Myanmar’s junta has slammed the UN’s human rights chief for making “irrelevant” remarks after he said the military may have committed war crimes as it struggles to crush resistance to its rule.
Two years after the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government, the human rights situation in Myanmar is a “festering catastrophe,” the global body’s rights office said last week in a report.
Stretched thin on the ground, the military was relying increasingly on air power and artillery to fight widespread opposition, with more than 300 air strikes in the last year, the UN said, including on schools and hospitals.
The junta’s foreign ministry said the report was based on “sweeping allegations against the Government and its security forces,” in a statement on its Facebook page on Tuesday.
“Myanmar, therefore, asserts its firm objection against the irrelevant recommendations made by the High Commissioner.”
The junta acknowledged that the UN report recognized the violence committed by some of the groups arrayed against it, but only “slightly.”