Yangon - A Rohingya advocacy group on Wednesday called for the
resignation of United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres
after a UN inquiry found "systemic failure" in its own conduct in
Myanmar.
The report, authored by former Guatemalan foreign minister Gert
Rosenthal and released on Monday, found that "serious errors were
committed and opportunities were lost" ahead of a military crackdown
in 2017 that saw hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims flee the
country.
On Wednesday, the Free Rohingya Coalition called for the resignation
of "senior UN leaders in whose hands the management of the entire UN
system rests" after their leadership and management "failed the
thousands of Rohingyas who were mass-slaughtered, maimed, raped or
otherwise violently deported."
Rosenthal described a lack of preparedness within the UN's Myanmar
office to respond to government persecution of Rohingyas in Rakhine
state.
The report confirmed accusations that Renata Lok-Dessallien, the
former UN resident coordinator for Myanmar, "deliberately
de-dramatiz[ed] events in reports" in order to avoid threatening her
office's relationship with the military.
Rosenthal, however, found that responsibility for this is a
collective one and did not hold any individuals accountable for the
office's "obviously dysfunctional" performance.
"For any internal assessment report to merely point to the systemic
failures while not apportioning the responsibility ... entirely
evades confronting the crucial issue of accountability and impunity
regarding the conduct of UN officials," the Free Rohingya Coalition
said in a statement.
"The Secretary General and his managerial deputies should be held
accountable for the failures that have thus far emboldened Myanmar's
ongoing genocidal persecution of Rohingya," the statement continued.
According to the Free Rohingya Coalition, Guterres bears personal
responsibility for the atrocities against the Rohingya because, as
high commissioner for refugees in 2012, he met then-president of
Myanmar Thein Sein, who told Guterres about plans to confine Rohingya
civilians to segregated camps and requested UN assistance in
transferring the Rohingya population to a third country.
Although Guterres' office denied the request, the coalition says it
should have done more to prevent the coming population transfer.
"Myanmar's intent to commit international crimes was thus made clear
to the most senior levels of [the] UN, yet no action was taken," the
statement says.
Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch,
levelled similar criticism at Rosenthal's report, telling dpa: "Given
the scale of the crimes against humanity against the Rohingya in
Rakhine state, which created the world's largest refugee camp in
Bangladesh in a matter of weeks, this report can only be described as
a damp squib, and an utter disappointment.
"People should have been fired for these failures, starting with
Renata Lok-Dessallien, the UN resident coordinator who presided over
this mess and continually downplayed the severity of the crisis until
it was too late."
He added: "The report now looks increasingly like a check-the-box
exercise by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, designed to show
commitment to accountability when, in reality, it accomplishes
exactly the opposite.
"The people of Myanmar deserve a whole lot better explanation than
this from the UN."