UNSC; meeting ends without resolution as China, Russia back Myanmar

[bluesky]

September 30, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 02:56 AM, September 30, 2017
Deep division, no action
Most members, including US, UK, France, strongly condemn Rohingya persecution at UNSC; meeting ends without resolution as China, Russia back Myanmar

Rasheda, a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, sobs as she mourns the death of her two daughters and a sister in Ukhia of Cox's Bazar. The three along with 17 other Rohingyas died on Thursday when a trawler capsized in the Bay near Inani beach. Photo: Anisur Rahman

Shakhawat Liton

China and Russia has once again prevented the UN Security Council from making any decision on Myanmar to protect Rohingyas from atrocities, just three years after demonstrating a strong anti-genocide stance.

In 2014, when the UNSC held a discussion on occasion of the 20th commemoration of Rwanda genocide, Beijing and Moscow joined other members of the council to air their concerns against genocide.

With their support the council unanimously passed a strongly-worded resolution, renewing its commitment to fight against genocide.

But three years down the line, China and Russia at the Security Council meeting on Thursday vehemently opposed any action against Myanmar. This exposed a deep division within the the UN's most powerful body, with the US, the UK and France demanding an end to "ethnic cleansing" of Rohingya, a Muslim minority in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Two local women carry a dead Rohingya child to bathe him before burial at Inani Sub-health Complex in Cox's Bazar. The child including 19 other people drowned in the Bay on Thursday when a boat carrying Rohingya families capsized near Inani beach. Photo: Anisur Rahman/ AFP
Empowered to take collective action to prevent and halt atrocity crimes, the UN is unable to take any action until an end to the deadlock in the UNSC.

The Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorise the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security. But for this it needs to unanimously pass a resolution with no negative vote by any of its permanent members.

The UNSC's three other permanent members -- the US, the UK and France enjoying the veto power along with China and Russia in the council l-- may need to find alternative ways to put pressure on Myanmar to resolve the Rohingya crisis, according to political analysts.

What China and Russia said at Thursday's meeting sends a clear indication that they did not move an inch from their previous stance on Myanmar and is likely to stick to their guns in the Rohingya issue in the coming days.

Eleven years ago, they cast a double veto to the UNSC's first draft resolution on Myanmar which called on the then military junta to stop persecution of minority and opposition groups. Their negative votes killed the measure at the UNSC.

It was a rare veto. According to a Reuters report on January 21, 2007, China and Russia had not cast a double veto since 1972. Through this move, they made the point the US needed to listen to their complaints carefully.

In defence, they argued that human rights violations were not the purview of the Security Council unless they endangered regional or international peace and security, which Myanmar did not.

Since then China and Russia have jointly been siding with Myanmar for their economic interests.

They again joined together in double veto in November 2009 to kill measures in the UNSC. The draft resolution would have urged Myanmar to ease repression and release of political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi.

In casting their negative votes, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors argued that Burma, or Myanmar as it is known at the UN, should not be on the agenda of the Security Council, according to a report of Voice of America on November 1, 2009.

In March this year, they together blocked a short UNSC press statement on Myanmar which would have “noted with concern renewed fighting in some parts of the country and stressed the importance of humanitarian access to all effected areas”.

After eruption of the ongoing violence, the UNSC sat at a close-door meeting at the end of August and discussed the situation. But the Chinese ambassador strongly opposed UN's involvement to resolve the crisis.

In the wake of global outcry against the atrocities, China and Russia allowed the Security Council to issue a press statement urging Myanmar to end violence against Rohingya. It was the first time in nine years that the Council had come together to issue a statement on Myanmar.

But the call fell flat.

China and Russia again did not pay heed to global outcry at Thursday's open meeting held amid exodus of Rohingyas to Bangladesh from Rakhine state of Myanmar and the UN chief call for taking strong action.

Sticking rigid to their stances, Beijing and Moscow rather questioned the UNSC's jurisdiction to take any measure and argued that any interference would worsen the situation in Myanmar.

Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia warned that “excessive pressure” on Myanmar's government to resolve the crisis “could only aggravate the situation in the country and around it.”

China's deputy UN ambassador condemned “recent violent attacks” in Myanmar but says “there is no quick fix” to the plight of Rohingyas.

Earlier this month, Myanmar government officials said they were negotiating with China and Russia to protect them from any possible action by the Security Council.

