this problem of political will requires a combination of private and public advocacy.”

Human Rights Up Front

Within the UN’s recent history lies a cautionary tale about dealing with these kinds of tensions.

During the bloody final months of Sri Lanka’s long civil war, as the army closed in on the rebel Tamil Tigers, there were 300,000 civilians trapped between the front lines. Tens of thousands of them were killed. But the UN declined to publish mounting casualty numbers and staff members who brought up threats to civilians were punished.

An internal probe commissioned afterwards by Ban, then UN secretary-general, found a “continued reluctance” among UN staff “to stand up for the rights of people they were mandated to assist”.

The report for OHCHR on Myanmar drew parallels to Sri Lanka. It noted that the approximately 100,000 Rohingya now living in camps are referred to as internally displaced people, or IDPs. But rather than IDP camps, the squalid clusters of monsoon-battered shelters “would more accurately be described as detention camps or internment camps, because the privations and restrictions of movement imposed on the Rohingya are so extreme.”

“The situation bears a striking resemblance to the humanitarian community’s systematic failure in the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka, during which hundreds of thousands of Tamils were held against their will in internment camps that were fully paid for and serviced by international humanitarian institutions,” said the report.

After the tragedy in Sri Lanka, Ban created an initiative intended to prevent such a situation from arising again, called Human Rights Up Front.

The author of that initiative, former UN assistant secretary-general Charles Petrie, who led the Sri Lanka internal probe, told IRIN the way the policy has been implemented in Myanmar has been “very confused” and demonstrates “a poor understanding of what Rights Up Front is all about”.

“Right now what you have is one group of human rights [advocates] and humanitarians who believe the UN should play a much more forceful role, and you have the development advocates who consider it a pain,” he said. “In actual fact you need to find something that’s a bit more common ground.”

The spokesperson for Lok-Dessallien’s office said the Human Rights Up Front policy has been rolled out across all UN agencies in Myanmar and “its implementation by the resident coordinator and the UN country team has been praised by the UN headquarters in New York.”

New strategy

Whatever its approach, the UN has little to show for its efforts in Rakhine.

In the more than 20 years the organisation has been in the northern part of the state, conditions have never been worse. Thousands of Rohingya have been brought to the brink of starvation. The World Food Programme said this month that it expects about 80,500 children to need treatment for acute malnutrition this year in Rohingya-majority areas where the government and military have blocked access to aid groups. 

Security forces began carrying out counter-insurgency operations in those areas last October, following deadly attacks on border police posts by a new group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Rights organisations have compiled evidence of military abuses of Rohingya civilians – including mass rapes, killings, and torture – which OHCHR said in a February report were “the very likely commission of crimes against humanity”. 

The dramatic escalation of violence in Rakhine State likely caught Lok-Dessallien offguard, said Quintana, the former human rights envoy to Myanmar. While she continued to favour a development-led approach, her colleagues at OHCHR were issuing strongly-worded statements and reports critical of the government and the military.

“It seems that, in the country, what is required is at least a common strategy,” he said.

Recent statements from UN headquarters in New York indicate that change is afoot.

In a 5 July speech, Guterres laid out plans for reform of the resident coordinator position throughout the UN. He said the “consultations and analysis” done by his office indicated the role should report directly to the secretary-general and not to UNDP.

Myanmar may serve as the test case.

By Oliver Holmes

The Guardian

July 17, 2017

Some 75,000 stateless Muslim Rohingya people who fled a bloody army crackdown live in western Rakhine state and are reeling from a food crisis

More than 80,000 children under the age of five living in majority-Muslim areas of western Myanmar are “wasting” and will need treatment for acute malnutrition over the next year, the World Food Programme has warned.

The report from the United Nations agency was based on an assessment of villages in western Rakhine state, where some 75,000 stateless Muslim Rohingya people have fled a bloody army crackdown.

Those who remain are now reeling from a food crisis, with WFP finding one-third of homes are experiencing extreme food deprivation in Maungdaw, one district particularly affected by the violence. This includes episodes of no food in the house or not eating for 24 hours.

A quarter of all households composed of only one female adult as the men had left due to the military campaign. These households had the highest frequency of episodes of severe hunger, WFP said.

No children under the age of two met minimum adequate diet requirements, the assessment found, while 225,000 people need humanitarian assistance.

“It is estimated that 80,500 children under the age of five are expected to be in need of treatment for acute malnutrition over the next twelve months,” the WFP report said. A WFP spokesperson in Myanmar said this “wasting” — condition of rapid weight lose that can become fatal — impairs the functioning of the immune system.

“The survey has confirmed a worsening of the food security situation in already highly vulnerable areas following the security incidents and ensuing violence in late 2016,” the WFP report said.

