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It's time for ASEAN to break silence on Myanmar: UN expert
ASEAN's muted response to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar may undermine its credibility, a United Nations expert has warned, as investigators uncover damning evidence linking foreign money to the atrocities carried out by the Myanmar military.
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Chairman of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar Marzuki Darusman (second left) and UN expert Christopher Sidoti in a press conference on Monday (JP/Dian Septiari)
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SEAN's authority could potentially be undermined unless it starts addressing the political and human rights aspects of the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, a United Nations expert has warned, as a team of UN investigators uncover damning evidence that links foreign money with a military crackdown that forced out more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims.
The regional response to the crisis has been "agonizingly slow" and the 10-nation bloc has not allowed for the bleak conclusions of the UN fact-finding mission to sink in, said the chairman of the investigation team, Marzuki Darusman, after his team unveiled a report on the Myanmar military's (Tatmadaw) web of economic interests on Monday.
“If this stigma continues to hang over ASEAN, then I think there will be serious doubts about the whole idea of ASEAN. This is not just the governments of ASEAN that's at stake, it is the whole notion of ASEAN that is now on the line,” he told reporters during a press briefing in Jakarta.
ASEAN has faced international pressure to take action since the Tatmadaw initiated in 2017 a crackdown on Rakhine state, the conflict-torn province that the stateless Rohingya minority are confined to by the state.
In November of last year, ASEAN leaders gave its humanitarian assistance agency, the AHA Center, the mandate to lead the regional response and help Myanmar carry out efforts to repatriate the refugees, sidelining its human rights body, the AICHR, in the process.
But the UN investigation revealed that companies with known links to the military had financed development projects that furthered the Tatmadaw's "objective of re-engineering the region in a way that erases evidence of Rohingya belonging to Myanmar.”
The 111-page report detailed how 45 companies and organizations in Myanmar donated over US$10 million to the military in the weeks following the beginning of the 2017 military clearance operations in Rakhine.
