20 January 2017•Update: 21 January 2017
By Kyaw Ye Lynn
YANGON, Myanmar
A United Nations human rights envoy said Friday that armed insurgency in western Myanmar is due to the decades of institutionalized discrimination against the stateless Rohingya minority group.
Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, visited Maungdaw area of western Rakhine state, which has seen the death of between 80 and 400 Rohingya since the military launched operations against the militants who attacked police station in October 2016.
“I must remind again that these attacks took place within the context of decades of systematic and institutionalized discrimination against the Rohingya population,” Lee told reporters at a press conference in Myanmar’s former capital Yangon on Friday.
“Desperate individuals take desperate actions,” she said.
Around 400 Rohingya villagers, mostly armed with knife and wood stick, had killed nine officers during the raids on the police outposts in Maungdaw district near the country’s border with Bangladesh on Oct. 9.
The attackers are masterminded by a Saudi-backed group called Harakah al-Yaqin, which has spent years recruiting and training fighters in Bangladesh and northern Rakhine, according to a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) last month.
ICG said the attackers who were emerging after deadly sectarian violence in 2012 aimed to advance the political rights of the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority.
Lee has called on the government for an end to such discrimination against the Rohingya Muslims in the country’s west, who were described by the UN as one of the most persecuted minority groups in the world.
“I do believe if the affected population had felt that the new government would start addressing their situation and grievances, then extreme elements would not have easily been able to hijack their cause,” said Yanghee Lee.
Lee has concluded her 12-day information-gathering visit to Myanmar on Friday as part of her mission to compile a report to submit to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2017.
During the four-day trip to Rakhine state, Lee also talked to Rohingya people who were detained for alleged involvement in the attacks.
“Most of the detainees do not know why they are here (in prison),” she said.
In a subsequent military clampdown, aid agencies and independent journalists were denied access to majority Rohingya areas, and at least 101 people -- 17 police and soldiers, eight Muslim men working closely with the local authority, and 76 alleged "attackers" (including six who reportedly died during interrogation) -- were killed and more than 600 people detained for alleged involvement.
Rohingya advocacy groups, however, claim around 400 Rohingya -- described by the UN as among the most persecuted groups worldwide -- were killed in the military operations, women were raped and more than 1,000 Rohingya villages torched.
