A Rohingya family have a meager meal in a camp for displaced Muslim families. (Photo: Jpaing / The Irrawaddy) |
June 12, 2013
Pauk Vrieze
RANGOON — The UN human rights rapporteur for Burma Tomás Ojea
Quintana has condemned a shooting incident that killed three Rohingya
women in Arakan State last week, calling it a “shocking example” of how
government security forces continue to mistreat the Muslim minority
“with complete impunity.”
On June 4, local authorities ordered a group of Rohingyas living in
makeshift homes in Parein Village, Mrauk-U Township, to leave their
village and relocate to another site. When they protested against the
order police opened fire on the villagers, killing three women, and
injuring five villagers
“The fatal shooting last week of three Rohingya women participating in a
peaceful protest in [Arakan] State is the latest shocking example of
how law enforcement officials operate with complete impunity there,”
Quintana said in a statement released on Tuesday.
He said that Burma’s government should conduct an impartial
investigation into the deadly shooting and other gross rights abuses
committed by security forces against the Rohingyas, which the UN envoy
said are “widespread and systematic.”
“However, since the violence in [Arakan] State first erupted last June, I
have seen absolutely no evidence that the government is fulfilling this
obligation,” Quintana said.
His comments come ahead of a statement on Burma by the President of the UN Human Rights Council, which is expected this week.
One year ago, waves of blood inter-communal violence broke out between
Rohingya Muslims and Arakanese Buddhists. Some 140,000 people, mostly
Muslims, were displaced by the unrest, which killed almost 200 people.
The government, which has deployed thousands of armed security forces in
the region, has been accused of actively supporting the Arakanese mobs
and of committing a wide range of human rights abuses against the
Rohingya population, including confining them to camps and villages.
Burma’s Buddhist-majority government rejects the citizenship claims of
the Rohingyas and stresses that they are “Bengalis,” who crossed into
Burma illegally from Bangladesh in the past decades. The Rohingya insist
they have lived in Arakan State for many generations.
Shwe Maung, a parliamentarian with the ruling Union Solidarity and
Development Party, said some villagers involved in the shooting incident
had told him that they were shot at simply because they had objected to
being relocated.
Shwe Maung, who comes from the Muslim-dominated constituency of Maungdaw
Township in Arakan State, said the incident was “a clear-cut case of
human rights violation,” as police should have never opened fire on an
unarmed crowd. “They could have shot in the air, they could have used
teargas or rubber bullets,” he added.
The lawmaker said however, that UN rights envoy Quintana had put out his
statement too soon, as a thorough investigation into the incident
should be conducted first to gather all the facts. “If he now already
says that it happened with impunity, I would not agree,” Shwe Maung
said.
Myo Thant, a Rohingya politician with the Maungdaw-based Democracy and
Human Rights Party, said villagers had told him that the police opened
fire without any provocation by the villagers.
“The officials came and said that they will move them to a refugee
camp,” he said, “But they villagers didn’t want to go, they are afraid
they will lose their land, and that they will have to stay in the camps,
or have to go another country.”
Since the shooting, he said, police had come to the village to arrest 30
men and boys, adding that authorities were trying to accuse the
Rohingyas of having resisted government orders in order to make them
culpable for the incident. “They are accused of disturbing the policemen
while they are carrying out their duties,” he added.
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