The above records, however, show the Council over the years has discussed Myanmar behind closed-doors, but could not move forward due to veto by China and Russia.

Thursday's open meeting was second one after eight years. The last open meeting was held in 2009 when Ban Ki-moon was the Secretary-General.

Until Thursday, the line up among the UNSC permanent members remains same on Myanmar issue. The US, the UK and France have been vocal against human rights violation in Myanmar and want actions while China and Russia have been siding with Myanmar opposing any action.

Japan, Sweden, Bolivia and Egypt also spoke for ending the violence against the Rohingya.

Formed in the aftermath of the Second World War with the core goal to prevent genocide, the UN has failed on many occasions due to lack of political commitment of the big nations enjoying veto power in the security council.

Against this backdrop, the call for restraining veto power has been growing over the past few years.

In 2013, France presented a proposal to the UN General Assembly to limit the use of the veto power in situations of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. France reiterated its stance in the general assembly in 2015.

That year, 107 countries placed a proposal in the general assembly for enacting a code of conduct to limit the exercise of the veto power in situation of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Both France and the UK have given their support to the proposed code of conduct. Three other members supported neither the France's initiative nor the proposed code of conduct.

This, too, exposed a sharp division among the permanent members of the UN's most powerful body.

 

[bd_4_ever]

Expected. Anyone who is hoping for anything otherwise probably doesn't understand world politics.

Problem is the situation is getting nowhere and it will only worsen the plight of these people.

 

[war&peace]

@Banglar Bir

 

[MultaniGuy]

Well what to do. If the majority of Myanmar people do not want Muslims, then Muslims should leave Myanmar to Muslim majority countries.

 

[kasper95]

Well what to do. If the majority of Myanmar people do not want Muslims, then Muslims should leave Myanmar to Muslim majority countries.

But no Muslim countries want to take them,may be turkey ,its President said will cover the expense for BD

 

[bluesky]

In 2013, France presented a proposal to the UN General Assembly to limit the use of the veto power in situations of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. France reiterated its stance in the general assembly in 2015.

That year, 107 countries placed a proposal in the general assembly for enacting a code of conduct to limit the exercise of the veto power in situation of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Both France and the UK have given their support to the proposed code of conduct. Three other members supported neither the France's initiative nor the proposed code of conduct.

I think, the politics of barbarism and forced expulsion will end for Rohingyas as well as others if the 2015 French proposal for code of conduct is again put forward for discussion and passed in the UN General Assembly. UNSC must be strengthen by curtailing the veto power of its member countries under new code of conduct. Even one veto can undo the effort of hundred countries. I wonder if even UN is now incapable to act because of veto by Russia and China, what the present non-elected and weak govt of BD will do.

 

[Homo Sapiens]

Countries which back North Korean brutal and mad dictatorship, what other can be expected from them? The more ruthless the regime, more strongly they get support from this two countries.They pick up friends, which western countries shun for their human rights violation.See, North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria,Venezuela or in the past Saddam's Iraq, Polpot's Cambodia,Milosevic's Serbia.Everywhere same pattern.

Western countries have many flaws, but in most of the cases they take a side in the divide which can be said morally right.But China and Russia never take any position which is morally right or reduce suffering in the world.

 

[Imran Khan]

what are BD options now ? real options not day dreams of pdf

 

[AnnoyingOrange]

Good morning Pakistanis so any comments on your friend’s support to A brutal regime that is supposedly tormenting muslims

 

[Mage]

what are BD options now ? real options not day dreams of pdf

As usual. Keep taking Rohingyas and try to get whatever support possible.

 

[Imran Khan]

Good morning Pakistanis so any comments on your friend’s support to A brutal regime that is supposedly tormenting muslims

jai ho jai ho china ki we ask them to back myanmar not haseena churail

As usual. Keep taking Rohingyas and try to get whatever support possible.

haseena should visit china now

 

[24 Hours]

Countries which back North Korean brutal and mad dictatorship, what other can be expected from them? The more ruthless the regime, more strongly they get support from this two countries.They pick up friends, which western countries shun for their human rights violation.See, North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria,Venezuela or in the past Saddam's Iraq, Polpot's Cambodia,Milosevic's Serbia.Everywhere same pattern.

Western countries have many flaws, but in most of the cases they take a side in the divide which can be said morally right.But China and Russia never take any position which is morally right or reduce suffering in the world.

Tell that to the Palestinians.

