People are feeling despair in Myanmar, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the country said as her fifth investigation trip to the country drew to a close.
“It pains me to see feelings of hope slowly fading,” Yanghee Lee, an academic from South Korea, said yesterday in front of reporters in Yangon.
Since the new government led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi took office in April 2016, fighting has again flared up in the country.
In Rakhine state a humanitarian crisis has been unfolding. After nine border guards were killed in early October, an army clearance operation against the Muslim Rohingya minority spiralled out of control.
Soldiers are being accused of arson, murder and rape. The government basically denies the allegations while at least 65,000 people have fled across the border to Bangladesh, the International Organization for Migration says.
Lee said her trip has been under the shadow of people’s fear of reprisal for speaking to her. The circumstances of the beheading of a man who blamed soldiers of human rights abuses needed to be clarified, she said.
Lee met civilians in the conflict hotspots, visited a hard labour camp in Mon state and spoke to Suu Kyi as well as other government representatives in Naypyitaw and Yangon during her 12-day mission during which she was denied access twice in Kachin State.
Lee highlighted the problem of the military still controlling the defence, home and border affairs ministries. Her final report to the UN Human Rights Council is expected in March.
UN special rapporteur on Myanmar Yanghee Lee departs after a press conference in Yangon during the conclusion of a 12-day mission to investigate escalating violence in Myanmar’s restive ethnic border areas.
