Arakan News Agency
Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, issued a strong worded statement on Monday accusing the Myanmar government of policies reminiscent of the former military government.
The UN official said she ended a 12-day visit to Myanmar on a list of concerns and concerns about the human rights situation there, expressing her concern over reports of killings, torture and the use of civilians as human shields in addition to deaths in custody.
She noted that the Muslim Rohingya, lives a continuing humanitarian crisis as well as other minorities who have been driven out of their homes.
She said that her own movements during the visit were severely restricted and that access to areas affected by crises had been prohibited even to international organizations at the same time, noting that the persons she met were harassed and unprecedented preconditions for her visit.
“The Special Rapporteur added that she was beginning to feel disappointed to see the tactics applied by the previous Government continue to be used.”
For its part, Lee stressed that Myanmar should not expect to be removed from international scrutiny or that its monitoring mechanisms would be dismantled overnight only after real and tangible progress in human rights had been made.
The UN official said the reports confirmed that the situation of the Rohingya people in Arakan state, who had been forced to leave their homes, indicated serious violations of human rights and that the situation had not improved much since the visit in January.
Some 120,000 people from the region still live in the camps after fleeing their homes and there is little prospect of a long-term solution, she said, adding that some people were told they would stay in the camps for three days and turn it into five years.
While Lee expressed growing concern about the worsening situation in the states of Kachin and Shan, with the inability of international organizations to access them and not giving them facilities, she expressed particular concern about the deterioration of the situation in the northern Shan State in the presence of reports of more alleged human rights conflicts and violations by security forces and armed groups and insufficient assistance to civilians.
“There are many reports of killings, torture and use of the human shields and in some cases this is accompanied by threats of further violence if incidents are reported,” Lee said.
The UN Special Rapporteur’s visit to Myanmar, the sixth fact-finding visit there, and the third since the arrival of the new authority, is scheduled to be submitted by “Yanghee Lee,” a report on that visit to the General Assembly of the United Nations in October.
