Bangladesh is going to request tomorrow for a special session on the ongoing Rohingya crisis at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), according to diplomatic sources. The objective of seeking such a session at the 47-member global body’s human rights council is, they said, to get a resolution on the crisis involving serious violations of human rights of Rohingya people in the Rakhine state of Myanmar.
“Yes, we are going to formally request on Monday for a special session,” said a top Bangladeshi diplomat. Meanwhile, Bangladesh has expressed doubt on Myanmar’s claim whether the attacks on military posts actually took place as claimed by the government of Myanmar.
Earlier, Bangladeshi officials expressed their doubts privately. But, this is for the first time doubt was expressed by Bangladesh officially.
Since August 25, more than six lakh Rohingyas had to cross into Bangladesh to escape the atrocities orchestrated by the Myanmar security forces and local Buddhist mobs. This figure is in addition to about 4.5 lakh Rohingya refugees already living in the country for a long time.
When contacted about the request for the special session, Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque told The Independent over phone yesterday, “We are hopeful that our request will be granted.”
The diplomatic sources said that in order to have such a session, support of 16 out 47 members is needed and Dhaka believes that it has that support. They said that the findings of the UN human rights experts, who concluded their visit to Bangladesh including Cox’s Bazar on Thursday, will help Bangladesh secure a special session.
According to a press statement issued by the Foreign Ministry on Friday, the experts of the independent fact-finding mission appointed by the UNHRC in March last year to “establish the facts and circumstances of alleged human rights violations by military and security forces, and abuses, in Myanmar, in particular in Rakhine State” are “deeply disturbed” by accounts of killings, torture, rape, arson and aerial attacks reportedly perpetrated against the Rohingya community in Myanmar.
If the Mission concludes that there have been violations, it will seek to ensure full accountability for perpetrators and justice for the victims, it said.
“The Mission has applied to the Myanmar Government for access to Myanmar. It seeks the views of the Government and the military on what has happened and why, and wishes to conduct inquires inside the Rakhine State itself,” said a press statement issued by the Foreign Ministry o Friday.
“However, access to the country has not yet
been granted, without which it becomes more difficult – though not impossible – to establish the facts,” it said. “For example, whether the armed attacks on military posts actually occurred, as the Government claims, can only be established when the Government presents the information that has led it to draw this conclusion,” it added. While in Bangladesh, the experts of the mission interviewed Rohingya victims in the Kutapalong, Nayapara and Balukhali camps and held consultations with government officials, diplomats and NGOs, said
the ministry, adding that in addition, teams of human rights officers, dispatched by the fact finding mission, have been in Bangladesh for many weeks conducting comprehensive interviews with those who fled from the Rakhine State.
“We are deeply disturbed at the end of this visit,” said Marzuki Darusman, former Indonesian Attorney-General and human rights campaigner, who chairs the fact finding mission. “We have heard many accounts from people from many different villages across northern Rakhine state. They point to a consistent, methodical pattern of actions resulting in gross human rights violations affecting hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, former special representative of the UN secretary-general on children and armed conflict, said the misery and despair she witnessed in the camps had left her “shaken and angry”.
“The accounts of sexual violence that I heard from victims are some of the most horrendous I have heard in my long experience in dealing with this issue in many crisis situations,” she said.
“One could see the trauma in the eyes of the women I interviewed. When proven, this kind of abuse must never be allowed to go unpunished,” she said. The third expert, Christopher Sidoti, an Australian international human rights specialist, said the visit
to Bangladesh also focused on the future of the Rohingyas and the placement of international human rights monitors might be needed after the safe returns of Rohingyas.