An official told news agencies that the United States has formally determined that the violence committed by Myanmar’s military against the Rohingya minority amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity. According to reports, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will formally announce the decision to declare that crackdown a genocide in remarks at the Holocaust Museum in Washington on Monday. A display about Burma’s path to genocide is on display at the museum.
The country was formerly known as Burma. Rohingya are one of Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities, according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Blinken had previously stated that the Rohingya communities were ‘one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world’ during a visit to Malaysia last December. At that time, he reported that the United States was ‘very actively’ looking into whether their treatment might constitute genocide.
According to a report released in 2018, violence against Rohingya was ‘extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seemingly aimed at both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents’. In 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fled across the border into Bangladesh following a deadly crackdown by Myanmar’s army. According to the UN, the Rohingya Muslims attempted to flee by sea or on foot after the crackdown, described as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’.
Around 850,000 Rohingya are languishing in camps in neighboring Bangladesh; they are recounting mass killings and rape, while 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine and are experiencing huge oppression. In addition to sanctioning the already-isolated military junta further, the designation of genocide – defined by the UN as acts of destruction committed with the intent of destroying a nation, ethnic group, race or religion – could result in aid restrictions and further sanctions.
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