Geneva: A leading United Nations human rights investigator has criticised Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's civilian leader, for acting as a "fig leaf for military atrocities" against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

In an interview ahead of Tuesday's release of a 400-page report on alleged "genocidal" crimes, Australian lawyer Chris Sidoti said that Nobel laureate Ms Suu Kyi could not escape responsibility for failing to act over the violence. The report, by three independent experts including Mr Sidoti, provides the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva with harrowing details of mass killings and rape by Myanmar's military that prompted more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh last year.

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Credit:AP

"The very first thing she could have done was not provide cover for the military by dismissing the overwhelming number of reports of mass rape as fake," Mr Sidoti said. "She could have refused to provide a fig leaf for military atrocities of the most serious kind... she has enormous moral authority, she won 80 per cent of the popular vote in the 2015 election."

Sidoti is a former Human Rights Commissioner and ex-commissioner of the Australian Law Reform Commission.