UN rights expert on Myanmar arrives

The United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, arrived in Dhaka on Sunday evening on a six-day visit.
The visit is a part of her efforts to assess plights of minority Muslims who fled persecution by security forces in Rakhine State and are now residing in makeshift shelters in Bangladesh. 
She will be visiting undocumented Myanmar nationals and registered refugees living in bordering Cox’s Bazar for three days from Tuesday. 
She is scheduled to call on foreign minister AH Mahmood Ali and foreign secretary M Shahidul Haque today. 
Out of 92,000 minority Muslims, who fled indiscriminate killing, rape, arson and violence by Myanmar security forces in Rakhine State, an estimated 69,000 entered Bangladesh since military crackdown that began October 9, 2016, and living in makeshift shelters in Cox’s Bazar, according to the UN. 
About 33,000 registered refugees of Myanmar and 3,00,000 undocumented Myanmar nationals have been living a shoddy life in camp houses, including in registered camps, in Cox’s Bazar for years.
The government recently expressed its intent to temporarily transfer them to Thengar Char, an island about 250 kilometres from Dhaka and about 30 kilometres to the north-east of the Hatiya upazila headquarters in Noakhali. 
Lee would focus on the situation of the specific population from Myanmar who crossed into Bangladesh in the past 4-5 months and the events which led to their exodus.
The Myanmar government on Saturday announced the end of military security operations, according to newspapers published from Yangon. 
Myanmar security teams were, however, staying in plainclothes in places in Rakhine State, officials said. 
In a statement on Friday, Lee welcomed the cease of ‘military security operations’ with cautionary note, ‘we cannot forget the numerous allegations of grave human rights violations recorded by the team deployed by the UN high commissioner for human rights to Cox’s Bazar last month’. 
Following her three-day visit to Bangladesh, Lee is scheduled to issue an end-of-mission statement in addition to present a new report to the UN Human Rights Council on March 13, 2017. 
Lee visited, from January 9 to 21, places in Myanmar including Rakhine where minority Rohingya Muslims have been facing systematic and institutionalised discrimination by successive governments over decades. 
‘I must remind again that these attacks took place within the context of decades of systematic and institutionalised discrimination against the Rohingya population,’ she said in a statement from UN Human Rights Office in Geneva after the visit.
Lee is set to leave Dhaka on Friday.

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