VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren interviewed former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson about Myanmar, the Rohingya crisis and his resignation from an advisory committee to give recommendations on a report on refugees in Bangladesh.
Thank you, Greta, nice to be with you.
Well, I had been appointed by Aung San Suu Kyi to an advisory committee to give recommendations on the [former U.N. Secretary-General] Kofi Annan report on refugees in Bangladesh and other issues and I resigned because I felt the advisory commission was a whitewash and I had a little bit of a confrontation with Aung San Suu Kyi when I asked her to please deal with these two Reuters reporters, that it was not sending a good message about freedom of the press. And I decided that I shouldn't be part of what I think in the end is going to be an advisory commission that whitewashes and reinforces the policies of Aung San Suu Kyi, my former friend, and the Myanmar government.
Well, it went off the rails. I think she already was upset with me because there’d been a press report that I had asked for a meeting with a home minister about the two Reuters reporters. So, I walked in the room, shook her hand, and you could tell by her expression she didn't exactly want to see me. It was a very quick handshake. And then when we sat down and started the dialogue, I could tell that she was uncomfortable. I first raised the issue of the mass graves of some of the Rakhine, that there should be an investigation. I then talked about the importance of dealing fairly with the two Reuters reporters, and I thought pretty much that it was not going well, and she literally exploded, interrupting me, telling me that "This is not your charter, Bill. This is out of the question. Stay out of those issues." And then, right then, I knew that my staying on this commission — we were there for some investigative work and reform work — but it wasn't going to work. So it didn't start too well, and that initial encounter also went into a dinner right after where we were kind of trading, not insults, but very negative. I just made a point, "Look," I said, "We're friends for 30 years. I've always supported you, and here we are in a situation where you don’t want frank advice. Friends give frank advice." And she said, "Well, I don't want bad advice." So, it didn't start too well.
No, nobody mentioned the word Rohingya, neither the chairman of our advisory committee, a former Thai foreign minister, or Aung San Suu Kyi, or any of her people. I think it just showed that their main interest was protecting the Buddhist-minority in the Rakhine; that they had little intention of dealing with human rights violations, the refugee issues relating to the Rohingya. No, she never mentioned it. She never mentioned the word.
She acknowledges it, but her view is that they violated the Official Secrets Act, which is just consistent with what dictatorships say reporters are violating national security, which is not the case. These are the two reporters that discovered the mass graves. Possibly as many as 12. And then they were framed by the military. The point here is that some of these atrocities were committed not by the Rohingyas, alone, but by members of the military. And so what you have here is a cover-up, a judicial process that I don't think is fair and, lastly, that doesn't give her a good, clean international image that she's trying to deal with the Rohingya issue and that she puts reporters, the bedrock of democracy and free press, in jail. It doesn't make sense.
First of all, she's in charge of all domestic policy. The military’s in charge of National Security. There is a divide, so she can't tell the military what to do. But she doesn't have, or has not exercised, moral authority to push the military and say, "You know, stop terrorizing the Rohingyas, release these reporters, find ways to integrate the Rohingyas and the Buddhists. Bring some kind of end to the violence with a lot of these refugees." You were there, Greta, you know this issue. I mean, there’s almost a million people displaced. They don’t want to go back to the Rakhine state, to Myanmar because they're afraid of their safety. They’re afraid they're going to end up in mass graves or raped. And you know that many of us, like also the international press, the U.N., we lionized Aung San Suu Kyi. She was a champion of democracy. I remember being in the Clinton cabinet and proposing sanctions on the military to set her free. And she eventually was set free. So, it's a big disappointment all around.