Aung San Suu Kyi should have resigned: UN rights chief

The outgoing UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein has said Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi should have resigned over the Rohingya crisis. 

Hussein made his comments to the BBC. 

Hussein said Suu Kyi was in a position to do something. That she could have stayed quiet, "or even better", she could have resigned. 

Hussein added that Suu Kyi need not have acted like a "spokesperson" for the Burmese Army. And that there was no need for her to say there was "an iceberg of misinformation". 

Some 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar's western Rakhine state since August 25, 2017 when the Myanmar Army launched a brutal crackdown on them. The United Nations has since said the crackdown amounted to "ethnic cleansing". 

The crackdown on the Rohingya followed attacks by the militant Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army on army and police posts.  

Suu Kyi did not speak out for a long time after the violence broke out. 

She later said there was a "huge iceberg of misinformation", but also that she felt "deeply" for the suffering of all the people in the conflict.