 

[beijingwalker]

Countries which back North Korean brutal and mad dictatorship, what other can be expected from them? The more ruthless the regime, more strongly they get support from this two countries.They pick up friends, which western countries shun for their human rights violation.See, North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria,Venezuela or in the past Saddam's Iraq, Polpot's Cambodia,Milosevic's Serbia.Everywhere same pattern.

Western countries have many flaws, but in most of the cases they take a side in the divide which can be said morally right.But China and Russia never take any position which is morally right or reduce suffering in the world.

What UN can do about this?
https://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

 

[Homo Sapiens]

Tell that to the Palestinians.

I said they have many flaws.

As usual. Keep taking Rohingyas and try to get whatever support possible.

If a solution is not found within 1 year, then Bangladesh should free Rohingya refugee to leave the country,BGB, Coast guard should not stop them,even arrange it secretly.Make them to be the headache for the entire world.

 

[Banglar Bir]

Rohingya Muslims fear the UN failed them
By Jonah Fisher BBC News, Yangon
28 September 2017Related Topics
Asia migrant crisis
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption More than 500,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar
The UN leadership in Myanmar tried to stop the Rohingya rights issue being raised with the government, sources in the UN and aid community told the BBC.

One former UN official said the head of the UN in Myanmar (Burma) tried to prevent human rights advocates from visiting sensitive Rohingya areas.

More than 500,000 Rohingya have fled an offensive by the military, with many now sheltering in camps in Bangladesh.

The UN in Myanmar "strongly disagreed" with the BBC findings.

In the month since Rohingya Muslims began flowing into Bangladesh, the UN has been at the forefront of the response. It has delivered aid and made robust statements condemning the Burmese authorities.

But sources within the UN and the aid community both in Myanmar and outside have told the BBC that, in the four years before the current crisis, the head of the United Nations Country Team (UNCT), a Canadian called Renata Lok-Dessallien:

• tried to stop human rights activists travelling to Rohingya areas
• attempted to shut down public advocacy on the subject
• isolated staff who tried to warn that ethnic cleansing might be on the way.

One aid worker, Caroline Vandenabeele, had seen the warning signs before. She worked in Rwanda in the run-up to the genocide in late 1993 and early 1994 and says when she first arrived in Myanmar she noticed worrying similarities.
'Mass Hindu grave' found in Rakhine state
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Media caption Myanmar: Who are the Rohingya?
"I was with a group of expats and Burmese business people talking about Rakhine and Rohingya and one of the Burmese people just said 'we should kill them all as if they are just dogs'. For me, this level of dehumanisation of humans is one sign that you have reached a level of acceptance in society that this is normal."

For more than a year I have been corresponding with Ms Vandenabeele, who has served in conflict areas such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Rwanda and Nepal.

Between 2013 and 2015 she had a crucial job in the UNCT in Myanmar. She was head of office for what is known as the resident co-ordinator, the top UN official in the country, currently Ms Dessallien.

The job gave Ms Vandenabeele a front-row seat as the UN grappled with how to respond to rising tensions in Rakhine state.

Back in 2012, clashes between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists left more than 100 dead and more than 100,000 Rohingya Muslims in camps around the state capital, Sittwe.

Since then, there have been periodic flare-ups and, in the past year, the emergence of a Rohingya militant group. Attempts to deliver aid to the Rohingya have been complicated by Rakhine Buddhists who resent the supply of aid for the Rohingya, at times blocking it and even attacking aid vehicles.

Image copyright REUTERS
Image caption Some Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine state have been razed
It presented a complex emergency for the UN and aid agencies, who needed the co-operation of the government and the Buddhist community to get basic aid to the Rohingya.

At the same time they knew that speaking up about the human rights and statelessness of the Rohingya would upset many Buddhists.

So the decision was made to focus on a long-term strategy. The UN and the international community prioritised long-term development in Rakhine in the hope that eventually increased prosperity would lead to reduced tensions between the Rohingya and the Buddhists.
'Torture' of Myanmar Muslim minority - UN
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For UN staff it meant that publicly talking about the Rohingya became almost taboo. Many UN press releases about Rakhine avoided using the word completely. The Burmese government does not even use the word Rohingya or recognise them as a distinct group, preferring to call them "Bengalis".

During my years reporting from Myanmar, very few UN staff were willing to speak frankly on the record about the Rohingya. Now an investigation into the internal workings of the UN in Myanmar has revealed that even behind closed doors the Rohingyas' problems were put to one side.

