Myanmar’s military chief denies sexual abuse of Rohingya

Myanmar’s army chief has denied that his forces committed rape and other sexual abuses against Rohingya Muslims during a government-sanctioned crackdown on the minority, despite widespread and documented evidence to the contrary.

“The Tatmadaw (army) is always disciplined... and takes action against anyone who breaks the law,” Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who controls all security matters in Myanmar, told a United Nations Security Council delegation in the capital, Naypyidaw, late on Monday.

Myanmar has come under intense criticism since the military launched a deadly crackdown against the Muslim minority in Rakhine State in late 2016. Thousands of the Muslims have been killed. About 700,000 others have fled the predominantly-Buddhist Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh since August last year, bringing with them horrifying accounts of massacres, gang rape, and arson by Myanmar’s military forces and Buddhist mobs.

The international medics who have examined the refugees have verified that their bodily injuries conform to the accounts of violence, including rape.

However, in a post on his official Facebook page, Min Aung Hlaing claimed his troops have “no such history of sexual abuse.”

“It is unacceptable according to the culture and religion of our country,” he claimed.

The UN has described the violence against the Rohingya as “ethnic cleansing” and possibly “genocide.”

A UN delegation led by Britain, Peru, and Kuwait, is now visiting Myanmar. Earlier, it visited the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, where delegation members heard emotional pleas for help and protection.

Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi also met the UNSC envoys on Monday afternoon. She, too, has denied the accounts of widespread violence against the Rohingya.

The UN team will on Tuesday travel by helicopter over the scarred landscape of northern Rakhine State — where the horrific atrocities were committed against the Rohingya — and will give a news conference back in Naypyidaw later in the afternoon.

The Muslim community has lived in Myanmar for generations but its members are denied citizenship and are branded illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, which likewise denies them citizenship.

The Rohingya are described by the UN as the most persecuted minority in the world.

UN envoy calls for access to trapped civilians

In separate news, the UN human rights expert on Myanmar voiced deep concern on Tuesday at a sharp escalation in fighting in Kachin State.

Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, cited reports of the army using aerial bombings, heavy weapons, and artillery fire on civilian areas near China.

“Innocent civilians are being killed and injured, and hundreds of families are now fleeing for their lives,” she said in a statement.

Thousands of people rallied on Monday in Kachin to demand humanitarian access for villagers trapped by fighting between government forces and ethnic minority insurgents, which has displaced more than 5,000 people.

Lee called for humanitarian aid access to the trapped civilians.

“Any willful impediment of relief supplies may amount to war crimes under international law,” she warned.

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