"It is likely that crimes under international law have been committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar", Yanghee Lee added.
Speaking to the Human Rights Council on Monday, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said that the repressive practices of previous military governments were returning as the norm once more in Myanmar.
Yanghee Lee gave the strongest call yet for accountability for the crimes committed in Rahkine since August 2017 that have driven more than 700,000 Rohingya over the border to Bangladesh.
The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar called for the creation of an independent investigative body to “investigate, document, collect, consolidate, map, and analyse evidence of human rights violations and abuses.
The campaign of violence by the military has seen thousands killed, Rohingya villages burned to the ground and hundreds of women raped and abused.
This “master database”, Yanghee Lee said, could then be used as the basis to put the individuals who gave the orders and carried out violations against individuals and entire ethnic and religious groups on trial in international criminal courts or tribunals.
"The government leadership who did nothing to intervene, stop, or condemn these acts must also be held accountable,” added The UN special rapporteur.
Much of the international focus has been on the role of Aung San Suu Kyi in the campaign of violence. Speaking to reporters, Yanghee Lee said that “complicity is a very serious issue” but added that she had a “little element of hope” that the Nobel peace prize winner “will put her foot down and say once and for all let’s stop this”.
The three experts of the UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar, who also addressed the human rights council about their ongoing investigation, were equally forthright in their condemnation.
The UN has been denied access to Rahkine since late last year, so both Yanghee Lee and the fact-finding mission have been forced to conduct their investigations in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are now living in refugee camps.
Around 700,000 people fled to Bangladesh after a massive crackdown began in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in August.
The military and Buddhist mobs torched and looted almost all Rohingya homes, raped women and killed more than 6,500 people.