Where have the Rohingya fled to

Multiple sources in Myanmar's aid community have told the BBC that at high-level UN meetings in Myanmar any question of asking the Burmese authorities to respect the Rohingyas' human rights became almost impossible.
Who will help Myanmar's Rohingya?
Ms Vandenabeele said it soon became clear to everyone that raising the Rohingyas' problems, or warning of ethnic cleansing in senior UN meetings, was simply not acceptable.

"Well you could do it but it had consequences," she said. "And it had negative consequences, like you were no longer invited to meetings and your travel authorisations were not cleared. Other staff were taken off jobs - and being humiliated in meetings. An atmosphere was created that talking about these issues was simply not on."

Repeat offenders, like the head of the UN's Office for the Co-ordination for Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) were deliberately excluded from discussions.

Ms Vandenabeele told me she was often instructed to find out when the UNOCHA representative was out of town so meetings could be held at those times. The head of UNOCHA declined to speak to the BBC but it has been confirmed by several other UN sources inside Myanmar.

Ms Vandenabeele said she was labelled a troublemaker and frozen out of her job for repeatedly warning about the possibility of Rohingya ethnic cleansing. This version of events has not been challenged by the UN.

Attempts to restrict those talking about the Rohingya extended to UN officials visiting Myanmar. Tomas Quintana is now the UN special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea but for six years, until 2014, held that same role for Myanmar.

Speaking from Argentina, he told me about being met at Yangon airport by Ms Dessallien.

"I received this advice from her - saying you should not go to northern Rakhine state - please don't go there. So I asked why and there was not an answer in any respect, there was just the stance of not trying to bring trouble with the authorities, basically," he said.

"This is just one story, but it demonstrates what was the strategy of the UN Country Team in regards to the issue of the Rohingya."

Mr Quintana still went to northern Rakhine but said Ms Dessallien "disassociated" herself from his mission and he didn't see her again.

One senior UN staffer told me: "We've been pandering to the Rakhine community at the expense of the Rohingya.

"The government knows how to use us and to manipulate us and they keep on doing it - we never learn. And we can never stand up to them because we can't upset the government."

Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption Many Rohingya fled by night into Bangladesh leaving everything behind
The UN's priorities in Rakhine were examined in a report commissioned by the UN in 2015 entitled "Slippery Slope: Helping Victims or Supporting Systems of Abuse".

Leaked to the BBC, it is damning of the UNCT approach.
"The UNCT strategy with respect to human rights focuses too heavily on the over-simplified hope that development investment itself will reduce tensions, failing to take into account that investing in a discriminatory structure run by discriminatory state actors is more likely to reinforce discrimination than change it."

There have been other documents with similar conclusions. With António Guterres as the new secretary general in New York, a former senior member of the UN was asked to write a memo for his team in April.

Titled "Repositioning the UN" the two-page document was damning in its assessment, calling the UN in Myanmar "glaringly dysfunctional".

In the weeks that followed the memo, the UN confirmed that Ms Dessallien was being "rotated" but stressed it was nothing to do with her performance. Three months on Ms Dessallien is still the UN's top official there after the Burmese government rejected her proposed successor.

"She has a fair view and is not biased," Shwe Mann, a former senior general and close ally of Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, told me. "Whoever is biased towards the Rohingyas, they won't like her and they will criticise her."

Ms Dessallien declined to give an interview to the BBC to respond to this article.

The UN in Myanmar said its approach was to be "fully inclusive" and ensure the participation of all relevant experts.

"We strongly disagree with the accusations that the resident co-ordinator 'prevented' internal discussions. The resident co-ordinator regularly convenes all UN agencies in Myanmar to discuss how to support peace and security, human rights, development and humanitarian assistance in Rakhine state," a statement from a UN spokesperson in Yangon said.

On Tomas Quintana's visits to Rakhine, the spokesperson said Ms Dessallien had "provided full support" in terms of personnel, logistics and security.

Ten ambassadors, including from Britain and the United States, wrote unsolicited emails to the BBC when they heard we were working on this report, expressing their support for Ms Dessallien.

There are those who see similarities between the UN's much-criticised role in Sri Lanka and what has happened in Myanmar. Charles Petrie wrote a damning report into the UN and Sri Lanka, and also served as the UN's top official in Myanmar (before being expelled in 2007).

