France joins calls for UN inquiry into Burma abuses

Thursday, 23 September 2010 03:42 Thomas Maung Shwe

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – French representative Jean-Baptiste Mattei expressed at a UN Human Rights Council meeting last Friday his government’s support to “establish an international commission of inquiry” on human rights abuses in Burma.

His comments were revealed in a summary of the meeting held last Friday, posted recently on the website of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

France is now the eighth nation to come out in support of the UN launching a commission of inquiry on Burma, joining Australia, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and the United States, along with many rights groups that have documented such crimes including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, all of which have endorsed such an inquiry.

Aung Din, executive director of rights group, the US Campaign for Burma, welcomed France’s stance. “[The] French coming on board is a positive development,” said the
former political prisoner, who runs the organisation that is also campaigning for a boycott of elections in Burma on November 7.

In March, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, issued a report to the UN Human Rights Council, which stated that in Burma, there existed a pattern of “gross and systematic” human rights abuses. Quintana’s report called on the UN to consider launching a “commission of inquiry with a specific fact-finding mandate to address the question of international crimes” committed in Burma.

During the meeting several countries including Norway, the US, Ireland, Switzerland and Japan expressed concern about the human rights situation in Burma, the treatment of ethnic minorities and the much-criticised national elections.

During its allotted right-of-reply time, the Burmese regime fired back against the charges, claiming, “that the allegations against Myanmar [Burma] were completely false and unfounded. There were no crimes against humanity in Myanmar and the government had negotiated ceasefires with 17 of the 18 rebel groups. The military only conducted counter-insurgency activities and not acts of military aggression. With regard to the issue of impunity, any member of the military who breached national law was subject to legal punishments. The Myanmar governmental authority said that there was no need to conduct investigations in Myanmar since there were no human rights violations there.”

The Burmese regime representatives at the meeting were likely very pleased when China, used its time to make reference to the French government’s recent wave of deportations of Roma (formerly known as Gypsies) back to Romania and Hungary.

France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council has endured a wave of criticism from within its fellow human rights group and many of its European neighbours since last month’s decision by President Nicolas Sarkozy to proceed with the deportation of thousands of Roma to Eastern Europe, despite the fact they are EU citizens and, in theory, are legally allowed to live anywhere in the European Union.

Other nations present at the meeting that put up a vigorous defence against charges of human rights abuses were North Korea and Iran.