The United States declared the ongoing violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar to be \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d on Wednesday, threatening penalties for military officials engaged in a brutal crackdown that has sent more than 620,000 refugees flooding over the border to Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed Myanmar\u2019s security forces and \u201clocal vigilantes\u201d for what he called \u201cintolerable suffering\u201d by the Rohingya. Although the military has accused Rohingya insurgents of triggering the crisis, Tillerson said \u201cno provocation can justify the horrendous atrocities that have ensued.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a careful and thorough analysis of available facts, it is clear that the situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,\u201d Tillerson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Although the designation carries no legal obligations for the U.S. to act, Tillerson said those who perpetrated the atrocities \u201cmust be held accountable.\u201d He added that the U.S. wanted a full investigation and was considering \u201ctargeted sanctions\u201d against those responsible \u2014 but not broader sanctions against the nation.<\/p>\n
Rohingya from Myanmar\u2019s Rakhine state have been fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh, seeking refuge from what Myanmar\u2019s military has called \u201cclearance operations.\u201d The crisis started in August, when Rohingya insurgents attacked Myanmar security forces, leading to a brutal crackdown in which soldiers and Buddhist mobs have killed men, raped women and girls and burned homes and property to force the Rohingya to leave.<\/p>\n
The declaration followed a lengthy review process by President Donald Trump\u2019s administration to determine whether the violence met the threshold to be considered ethnic cleansing. The United Nations came to that conclusion in September, but the U.S. had held off, with Tillerson saying he needed more information even as he expressed deep concern about the crisis.<\/p>\n
Last week, Tillerson traveled to Myanmar in the highest level visit by a U.S. official since Trump took office. U.S. officials dangled the possibility of an \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d designation ahead of Tillerson\u2019s trip, potentially giving him more leverage as he met with officials in Myanmar. In the capital of Naypitaw, Tillerson met with the country\u2019s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as Myanmar\u2019s powerful military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, who is in charge of operations in Rakhine state, home to Myanmar\u2019s Rohingya population.<\/p>\n
The leader of a group that works to improve conditions for the Rohingya said Thursday he hopes the declaration will strengthen the call for accountability. Arakan Project director Chris Lewa said he thought Tillerson\u2019s visit had been relatively appreciated and he hoped it would prove constructive.<\/p>\n
I hope that it will have the impact that (Tillerson) used the correct word I think to describe what really is going on,\u201d Lewa said. \u201cAnd I hope that the military will listen more, but it\u2019s always difficult to predict how the military will react and sometimes it\u2019s like they are not listening to anything at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior State Department officials said the determination was intended to ramp up pressure on the military and others in Myanmar to resolve the conflict and repatriate refugees who have fled to Bangladesh. Yet it was also likely to intensify calls for the Trump administration and Congress to move toward new sanctions. Earlier this month, a House committee passed a nonbinding resolution condemning \u201cmurderous ethnic cleansing and atrocities\u201d and calling on Trump to impose sanctions on those responsible for abuses.<\/p>\n
Yet sweeping sanctions targeting Myanmar\u2019s economy or its military as a whole are off the table, officials said, adding that the Trump administration had determined they would not be productive either for ensuring accountability or for promoting broader U.S. goals in Myanmar. Instead, the U.S. is considering sanctions against individuals only, said the officials, who weren\u2019t authorized to comment by name and briefed reporters on a conference call on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
Broad-based U.S. sanctions on Myanmar were eased under former President Barack Obama as the Southeast Asian nation inched toward democracy. U.S. officials have been concerned that slapping back sanctions or pushing Myanmar\u2019s leaders too hard on the Rohingya violence could undermine the country\u2019s civilian government, led for the last 18 months by Suu Kyi. That could slow or reverse the country\u2019s delicate transition away from decades of harsh military rule and risks pushing Myanmar away from the U.S. and closer to China.<\/p>\n
The State Department has also examined whether the violence in Rakhine meets the definitions for crimes against humanity or genocide, but have so far made no such determinations. Both designations carry significant legal consequences.<\/p>\n
Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, isn\u2019t recognized as an independent crime under international law, according to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention. The ethnic cleansing term surfaced in the context of the 1990s conflict in the former Yugoslavia, when a U.N. commission defined it as \u201crendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Human rights groups accuse the military of a scorched-earth campaign against the Rohinyga, who numbered roughly 1 million in Myanmar before the latest exodus. The Buddhist majority in Myanmar believes they migrated illegally from Bangladesh, but many Rohingya families have lived for generations in Myanmar. In 1982, they were stripped of their citizenship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States declared the ongoing violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar to be \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d on Wednesday, threatening penalties for military officials engaged in a brutal crackdown that has sent more than 620,000 refugees flooding over the border to Bangladesh. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed Myanmar\u2019s security forces and \u201clocal vigilantes\u201d for what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11032,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11030\/revisions\/11032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}