U.N. Rights Council to Investigate Reports of Atrocities in Myanmar
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCEMARCH 24, 2017
GENEVA — The United Nations’ top human rights body decided on Friday to send an international fact-finding mission to Myanmar to investigate atrocities
that the country’s army is said to have committed against Rohingya Muslims, ratcheting up pressure on the country’s leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, to curb the conduct of the powerful military.
But government statements disparaging accounts of atrocities in Rakhine as false or exaggerated have led to doubts
that the national inquiry will be impartial, and United Nations officials have said that the work of the inquiry falls far short of international standards.
Myanmar has appointed its own commission of inquiry into the Rakhine unrest, led by Vice President Myint Swe,
and it has set up an advisory panel on ethnic strife and poverty in the state led by the former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, which is to submit its report in August.
In testimony to the Human Rights Council this month, Yanghee Lee, the United Nations expert monitoring developments in Myanmar, related harrowing
accounts she had heard from some of the more than 70,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh since the military crackdown began.
" Ms. Lee said. that I heard allegation after allegation of horrific events like these — slitting of throats, indiscriminate shootings, setting alight houses with people tied up inside
and throwing very young children into the fire, as well as gang rapes and other sexual violence,