MR PRICE: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce Secretary Blinken, who will speak to the Department’s International Religious Freedom Report. We will then hear from Office of International Religious Freedom senior official Dan Nadel, who will be happy to take your questions on this year’s report.
Without further ado, I will turn it over to Secretary Blinken.
The UN Security Council discusses maintaining international peace and
security and upholding the United Nations Charter during a meeting at UN
headquarters in New York, Jan. 9, 2020. AFP/UN/Mark Garten
European member states of the United Nations called for Myanmar on Tuesday to take measures to hold to account those responsible for committing human rights violations against Rohingya Muslims after the Security Council failed to support an order by the international body’s top court to protect members of the minority group.
U .S.HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMETTEonFOREIGN AFFAIRS PRESS RELEASE July 29, 2019
Washington—Representative Eliot L. Engel, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and a bipartisan group of members today urged Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to take strong action to hold the Burmese military accountable for crimes against the Rohingya people. In a letter, the members cast the Department’s recently announced visa bans on four Burmese officials as inadequate, pressed for more meaningful and effective sanctions, and called on the Administration to designate the crimes against the Rohingya as genocide.
The Daily Star
July 29, 2019 Our Correspondent, Cox’s Bazar
Myanmar foreign affairs permanent secretary tells reporters in Cox’s Bazar
The Myanmar government will consider Rohingyas as foreign nationals,
said Myanmar Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Myint Thu to reporters
after a meeting with hindu Rohingyas at the Kutupalong D-4 camp in Cox’s
Bazar’s Ukhia yesterday.
Detailing his government’s position on the issue of Rohingya repartition from Bangladesh, Myint Thu said there were three types of citizenships in the Myanmar Citizenship Act 1982.
According to it, whoever has been living in Myanmar for three generations would be entitled to get “naturalised citizenship”.
Bangladesh has handed over a fresh list of 25,000 Rohingyas to Myanmar for verification as the repatriation process lingers.
With the new list, Bangladesh has so far handed over names of around 55,000 Rohingyas to the Myanmar authorities following singing the deal two years back soon after the massive exodus in August 2017.
File photo of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Focus Bangla
Sheikh Hasina visited China for a five-day bilateral official visit
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will hold a press conference on Monday to brief journalists about the outcomes of her just-concluded visit to China.
The press conference will be held at the premier's official residence Ganabhaban at 4pm, Secretary Md Nazrul Islam from the Prime Minister’s Office said on Saturday.
Press Briefing by Yanghee Lee, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar and Marzuki Darusman, Chair of the UN Fact-finding Mission in Myanmar.
The Chair of the UN Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar, Marzuki Darusman stressed that “atrocities continue to take place” against the Rohingya population in the country adding that it is “an ongoing genocide that is taking place at the moment.”
Speaking to reporters in New York today (24 Oct), Darusman said the big obstacle in the issue of Myanmar has been the Government’s “hardened positions” including; “its continued denials, its attempts to shield itself under a cover of national sovereignty, and its dismissal of 444 pages of details about the facts and circumstances of recent human rights violations that point to the most serious crimes under international law.”
The FFM Chair said four of the five requirements for genocide were fulfilled in Myanmar, including killing, causing serious bodily harm, inflicting conditions designed to destroy the group, and imposing measures to prevent births. He said besides the killing, the other requirements continue to hold. Darusman added that the underlying factor remains the genocidal intent, which he said was established by the FFM and as such it is warranted to bring the six generals identified by the mission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or a judicial tribunal for prosecution, beginning with the Commander in Chief Min Aung Hlaing.
In March 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Council established the Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar to establish the facts and circumstances of the alleged recent human rights violations by military and security forces, and abuses.
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said she had high hopes that the human rights situation in the country would be different with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in office, but stressed that it not much has changed. She said the civilian government was choosing not to use its power to increase the democratic space in the country.
Yanghee Lee, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, United Nations: “The Government is increasingly demonstrating that it has no interest and capacity in establishing a fully functioning democracy where all its people equally enjoy all their rights and freedom. It is not upholding justice and rule of law. The rule of law is an ideal that the State Counsellor repeatedly says is the standard to which all in Myanmar are held. However, I see that this is clearly not the case in reality. If the rule of law were upheld, all people in Myanmar, regardless of their position, would be answerable to fair laws that are impartially applied, impunity would not reign, and the law would not be wielded as a weapon of oppression.”
Lee noted that the civilian government has the power to create legislative reforms to repeal oppressive laws, some of which have been in place since the colonial era. She recognized that economic and developmental progress has been made in the country, but unlined that no progress has been made in increasing democratic space in Myanmar.
Special Rapporteurs are part of the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council and work on a voluntary basis. They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt visited Burma on 19 and 20 September. The visit included talks with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and a tour of northern Rakhine, the area where thousands of Rohingya have fled.
Speaking to media, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said:
Burma is a country that has made some important steps towards democracy in the last few years, holding their first democratic elections 3 years ago. Although they are not fully democratic they have been moving in the right direction.
On the Rohingya crisis, the Foreign Secretary said:
I went to Rakhine State myself to see what had happened. What is essential now is that the perpetrators of any atrocities are brought to justice, because without that there can be no solution to the huge refugee problem. We will use all the tools at our disposal to try and make sure there is accountability.
I’ll be going to New York next week for the United Nations General Assembly to discuss what we should do. Britain can’t act alone. We need to act in concert with other countries – we are a believer in the international rules based order. It’s incredibly important for all of us that those perpetrators face justice.
On the first day of his visit, Foreign Secretary Hunt met human rights defenders from the Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners and toured the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon.
# New evidence points to gruesome massacre of Hindus
# Men, women and children rounded up and executed in front of relatives
#Access for UN, independent investigators urgently needed
‘I saw men holding the heads and hair of the women and others were holding knives. And then they cut their throats’ – Hindu survivor
