Indonesian expert tapped as new head of UN Myanmar team

BERLIN – A prominent Indonesian human rights expert has been appointed the new chairman of a U.N. fact-finding mission to Myanmar, which the government has said it will bar from entering.

The U.N. human rights office said Thursday the president of the world body’s Human Rights Council appointed Marzuki Darusman as the team’s new chair. It gave no reasons for the “new composition” of the mission, whose other members — Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka and Christopher Dominic Sidoti of Australia — were unchanged.

The panel no longer features Indian lawyer Indira Jaising, appointed in May as the mission’s chairwoman. Thursday’s statement said the team will meet in Geneva in August.

The mission’s goal is to investigate alleged human rights violations by security forces against the Muslim Rohingya minority and other groups.