In October last year, Rohingya militant attacks on border police sparked army retaliation in which government forces have used helicopters to attack villages.

The country’s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1991, has been criticised by more than a dozen fellow laureates for the armed response. They wrote an open letter to the UN security council warning of a tragedy “amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” in Rakhine state.

Regardless, Myanmar said last month it will refuse entry to members of a United Nations investigation focusing on allegations of killings, rape and torture by security forces against Rohingya Muslims. 

The WFP assessment found that in area affected by the violence, nearly half of the markets were not or only partially functioning. “Food prices were highly volatile, and supply of affordable dried fish, a main source of proteins for the population, was scarce,” the report said.

“Under these circumstances and with the upcoming rainy season that may aggravate an already fragile situation, the capacity of the most vulnerable population to access sufficient food in the long-term is severally undermined and will depend on the humanitarian assistance in the near future.”

RB News

July 17, 2017

Maungdaw -- "The international journalists were taken only to the selective places by the government", said a number of victims in northern Maungdaw on Saturday (July 15) evening. 

The Myanmar government, under pressure to allow international investigation teams and independent media journalists to give access to northern Maungdaw and other parts of Arakan state severely affected by the so-called 'Region Clearance Operation' since last year, allowed some 18 local and international journalists for the first time to visit the regions on Wednesday (July 12).

While speaking to Reuters, U Thet Swe, a director at the Ministry of Information's News and Periodicals Enterprise, said "there are no restrictions regarding the areas that you can report from. We didn't arrange any 'for show' places for news reporting."

However, something exactly contrary to what he said has happened according to the victims expressing their concern to us.

"We were happy to hear that finally international journalists were allowed to visit our places. But sadly, they were escorted by the Security Forces and taken to the places pre-selected and pre-decided by the government. And they were allowed to  meet and interview the people pre-arranged by the authorities or some families whose members were reported to have been abducted or killed allegedly by the armed rebels.

"They visited quite a few places in Maungdaw and Buthidaung and some villagers talked to them but hardly could anyone open up because the Security Forces tagged along with them. The journalists were not free to visit the violence-hit places on their own either," said a villager in northern Maungdaw. 

After the group of journalists had left the villages in Northern Maungdaw on Saturday, the Border Guard Police attempted to arrest some people that earlier talked to the journalists, reports emerged. 

A local human rights observers group based in Maungdaw commented "although it is being widely said that the journalists have been given free access, they haven't visited the villages severely affected by the violence. Therefore, there are less chances that they will get actual picture of the situation and any concrete evidences on the atrocity crimes committed against the local civilians. 

"They have only seen what the government wanted them to see. Therefore, it's crucial for them they visit the affected villages without the Government Security Forces tagged along with them."

Yesterday on July 16, the group of journalists visited the Thakka Pyin (Sakki Fara) Internally Displaced People (IDP) Camps in Sittwe (Akyab) Township. They have interviewed displaced people on their current situation assuring them that there would be no punitive measures taken against them by the Myanmar Security Forces after their departures.

"The journalists said that the Security Forces wouldn't do anything to us for talking about our situation. But most of us were still afraid and unable to tell them freely," said an internally displaced person at 'Thakkay Pyin' IDP Camps.

[Reports by Rohingya Eye & Saeed Arakani; Edited by M.S. Anwar]

Please email to: editor@rohingyablogger.com to send your reports and feedback.

___________________

By Simon Lewis

Reuters

July 16, 2017

KYAR GAUNG TAUNG, Myanmar, 2017 - Rohingya Muslim women lined up to tell reporters of missing husbands, mothers and sons on Saturday as international media were escorted for the first time to a village in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state affected by violence since October. 

"My son is not a terrorist. He was arrested while doing farm work," said one young mother, Sarbeda. She had bustled her way -- an infant in her arms -- through several other women telling reporters their husbands had been arrested on false grounds. 

In November, Myanmar's army swept through villages where stateless Rohingya Muslims live in the area of Maungdaw. 

Some 75,000 people fled across the nearby border to Bangladesh, according to the United Nations. 

U.N. investigators who interviewed refugees said allegations of gang rape, torture, arson and killings by security forces in the operation were likely crimes against humanity. 

Myanmar's government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied most of the claims, and is blocking entry to a U.N. fact-finding mission tasked with looking into the allegations. 

The government has also kept independent journalists and human rights monitors out of the area for the past nine months. 

This week, the Ministry of Information escorted more than a dozen foreign and local journalists representing international media, including Reuters, to the area under a guard of officers from the paramilitary Border Guard Police 

Brutal Tactics 

The reporters spent nearly two days in Buthidaung, a township in Maungdaw district of Rakhine state, where they were taken to sites of alleged militant activity. 

They were taken to Kyar Gaung Taung, one of three settlements requested by the journalists. Officials cited time constraints for the limited access. 

