Press Release: “UN Commission of Inquiry Most Urgent”

ARAKAN ROHINGYA NATIONAL ORGANISATION

(Press Release, 30 October 2015)

“UN Commission of Inquiry Most Urgent”

Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) reiterates its call on the United Nations to establish independent investigation into genocide against Rohingya people in Myanmar. 

ARNO welcomes and endorses the just released documentary film titled “Al Jazeera Investigates -Genocide Agenda”, legal analysis prepared for Fortify Rights by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School titled “Persecution of the Rohingya Muslims: Is Genocide Occurring in Myanmar’s Rakhine State?”, and the report "Count Down to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar" of the International State Crime Initiative at the School of Law, Queen Mary University, all of which clearly established the facts that Thein Sein government has committed ‘atrocity crimes’ with intent to destroy the ethnic Rohingya from their ancestral homeland of Arakan/Rakhine State. 

ARNO has once again stressed with highest appreciation the previous report, “Slow-Burning Genocide of the Myanmar’s Rohingya” by Burmese academic Dr. Maung Zani and Alice Cowley, published in Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, June 2014, of the University of Washington. 

Thein Sein government or the national authorities in Myanmar are the primary perpetrators of the crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing against the defenceless Rohingya population, who are facing ‘existential threat’ day in day out without recourse to domestic remedies. 

For decades the Rohingya have been subjected to institutionalized persecution and atrocity crimes resulting in systematic and massive destruction of their lives, properties and settlements. More than half of the Rohingya population fled their homeland for their lives and those who are still in Rakhine State are living in ghetto-like displacement camps and villages without basic freedom and access to basic necessities for lives. A number of them were victimized at the hands of the human traffickers and/or ended up in mass graves in jungles on Thai-Malaysia border as well as in the Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea and Strait of Malacca. 

Based on the testimonies of the victims and eye witnesses, internal or secret government documents as well as UN data, report and information, all the above mentioned well researched expert reports, including Lowenstein Clinic, conclude that “strong evidence exists to establish the elements of the crime of genocide”. Again based on the circumstances of the crimes against humanity against Rohingya with the factual events and evidences and drawing on the UN Genocide Convention of 1948 it is a case of genocide that warrants urgent adequate international responses. 

Arakan Rohingya National Organisation welcomes and endorses the call of the Fortify Rights and Lowenstein Clinic, and request the UN Human Rights Council to urgently adopt a resolution mandating an international Commission of Inquiry in order to publicly announce the fact findings, arrest the current silence extermination or deteriorating human rights situation of the Rohingya, prevent further deaths and destructions and to identify and bring those responsible to justice. 

For more information, please contact:

Nurul Islam: : +44-7947854652 

Email: info @rohingya.org 

Web: www.rohingya.org