Myanmar: New president must hold human rights violators to account

Responding to the appointment of Win Myint as the new President of Myanmar, James Gomez, Amnesty International’s Director for Southeast Asia,said:

“The Myanmar authorities should use the appointment of a new president as an opportunity to step back from the brink.

“We’ve seen a dramatic deterioration in the human rights situation in the last year, most especially for the Rohingya community who have been targeted in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing involving crimes against humanity.

“While the military still wields considerable power, the civilian-led government most do more to end discrimination and ensure that perpetrators of human rights violations are held to account.”

Amnesty has documented how the Rohingya people in Myanmar are currently trapped in a dehumanising system of state-sponsored discrimination and racial segregation. This is apartheid – a crime against humanity as defined by international law.

In a recent report, Amnesty revealed how Myanmar’s military is involved in a land grab on a dramatic scale in Rakhine State, with the authorities building security force bases on land where Rohingya villages were burned to the ground just months ago.