In an effort to boost international pressure on Myanmar’s military-led government, Washington is set to formally declare Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority population is as genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Muslim ethnic minority Rohingya have been described by the UN as the world’s most persecuted minority and since 1982 are denied citizenship in Myanmar, which is a predominantly Buddhist country, and does not recognize Rohingya as an official ethnic group.
The Biden administration is expected to formally make this designation on Monday, almost five years after Myanmar’s military intensified a bloody campaign against the mostly Muslim ethnic minority Rohingya in Rakhine State during which more than 745,000 people fled to neighboring Bangladesh while thousands were killed.
According to UN data, 49% of Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers, which have lost their shelters and all of their belongings in a fire that devastated parts of the Kutupalong refugee camp in March 2021, are children while 25% are women.
Stressing that they should comply with obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered in 2020 Myanmar’s security forces, which have been accused of mass rape, murder, and arson, to protect Rohingya from genocide.
Although Washington has previously called the Beijing government’s actions against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang region a genocide, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who will formally announce the genocide designation at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, hasn’t been so explicit with regards to the Rohingya people, ordering a review of the atrocities committed against them.
However, the US announced sanctions against the country after Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup last year.
Describing its 2017 crackdown as a response to terrorists in the region, Myanmar has rejected the genocide accusations.
Be the first to comment