Furious US ex-governor quits advisory board on Rohingya crisis

American Bill Richardson, quitting the board chaired by Thai former foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai, said he was particularly incensed over the suppression of press freedom in Myanmar.
“I was extremely upset at State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s reaction to my request that she address the situation of the two Reuters journalists both swiftly and fairly,” Richardson said in his statement, which was later posted on the Twitter feed of Dutch diplomat Laetitia van den Assum.
“Freedom of the press to report the facts is a fundamental bedrock of democracy.”
Richardson, a former governor of the US state of New Mexico, was a member of the five-member Advisory Board on the Implementation of Recommendations on Rakhine State.
He’d been in Nay Pyi Taw for the board’s inaugural meeting, chaired by Surakiart and with Suu Kyi in attendance.
“It has become clear that I cannot in good conscience serve in this role,” Richardson said. “In the Advisory Board’s initial meeting with Daw Suu, I was taken aback by the vigour with which the media, the United Nations, human rights group, and in general the international community were disparaged.
“I was also alarmed by the lack of sincerity with which the critical issue of citizenship was discussed [and] moreover [by] Daw Suu’s furious response at my suggestion that the case against the two arrested Reuters journalists be addressed swiftly, as a way to protect freedom of the press in an increasingly constraint environment.”
Richardson said his scheduled meeting with Myanmar’s minister of home affairs was abruptly cancelled.
He acknowledged it was important to recognise that the military still wields significant power and that the military blamed Rohingya militants for the exodus of more than half a million Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh, but insisted that the absence of Suu Kyi’s “moral leadership” on the issue was of great concern.
Richardson said he was also concerned that Surakiart was not “genuinely committed” to implementing the recommendations made last August, just as the current crisis erupted, by the Rakhine Advisory Commission led by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan.
Nor did Richardson feel Surakiart was committed to addressing the root causes of the conflict in Rakhine.
“He [Surakiart] parroted the dangerous and untrue notion that international NGOs employ radicals and that the humanitarian agencies are providing material support to ARSA,” Richardson wrote, referring to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a militant group that launched attacks on Myanmar security outposts last summer.
The attacks triggered a brutal response from the military – a “clearance operation” in which hundreds of Rohingya were killed and an estimated 655,000 displaced from their homes.
Contacted by The Nation, Surakiart’s team declined to comment, saying the Myanmar government would respond to Richardson’s resignation soon.