Reuters had previously gathered accounts from residents by phone and from former residents who have fled to Bangladesh, of brutal counterinsurgency tactics unleashed in Kyar Gaung Taung and several nearby villages in mid-November.

When a group of journalists insisted on speaking to villagers away from security forces, allegations of abuses by troops emerged almost immediately. 

Kyar Gaung Taung resident Sarbeda, 30, had been able to visit her son, Nawsee Mullah, 14, at a police camp where he is being held separately from adult detainees. She was not sure if he had a lawyer, she said. 

Reuters reported in March that 13 boys under the age of 18 were detained during security operations. They were included in a list of 423 people charged under the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act, which outlaws joining or aiding rebel groups. 

At least 32 people from Kyar Gaung Taung village had been arrested and 10 killed, said a village schoolteacher, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. He estimated that half the village's 6,000 residents had fled during the clearance operation.

Burned to Death 

Another villager, Lalmuti, 23, pointed to a small pile of ashes where she said she found her father's remains. She described how he was bound and thrown into a house and burned to death. 

Her mother was later arrested when authorities deemed her complaint about the killings to be fabricated. She is serving a six-month jail sentence, Lalmuti and two other villagers said. 

Reporters were not given a chance to put these allegations to authorities, and Reuters was unable to reach officials to confirm the details of the cases by phone. 

In a press briefing on Friday, Brigadier General Thura San Lwin, commander of Myanmar's Border Guard Police, said some villagers had made what he said were erroneous claims and were subsequently charged and jailed for lying to the authorities. 

"The media said we torched houses and that there were rape cases -- they give wrong information," Thura San Lwin told reporters. 

He also disputed the U.N.'s estimates for the number of people who fled, claiming local records showed that only 22,000 people were missing in the conflict. 

Myanmar officials say a domestic investigation, led by Vice President Myint Swe - a former lieutenant general in the army - and a commission headed for former U.N. chief Kofi Annan - which is not mandated to investigate human rights abuses - are the appropriate ways to address problems in Rakhine State. 

(For a graphic on 'The Rohingya exodus' click fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/ROHINGYA-CRISIS/010040E00WC/index.html) 

Reporting by Simon Lewis in Kyar Gaung Taung village. Additional reporting by Wa Lone in Yangon. Editing by Bill Tarrant.

RB News

July 15, 2017 

Maungdaw -- Three ethnic Rohingya farmers were killed and one was wounded in a landmine explosion in Western Myanmar this morning, an eyewitness said. 

The incident happened nearby the village of Pyaung Paik in Northern Maungdaw Township, Rakhine state, at around 10:00am today (July 15) as one farmer stepped on a landmine when the they were harrowing their farmlands for paddy cultivation. 

According to the local sources, the landmines were planted by the Myanmar military during the so-called 'Region Clearance Operation' that lasted from October 2016 to February 2017. 

Under disguise of 'Region Clearance Operation' to crack down on the rebels that launched post midnight attacks on the Border Guard Police (BGP) headquarter in Maungdaw on October 9 last year killing nine policemen, the Myanmar military have committed atrocity crimes against Rohingya population killing hundreds of people, burning down or partially destroying dozens of villages, displacing more than 70,000 villagers and forcing other around 70,000 people to flee to Bangladesh as refugees. Many human rights groups worldwide have condemned the Myanmar government actions as the Collective Punishment on the Rohingya population at large. 

[Report by Sawed Arakani, Additional Report by MYARF; Edited by M.S. Anwar] 

Please send email to: editor@rohingyablogger.com to send your reports and inquiries. 

By Radio Free Asia

July 13, 2017

Myanmar’s refusal to grant visas to a United Nations team investigating abuses against ethnic Rohingya Muslims is a “slap in the face” to victims that risks lumping the country with the world’s “pariah states,” like North Korea, who block independent fact-finding missions, a rights group said Wednesday.

The condemnation came as the arrival of the U.N. human rights envoy to Myanmar was met with protests by residents of troubled Rakhine state, where she is leading a delegation to probe allegations of rights violations carried out on the Rohingya by security forces.

In late June, Myanmar’s civilian government under de facto leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi informed the U.N. Human Rights Council that it would conduct its own investigation into the situation in Rakhine, and refused visas to three investigators the council asked to send to the region.

On Wednesday, John Fisher, Geneva director at Human Rights Watch, urged the government to reconsider its decision or risk facing international censure, saying that to deny the team visas “would be a slap in the face to victims who suffered grave human rights violations by Myanmar’s state security forces.”

“Does Aung San Suu Kyi’s government really want to be included in a very small and ignominious club of countries that reject Human Rights Council decisions?” Fisher said in a statement.

