Veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel set up by Burma to advise on the Rohingya crisis, saying it was conducting a “whitewash” and accusing the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi of lacking “moral leadership.”

The former governor of the US state of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, says he will work toward securing the release of two Reuters journalists arrested in Burma in his capacity as a member of an international advisory board on the crisis in Rakhine State.

Humanitarian workers and journalists should be given free access to Burma’s Rakhine State, where violence has prompted some 650,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh, the head of a new international advisory panel on the crisis said.

Twenty-four political parties release a statement opposing the recent appointment of five foreign nationals to a 10-member “advisory team” tasked with monitoring implementation of recommendations laid out in August by the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State.

President Htin Kyaw has established yet another governmental body to address the situation in troubled Rakhine State, this one comprised of Burmese and foreign members including the chairman of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission and a former US presidential aspirant.

Leading figures in the Catholic Church and international politics have advised Pope Francis not to use the term Rohingya during a trip to Burma due to political sensitivities, but human rights groups want him to uphold international law on self-identity.