As Zeid Alarmed at Myanmar Violence Against Rohingya, New PR To Meet Ban

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 5 - Back on July 1, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Partners' Group on Myanmar met in UN Conference Room 8. ICP asked Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric about  Myanmar's new Ambassador saying the term Royingya shouldn't be used, and minimizing the Muslim group's problems. On July 5, Ban is scheduled to publicly greet and accept credentials from this new Ambassador - hours after, from Geneva, UN High Commission for Human Rights issued this:

"We are alarmed by two major acts of mob violence directed against Myanmar’s Muslim community in the space of just eight days. Last Friday, a mob burned down a mosque in Hpakant Township in Kachin State and a week earlier, on 23 June, another  mob attacked and partially destroyed a mosque and other properties in a village called Thaye Thamain, in Bago Region.

We are particularly concerned by initial reports that the police were present at the mosque in Hpakant but failed to take action to prevent it being destroyed, and that the authorities in Bago have not carried out any criminal investigation into the incident there.

We call on the Government to investigate both these incidents, as well as the responses by local authorities, in a prompt and thorough manner. These acts of mob violence could fuel a further cycle of hostility in the country, and we urge immediate steps be taken to prevent further incidents of religious intolerance.

Failure to investigate and prosecute such crimes would send a worrying message that attacks against religious minorities will go unpunished. The Government must send a clear signal that everyone is subject to the rule of law and that incidents against Muslims and other religious minorities must come to an end."

For ten years as Inner City Press covered the UN in ever greater detail, showing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Herve Ladsous' inept overseeing and cover up of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers, dalliance with genocide in Sri Lanka and prospectively Burundi, impunity for cholera deaths in Haiti and until now for UN lead poisoning in Kosovo and cravenly pro-Saudi position on Yemen amid the airstrikes, it was never thrown out of the UN.

Now it has been, by Ban's Under Secretary GEneral Cristina Gallach with Ban's knowledge, and even as groups like the Government Accountability Project tell Ban to reverse the eviction and give Inner City Press back its long time office and Resident Correspondent pass, Ban's UN tellingly move to award Inner City Press' office to Egypt state media Al-Akhbar / Akhbar Elyoum and its rarely present correspondent Sanaa Youssef, who never asks questions, a former UN Correspondents Association president. This is Ban's UN. a

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