PRESS CONFERENCE
"Myanmar in Freefall"
Thomas Andrews, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar
April 28, Friday, 12:00-13:00 (Press Conference)
(The speech and Q & A will be in English with simultaneous interpretation.)
Despite once promising signs of democratic buds flowering, Myanmar is increasingly a black hole for human rights. Two years after a coup d’état ended a brief democratic experiment, the country is in 'freefall', says Thomas Andrews, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights there. The military has doubled down on its brutal tactics, he says, sowing violence and chaos, "bombing villages, schools, medical facilities, and encampments for internally displaced persons". "More than 1.3 million people have been displaced in the past two years, and more than 3,000 civilians have been killed."
Thousands of journalists, activists, opposition politicians and ordinary people have been arrested and some have been executed. Torture and abuse of detainees have been widely reported. The ethnic Rohingya people have been intimidated or killed and many live in camps, without access to the basic needs of life. Aung San Suu Kyi, who once bore the world’s hopes for democracy in Myanmar, is serving out a jail sentence of over 30 years following her conviction on corruption and other charges that have been called 'bogus' by Human Rights Watch and other monitors. Many other politicians have been convicted of 'anti-terrorism' crimes.
Thus, there is no shortage of work for Andrews. A former US Congressman, Andrews was appointed to the Rapporteur post in 2020. He is a Robina Senior Human Rights Fellow at Yale University Law School, an Associate of Harvard University's Asia Center and has a Washington DC based consulting practice, Andrews Strategic Services. In addition to explaining the appalling human-rights situation in Myanmar, Andrews will ask whether the governments of Japan and other democratic countries could do more to pressure the Myanmar junta.
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