Hossen Sohel: The outgoing UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said Myanmar’s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, should have resigned over the military’s violent campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority last year.
He told the BBC that the Nobel Peace prize winner’s attemps to excuse it were “deeply regrettable”.
Hussein made the remark after a recent UN report said Myanmar’s military leaders should be prosecuted for possible genocide.
The UN report, published on August 27, blamed Suu Kyi, a symbol of the fight for democracy, for failing to prevent the violence.
Myanmar rejected the report, saying it had no tolerance for human rights violations.
In the interview with the BBC, Hussein remarked that there was no need for Suu Kyi to be the spokesperson for the Myanmar military.
She should at least have kept quiet, he said, better yet, resigned and returned to house arrest.
“She didn’t have to say this was ‘an iceberg of misinformation these were fabrications,’” he said.
While it is acknowledged that the 73-year-old does not control the military, she has faced international pressure to condemn the army’s alleged brutality.
Since the outbreak of the Rohingya Crisis in August 2017, Suu Kyi has missed several opportunities to speak publicly about the issue, including the UN General Assembly in New York last September.
She later claimed the crisis was being distorted by a “huge iceberg of misinformation”–while saying she felt “deeply” for the suffering of “all people” in the conflict.
More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since August last year. They have escaped violence and persecution, that the UN has called “ethnic cleansing,” by the Myanmar military