Suu Kyi aide dismisses UN pressure over abuse of Rohingya

This screen grab taken on January 4, 2017 from a YouTube video originally taken by Myanmar Constable Zaw Myo Htike (not pictured) shows policemen standing guard around Rohingya villagers seated on the ground in Kotankauk during a police area clearance operation on November 5, 2016. (Via AFP)

A close aide to Myanmar's State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi has dismissed mounting international pressure over the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state despite evidence provided by the UN of murder, rape and torture at the hands of government forces.

Win Htein said on Wednesday that recent remarks by UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Yanghee Lee about the abuse of the Rohingya were "biased" and "unfair."

"What Yanghee Lee is doing is not fair. It's biased," media outlets quoted Htein as saying.

"We do not care about this kind of unfair report. Because we do not care, we do not worry."

Lee recently slammed Myanmar's continued discrimination against Rohingya Muslims.

The UN official has called for Myanmar to immediately end its crackdown on the Muslim minority.

Lee has said that the magnitude of violence against the Rohingya is far more extensive than the UN rights office perceived.

The UN official says Myanmar's military stands accused of committing acts of violence against the Muslims, such as slitting throats, indiscriminate shootings, burning houses with people tied up inside, and gang-raping women.

Lee is expected to turn up the heat next week by calling a formal commission of inquiry into abuses against the Rohingya. 

UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Yanghee Lee (4th-R) is escorted by a policeman upon arrival at Sittwe airport in the capital of Rakhine state, Myanmar, January 13, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

A four-month crackdown on the stateless Muslim minority has seen over 70,000 Rohingya flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

Escapees have given the UN chilling accounts of babies being stabbed to death and people being burned alive.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize laureate who has been lionized in Western media as Myanmar's “democracy icon,” has defended the military's crackdown in Rakhine, much to the dismay of the international community.

Rakhine has been under a military siege since October 2016 over a raid on a police post that was blamed on the Rohingya.

Suu Kyi, however, has described the crisis in Rakhine as “under control” and demanded that the international community stop stoking the “fires of resentment.”

The bloody crackdown on the Muslims by the military has posed the biggest challenge to Suu Kyi since her NLD party won Myanmar’s first democratic elections in a generation in late 2015.