Practised U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel set up by Myanmar to recommend on the Rohingya crisis, saying it was conducting a “whitewash” and accusing the country’s number one Aung San Suu Kyi of lacking “moral leadership”.
Richardson, a former Clinton supervision cabinet member, quit as the 10-member advisory board was making its gold medal visit to western Rakhine State, from where nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims must fled in recent months.
“The main reason I am resigning is that this counselling board is a whitewash,” Richardson told Reuters in an interview, adding he did not inadequacy to be part of “a cheerleading squad for the government”.
Richardson said he got into an feud with Suu Kyi during a meeting on Monday with other members of the enter, when he brought up the case of two Reuters reporters who are on trial accused of breaching the motherland’s Officials Secrets Act.
He said Suu Kyi’s response was “furious”, saying the case of the gentlemen “was not part of the work of the advisory board”.
The argument continued at a dinner later that regular, the former New Mexico governor said.
Neither Suu Kyi nor her spokesman Zaw Htay, who is also the ministry spokesman, responded to requests for comment.
Reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had mty on Reuters coverage of the crisis in Rakhine, from where 688,000 Rohingya own fled an army crackdown on insurgents since late August, correspondence to estimates by the United Nations.
They were detained on Dec. 12 after they had been invited to make the acquaintance of police officers over dinner in Yangon. The government has cited enforce as saying they were arrested for possessing secret documents relating to the conviction situation in Rakhine.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert baptized Richardson’s decision to resign from the board and his reasons for doing so “provoke for concern”, but noted he had been acting as a private citizen in joining the trustees and visiting Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.
“The Burmese guidance has pledged to implement the final recommendations of the Annan Commission, and we have prompted the government to fulfill its pledge as a matter of urgency,” she said.
“Ultimately, the Burmese administration and military have the authority to determine whether the Advisory Board force succeed,” Nauert said. “The United States has made clear that we are complaisant to support good faith efforts to implement the Annan Commission encouragements.”
The Advisory Board for the Committee for Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State was set up by Myanmar last year, to counsel on enacting the findings of an earlier commission headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The armed powers have been accused by Rohingya witnesses and human rights activists of bear out killings, rapes and arson in a campaign senior officials in the United Lands and United States have described as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar rebuffs that label and has denied nearly all the allegations.
Richardson said he was also “captivated aback by the vigour with which the media, the United Nations, benignant rights groups and in general the international community were disparaged” during the decisive three days of meetings the board held with Myanmar propers.
“She’s not getting good advice from her team,” Richardson said of Suu Kyi, whom he mean he has known since the 1980s. “I like her enormously and respect her. But she has not shown belief leadership on the Rakhine issue and the allegations made, and I regret that.”
Suu Kyi’s citizen security adviser, Thaung Tun, told Reuters he had escorted the other plank members on a trip to Rakhine on Wednesday, but that Richardson had not taken hint at.
“He said he was unhappy about the situation but I am not sure what he was unhappy far,” he said. “This is just the initial stage, this is the start of a sum total year of business so I don’t know what happened to make him feel groove on that.”