UN envoy to Myanmar warns that violence puts country on 'path to self-destruction'
Julie Bishop told the U.N. General Assembly that 'alarmingly' the violence didn't end after a powerful earthquake in late March devastated parts of the capital, Naypyitaw, and the country's second-largest city, Mandalay, killing more than 3,000 people and injuring thousands more.
Ceasefires announced by some parties have largely not been observed, 'embedding a crisis within a crisis,' and people in Myanmar must now deal with the raging conflict and the earthquake's devastation, said Bishop, a former foreign minister of Australia.
'A zero-sum approach persists on all sides,' she said. 'Armed clashes remain a barrier to meeting humanitarian needs. The flow of weapons into the country is fueling the expectations that a military solution is possible.'
A widespread armed struggle against military rule in Myanmar began in February 2021 after generals seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. More than 6,600 civilians are estimated to have been killed by security forces, according to figures compiled by nongovernmental organizations.
The military takeover triggered intensified fighting with long-established armed militias organized by Myanmar's ethnic minority groups in its border regions, which have struggled for decades for more autonomy. It also led to the formation of pro-democracy militias that support a national unity government established by elected lawmakers barred from taking their seats after the army takeover.
More than 22,000 political prisoners are still in detention, Bishop said, including Suu Kyi, who turns 80 on June 19, and the ousted president, Win Myint.
The U.N. envoy said she detected 'some openness to political dialogue with some regional support, but there is not yet broader agreement on how to move forward.'
In meetings with the country's leaders, Bishop said she encouraged them to reconsider their strategy, which has left the country more divided. She also warned against elections, planned for December or January, saying they risk fueling greater resistance and instability unless there is an end to the violence and they can be held in an inclusive and transparent way.
Bishop said she has been coordinating further action with Othman Hashim, the special envoy for Myanmar from the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN, and they agreed to visit Myanmar together.
The U.N. envoy said she had a meeting online on Monday with representatives of the Rohingya minority from Myanmar and Bangladesh.
She said the situation for the Rohingya in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state remains dire, with up to 80% of civilians living in poverty and caught in crossfire between the government's military forces and the Arakan Army, the well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority, and "subject to forced recruitment and other abuses.'
More than 700,000 Muslim Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar starting in late August 2017 when Myanmar's military launched a 'clearance operation.' Members of the ethnic group face discrimination and are denied citizenship and other rights in the Buddhist-majority nation.
Bishop said there's hope that a high-level conference on the Rohingya and other minorities called for by the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 30 will put a spotlight on the urgency of finding 'durable solutions' to their plight.
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Daily Mail
5 hours ago
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The Independent
12 hours ago
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The Guardian
12 hours ago
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John Oliver: ‘Gaza is being starved by Israel'
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Trump, Oliver reminded, was convicted on 33 counts of falsifying business records; since retaking office, his administration has halted or dropped 109 enforcement actions against corporate misconduct, and even issued the first ever pardon of a corporation, for crypto exchange BitMex. 'It is frankly no wonder experts have called this moment 'the ripest environment for corruption by public officials and business executives in a generation',' said Oliver. 'Though to be unfair, it's not like the environment was unripe before Trump took office. Republican and Democratic administrations have both taken a pretty lax approach to corporate crime for a while now. You might have noticed that stories about corporate malfeasance rarely end with executives going to jail or the companies getting shutting down.' Oliver focused on one key reason why: deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs), which are 'basically out-of-court settlements for companies to avoid being prosecuted', he explained. 'Essentially, the government will come to a company and say 'hi, company. Government here. You did a crime, and we have enough evidence to prosecute you.' But instead of then doing that, they then strike a deal where if the company behaves itself for a certain amount of time, the criminal charges eventually disappear.' Unfortunately, DPAs also 'don't really do much', Oliver continued. 'And sometimes, companies that have done massive harm have used them to literally get away with murder.' Oliver first looked at the history of DPAs, which were never supposed to apply to corporations. The concept arose out of a 1974 law that was supposed to help juvenile and first-time offenders avoid prosecution in favor of rehabilitation. DPAs for corporations flourished in the wake of the Enron scandal, when many employees of the fraudulent company's embattled accounting firm Andersen blamed the government for shutting down the company and putting them out of work. 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No individuals were held responsible, but because the company withheld information, at one least one woman was convicted of negligent homicide for a crash involving her boyfriend that later determined to be caused by the faulty switch. (Her conviction has since been overturned.) 'Thankfully, GM hasn't killed any more people with its cars since then, as of taping,' said Oliver. 'But other companies with DPAs have shown a much greater propensity for recidivism,' such as HSBC. In the early 2010s, the company got in trouble for allowing Mexican cartels to launder $880m in drug trafficking proceeds and facilitating $660m in transactions by sanctioned regimes. The company paid a fine of around $2bn, during a year in which they made over $13bn in profit, and no individuals were prosecuted. When the deal expired in 2017, the government dropped all charges … and a month later, the government charged them with rigging currency rates, and offered them another DPA. 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This year, the Trump administration downgraded Boeing's punishment to a non-prosecution agreement, removing the possibility of prosecuting them over the 737 Max in the future. 'Which is completely infuriating,' Oliver fumed, as it is 'clearly great news for stockholders and not for anyone else.' 'This is not sustainable,' said Oliver of a cycle where corporate misbehavior leads to harm to government fine on repeat. 'And unfortunately, I wouldn't expect any of that to change for at least, say, three-and-a-half years But it is worth asking for a hypothetical future, when we have a government that isn't run by a pro-corruption felon, what could we be doing better to hold corporations accountable?' Oliver recommended making DPAs more of a deterrent by dramatically increasing fines and actually prosecuting executives, and more transparency of corporate compliance records. 'But the hard truth here is, if we want more accountability, the government is going to have to show more willingness to prosecute repeat offenders, even if it affects a large company's ability to do business.'
