EXCLUSIVE: RICHARDSON RESIGNED MYANMAR’S ‘WHITEWASH’ ROHINGYA CRISIS PANEL
Richardson, a former
Clinton administration cabinet member, quit as the 10-member advisory board was
making its first visit to western Rakhine State, from where nearly 700,000
Rohingya Muslims have fled in recent months.
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| Bill Richardson |
‘The main reason I
am resigning is that this advisory board is a whitewash,’ Richardson told
Reuters in an interview, adding he did not want to be part of ‘a cheerleading
squad for the government’.
Richardson said he
got into an argument with Suu Kyi during a meeting on Monday with other members
of the board, when he brought up the case of two Reuters reporters who are on
trial accused of breaching the country's Officials Secrets Act.
He said Suu Kyi's
response was ‘furious’, saying the case of the reporters ‘was not part of the
work of the advisory board’. The argument continued at a dinner later that
evening, the former New Mexico governor said.
Suu Kyi's spokesman,
Zaw Htay, told Reuters on Thursday that the Advisory Board was meeting about
the ‘Rakhine issue’.
‘(Richardson) talked
on a topic outside the agenda of the meetings and went beyond the framework,’
Zaw Htay said. ‘We feel sorry for his resignation due to the misunderstanding.’
Reporters Wa Lone,
31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had worked on Reuters coverage of the crisis in
Rakhine, from where 688,000 Rohingyas have fled an army crackdown on insurgents
since late August, according to estimates by the United Nations.
They were detained
on December 12 after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner
in Yangon. The government has cited police as saying they were arrested for
possessing secret documents relating to the security situation in Rakhine.
US State Department
spokeswoman Heather Nauert called Richardson's decision to resign from the
board and his reasons for doing so ‘cause for concern’, but noted he had been
acting as a private citizen in joining the board and visiting Myanmar, which is
also known as Burma.
‘Ultimately, the
Burmese government and military have the authority to determine whether the
Advisory Board will succeed,’ Nauert said. ‘The United States has made clear
that we are willing to support good faith efforts to implement the Annan Commission
recommendations.’
The Advisory Board
for the Committee for Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State
was set up by Myanmar last year, to advise on enacting the findings of an
earlier commission headed by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.
The armed forces
have been accused by Rohingya witnesses and human rights activists of carrying
out killings, rapes and arson in a campaign senior officials in the United
Nations and United States have described as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar rejects
that label and has denied nearly all the allegations.
Richardson said he
was also ‘taken aback by the vigour with which the media, the United Nations,
human rights groups and in general the international community were disparaged’
during the last three days of meetings the board held with Myanmar officials.
‘She's not getting
good advice from her team,’ Richardson said of Suu Kyi, whom he said he has
known since the 1980s. ‘I like her enormously and respect her. But she has not
shown moral leadership on the Rakhine issue and the allegations made, and I
regret that.’
Suu Kyi's national
security adviser, Thaung Tun, told Reuters he had escorted the other board
members on a trip to Rakhine on Wednesday, but that Richardson had not taken
part.
‘He said he was
unhappy about the situation but I am not sure what he was unhappy about,’ he
said. ‘This is just the initial stage, this is the start of a whole year of
business so I don't know what happened to make him feel like that.’
Before Richardson
quit the advisory board had 10 members, including five from overseas, chaired
by former Thai deputy prime minister Surakiart Sathirathai.
Richardson, a former
US ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton
administration, also had harsh words for Surakiart.
The board chairman,
he said, was not ‘genuinely committed’ to implementing recommendations
regarding the issues of Rohingya safety, citizenship, peace, stability and
development.
‘He parroted the
dangerous and untrue notion that international NGOs employ radicals and that
humanitarian agencies are providing material support to ARSA,’ Richardson said,
referring to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army militants.
Surakiart was
travelling with other members of the board in Rakhine and did not respond to
requests for comment.
Another board
member, former South African defence minister Roelof Meyer, told Reuters the
visit to Rakhine had been ‘very constructive’.
‘If anybody would
say that we are just a rubber stamp or a voice on behalf of the government that
would be completely untrue, unfair,’ he said. ‘We haven't done any
recommendations so far.’
Other members of the
board, which also includes British doctor and politician Lord Darzi of Denham
and speaker of the Swedish parliament Urban Ahlin, were not immediately
available for comment.
Richardson said he
declined to join the advisory board's tour of a new repatriation camp in
Rakhine State on Wednesday, instead travelling to Yangon.
Myanmar's military
said earlier this month its soldiers had taken part in the killings of 10
captured Muslim ‘terrorists’ during insurgent attacks at the beginning of
September, after Buddhist villagers had forced the captured men into a grave
the villagers had dug.
It was a rare
acknowledgment of wrongdoing during its operations in Rakhine by the Myanmar
military, which said legal action would be taken against members of the
security forces who violated their rules of engagement and the villagers
involved.
Richardson said he
has asked the board to recommend that the Myanmar government set up an
independent investigation into ‘the mass grave issue, especially as it
pertained to ... the involvement of the military’. He did not say how the board
had responded.
The Rohingya crisis
erupted after ARSA attacks on security posts in Rakhine on August 25 triggered
a fierce military response. Myanmar says its troops were engaged in legitimate
counterinsurgency operations.
The UN on Wednesday
called on Myanmar to give aid agencies unhindered access to camps it has built
for tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees after agreeing a deal with
Bangladesh on their return.
Source: Reuters
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