Arakan News Agency
Veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international commission set up by Myanmar to advise on the Rohingya crisis, saying the commission is doing “camouflage” and accused Aung San Suu Kyi of lacking “moral leadership.”
Clinton’s former secretary of state, Bill Richardson, resigned from the 10-member Advisory Committee during the commission’s first visit to Western Arakan province, from where some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled in recent months.
“The main reason for my resignation is that this advisory committee is a facade of camouflage,” Richardson told Reuters in an interview, adding that he did not want to be part of a “cheering squad for the government.”
He said he entered into an argument with Suu Kyi during a meeting on Monday with other members of the committee when he brought up a case of Reuters journalists being tried for violating the “Official Secrets Act.”
He said Suu Kyi had “revolutionized” and said the issue of journalists was not within the competence of the advisory board. Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, said the controversy continued at dinner that evening.