He said the UN's response to the Rohingya over the past few years had been confused and that Ms Dessallien hadn't been given the mandate to bring all of the key areas together.

"I think the key lesson for Myanmar from Sri Lanka is the lack of a focal point. A senior level focal point addressing the situation in Myanmar in its totality - the political, the human rights, the humanitarian and the development. It remains diffuse. And that means over the last few years there have been almost competing agendas."

So might a different approach from the UN and the international community have averted the humanitarian disaster we are seeing now? It's hard to see how it might have deterred the Burmese army's massive response following the 25 August Rohingya militant attack.

Image copyright AFP
Image caption Bangladesh says it is struggling to cope with the refugees
Ms Vandenabeele said she at least believed an early warning system she proposed might have provided some indications of what was about to unfold.

"It's hard to say which action would have been able to prevent this," she told me. "But what I know for sure is that the way it was done was never going to prevent it. The way it was done was simply ignoring the issue."

Mr Quintana said he wished the international community had pushed harder for some sort of transitional justice system as part of the move to a hybrid democratic government.

One source said the UN now appeared to be preparing itself for an inquiry into its response to Rakhine, and this could be similar to the inquiry that came after the controversial end to Sri Lanka's civil war - and which found it wanting.
The Rohingya refugee crisis is the worst in decades
The weekly outflow from Myanmar is the highest since the Rwandan genocide
Graphic detail
Sep 21st 2017
by THE DATA TEAM

ON AUGUST 25th a group of militant Rohingya Muslims attacked police bases in northern Myanmar. The army retaliated with untrammelled fury, burning villages, killing civilians and raping women. More than 420,000 terrified Rohingyas have crossed the border into Bangladesh. The UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has proclaimed the exodus “unprecedented in terms of volume and speed”, and Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN’s human-rights chief, called it a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Myanmar’s leaders deny they are conducting a campaign of repression against the Rohingyas. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of the government and a winner of the Nobel peace prize, has repeatedly failed to condemn the attacks. Speaking on September 19th, she again avoided mentioning the Rohingyas by name, and flatly claimed that no violence or village clearances had occurred since September 5th. Amnesty International, a human-rights group, branded the speech “a mix of untruths and victim-blaming”.

Despite widespread international criticism, Ms Suu Kyi’s stance is widely shared in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. In 1982 the military government excluded the Rohingyas from a list of more than 130 officially recognised ethnic groups in the country, dismissing them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. That rendered them, in effect, stateless, and their mistreatment intensified. In 1991-92, around 600,000 Rohingyas fled across the border to escape violent persecution by the army.

The current exodus is unfolding much more swiftly. On average, 120,000 people have crossed the border per week, although the rate has recently started to slow. Aid agencies say they are overwhelmed and cannot provide enough food, water or shelter. Other refugee crises have involved a larger total number of refugees, but have stretched out over longer periods, sometimes lasting years, so the flow has been less intense than the exodus from Myanmar.

Data on weekly refugee flows are often unavailable. The Economist has attempted to estimate them by using UNHCR figures for selected crises and averaging the yearly flows over 52 weeks (when yearly data are available, eg, for Iraq and Syria), or by averaging the overall number of refugees over the relevant time period (eg, for Liberia and Afghanistan).

This suggests that the current refugee flow from Myanmar is swifter even than the exodus from Rwanda in 1994. Some 2.3m people fled the country, more than a third of the population. (Confusingly, the refugees were mostly not Tutsis (the targets of the genocide, who were largely unable to escape) but Hutus (the perpetrators). A Tutsi rebel army overthrew the genocidal Hutu government, and its leaders fled, taking a huge portion of their own tribe with them.) We have assumed that most of the Rwandan exodus occurred between April and August 1994. If so, an average of 111,000 Rwandans left the country every week.

The refugee crisis in Syria is the worst of the past decade. Some 5.5m people have left the country. But averaging yearly flows, about 33,000 people left the country every week in 2013, the worst year.

Until the most recent violence began in Myanmar, some 1m Rohingyas lived in Rakhine state. Nearly half have gone to Bangladesh, which already hosted around 400,000 Rohingyas from previous outflows. A further 700,000 live in other countries in Asia and the Middle East. Ms Suu Kyi has said her government is prepared to begin a verification process “at any time” that would allow some Rohingyas in Bangladesh to return home. How many will be allowed to come back remains to be seen.
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/09/daily-chart-13?fsrc=gnews