“North Korea, Eritrea, Syria, and Burundi are human rights pariah states that obstructed the work of independent, international investigations into alleged rights abuses, and it would be a travesty for a democratically elected, National League for Democracy-led government in Myanmar to do the same.”

Fisher advised the government to immediately issue visas to the U.N. team and “fully cooperate with its investigation.”

“Otherwise, the governments that pushed to set up this fact-finding mission need to stand up for it and impose a political consequence on Myanmar for blocking its work,” he said.

Fisher’s statement followed one issued Monday by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, calling on Myanmar’s government to provide the team with visas, saying that the “international community cannot overlook what is happening in [Myanmar].”

Troubled state

Northern Rakhine state has seen a string of disappearances, murders, and attacks on security forces since deadly attacks there on border guard stations by an obscure group of Rohingya Muslim militants.

A four-month security crackdown followed the attacks, during which an estimated 1,000 were killed and 90,000 Rohingya—who are denied citizenship and other rights in Buddhist-majority Myanmar—fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape alleged atrocities committed against them by security forces.

Since then, nearly 40 civilians, including several ethnic Rakhine people, have been killed and more than 20 have gone missing or been abducted, according to the government.

Troops in northern Rakhine have been put on high alert in the area following other attacks by Muslim militants, though a state parliamentary official and political parties have called for increased security.

In February, the U.N. said in a report that the campaign against the Rohingya “very likely” amounted to war crimes, and three months later the rights council ordered Indira Jaising of India, Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka and Christopher Dominic Sidoti of Australia to “urgently” investigate reported abuses against the ethnic group by security forces—including rape, torture, and murder.

Aung San Suu Kyi has said a U.N. fact-finding mission would raise tensions in Rakhine, and Myanmar officials say a domestic investigation and a commission headed by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan—which is not mandated to investigate human rights abuses—are sufficient to address problems in the region.

Journalist access

Myanmar’s government on Wednesday granted access to 18 Myanmar nationals and foreign correspondents representing international media, including RFA’s Myanmar Service, to northern Rakhine state for the first time since the security crackdown in October last year.

Myo Myint Aung, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Information, told RFA that priority had been given to foreign media for the five-day government-escorted visit, during which reporters will travel to Buthidaung and Maungdaw—where most residents are Rohingya.

Reuters News Agency quoted Thet Swe, a director at the ministry's News and Periodicals Enterprise, as saying that journalists would face “no restrictions” regarding areas they could report from, and stressing that no “for show” areas had been arranged to mislead them about the situation on the ground.

The itinerary does not include visits to villages at the center of a two-week offensive in mid-November, where numerous abuses have been documented, but Thet Swe said it is “not fixed” and subject to changes due to weather and security concerns.

Reporters would be taken to the village of Tin May, where security forces killed two suspected militants and arrested one after they detonated a bomb on Sunday, Reuters reported, citing an announcement from Aung San Suu Kyi's office.

Rights envoy

Also on Wednesday, nearly 100 people gathered at the airport in the Rakhine capital Sittwe to protest the arrival of U.N. special rapporteur on human rights Yanghee Lee as part of her July 10-21 visit to Myanmar to investigate developments in the country’s human rights situation.

The protesters, who were given permission to protest by authorities and are believed to be members of a small local group known as the Rakhine Ahlin Takar, held signs which read “get out Yanghee Lee” and “sorry Yanghee Lee, not welcome” as the rights envoy left the airport in a car.

Ma Kyaut Sein, a protester in Sittwe, told RFA that Lee “discriminates against the ethnic Rakhine” in favor of “Bengalis,” using a pejorative term for the Rohingya which suggests they have illegally entered Myanmar from neighboring Bangladesh.

“Every time [U.N. officials visit and] return home, we end up with more problems and more terrorist attacks in Rakhine state,” she said, adding that it is better for the U.N. “not to come at all.”

Another protester named May Phyu told RFA that in the six times Lee had visited Myanmar, “she hasn’t done anything for the Rakhine people.”

“She only helps the Bengali Muslims, claiming they are a minority [of Myanmar that should have the rights of citizenship],” she added.

After her arrival, Lee met with residents and community leaders, who told her they want the government to set up thorough checks on the Rohingya to determine who is entitled to citizenship, and asked her advice on how members of the two ethnic groups can live together peacefully in Rakhine.

They also called for the government to bring stability to the region, adding that rule of law can only be achieved when acts of terrorism by both sides are ended.

Lee later left for Buthidaung, where she was met by another group of around 100 protesters, and was expected to continue on to Maungdaw for the evening.

On Tuesday, Lee met with residents of Rakhine state’s deep-water port town of Kyaukphyu to hear from those whose rights have been affected by special economic zones and other mega-projects that they say have not benefited them.

Reported by Thiri Min Zin and Kyaw Thu for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.