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UN/ MYANMAR HUMAN RIGHTS
STORY: UN/ MYANMAR HUMAN RIGHTS
TRT: 2.13
SOURCE: UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/ NATS
DATELINE: 25 OCTOBER 2013, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – RECENT, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations headquarters
25 OCTOBER 2013, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, press conference dais
3. Med shot, journalists
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Tomás Ojea Qunintana, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar:
“Myanmar has made some important steps towards democratic reform and national reconciliation, and this includes, the release of a large number of political prisoners, more than one thousand; a greater media freedom; an active parliament; now the prospect of a national ceasefire agreement, maybe next November. These are all developments that need to be supported and encouraged.”
5. Med shot, photographer
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Tomás Ojea Qunintana, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar:
“The government has yet to fulfil its obligations under international human rights law to investigate the allegations of widespread human rights violations, including by the security forces, reportedly committed during the initial June 2012 violence and to hold the perpetrators to account. The government cannot renege from these obligations. The situation in Rakhine State is fuelling a wider occurrence of communal and religious violence which is posing one of the most serious threats to the reform process.”
7. Med shot, journalists
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Tomás Ojea Qunintana, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar:
“I don’t believe that the new found freedoms in Myanmar are to blame for the violence and incitement that the country has recently seen. I have visited Myanmar eight times, and I have seen that the people in Myanmar are kind and peaceful people. This violence should be seen more as a continuation of the way organized groups with political and social agendas have operated under decades of military rule, through violence and incitement against minority groups. A more open society in which human rights are respected and in which all individuals and groups are accounted under rule of law will soon mean that these ways of operating will be a thing of the past.”
9. Wide shot, dais
The United Nations expert on Myanmar today (25 October) cautioned that the situation in Rakhine State is feeding a winder anti-Muslim narrative in the country which threatens the ongoing reform process aimed at a more open and broad-based democracy.
Speaking to journalists in New York, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, said “Myanmar has made some important steps towards democratic reform and national reconciliation, and this includes, the release of a large number of political prisoners, more than one thousand; a greater media freedom; an active parliament; now the prospect of a national ceasefire agreement, maybe next November.”
He stressed that “these are all developments that need to be supported and encouraged” and called on the Organization’s 193 Member States to focus on human rights in their support to the South-east Asian country.
Quintana said “the government has yet to fulfil its obligations under international human rights law to investigate the allegations of widespread human rights violations, including by the security forces, reportedly committed during the initial June 2012 violence and to hold the perpetrators to account.”
He underlined that the government “cannot renege from these obligations” and pointed out that “the situation in Rakhine State is fuelling a wider occurrence of communal and religious violence which is posing one of the most serious threats to the reform process.”
Clashes between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims had led the Government to declare a state of emergency. Some 75,000 people were uprooted in the first wave of riots and another 36,000 were displaced by a second wave of unrest in October last year.
Turning to the fighting in Kachin, Mr. Quintana highlighted the role of key leaders have played in inciting violence, as well as the negative role of local media.
Quintana dismissed the idea that “the new found freedoms in Myanmar are to blame for the violence and incitement that the country has recently seen.”
He said “this violence should be seen more as a continuation of the way organized groups with political and social agendas have operated under decades of military rule, through violence and incitement against minority groups” and added that “a more open society in which human rights are respected and in which all individuals and groups are accounted under rule of law will soon mean that these ways of operating will be a thing of the past.”
The Special Rapporteur made his comments following a briefing to the UN General Assembly’s main social, humanitarian and cultural body (Third Committee) which has been hearing from the UN experts all this week and will continue to be briefed next week.
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