Blog Elements – Page 468

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, set up by the Human Rights Council in 2017 (resolution 34/22), has handed over its evidence under international law to a new mechanism that is mandated by the Human Rights Council to follow up and prepare files for criminal prosecutions, according to a statement.

The Mission’s short report to the Human Rights Council, released on Monday, explained the preparations it made to consolidate and hand over to the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) the extensive information it collected over the last two years. The Mission’s evidence has been preserved and transferred to the IIMM in a manner that ensures its integrity so it can be used in criminal trials in courts outside Myanmar.

A more detailed report containing the Mission’s findings on the latest activities of Government security forces and conflict-related human rights developments in Myanmar will be released on 17 September when the Mission appears before the Human Rights Council.

The Mission’s three members – Chairman Marzuki Darusman and Experts Radhika Coomaraswamy and Christopher Sidoti – will hold a news conference in Geneva on 17 September, the statement said.

Mizzima News

Myanmar said its military was conducting a rare court martial following a probe into mass graves in crisis-hit Rakhine state, two years after a crackdown drove some 740,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.

In February 2018, an Associated Press report alleged at least five mass graves of Rohingya in Rakhine’s Gu Dar Pyin village — a claim denied by the government, which said the bodies were those of “terrorists”.

But the military’s official website said Saturday that an investigation had found “weakness in following instructions” in Gu Dar Pyin, and that a court martial would “proceed in accordance with the procedures of Military Justice.”

No additional details were provided.

The report described grisly violence at the hands of soldiers and Buddhist vigilantes, who allegedly attacked villagers with guns, knives, rocket launchers and grenades before dumping bodies into pits and dousing them with acid.

Estimates from survivors in Bangladesh put the death toll in the hundreds, the report said.

Security forces claimed they were under attack by some 500 villagers, and that they had acted “in self-defence”, according to state-run media last year.

Rights groups say the military has done little to hold anyone accountable for abuses in Rakhine state.