Soldiers stand next to military vehicles as people gather to protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 15, 2021.Stringer ./Reuters
The Biden administration has formally determined that violence committed against the Rohingya minority by Myanmar’s military amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity, U.S. officials told Reuters, a move that advocates say should bolster efforts to hold the junta that now runs Myanmar accountable.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will announce the decision on Monday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, U.S. officials said, which currently features an exhibit on the plight of the Rohingya. It comes nearly 14 months after he took office and pledged to conduct a new review of the violence.
Myanmar’s armed forces launched a military operation in 2017 that forced at least 730,000 of the mainly Muslim Rohingya from their homes and into neighbouring Bangladesh, where they recounted killings, mass rape and arson. In 2021, Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup.
U.S. officials and an outside law firm gathered evidence in an effort to acknowledge quickly the seriousness of the atrocities, but then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declined to make a determination.
Mr. Blinken ordered his own “legal and factual analysis,” the U.S. officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The analysis concluded the Myanmar army is committing genocide and Washington believes the formal determination will increase international pressure to hold the junta accountable.
“It’s going to make it harder for them to commit further abuses,” one senior State Department official said.
Officials in Myanmar’s embassy in Washington and a junta spokesperson did not immediately respond to e-mails requesting comment on Sunday.
Myanmar’s military has denied committing genocide against the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship in Myanmar, and said it was conducting an operation against terrorists in 2017.
A UN fact-finding mission concluded in 2018 that the military’s campaign included “genocidal acts,” but Washington referred at the time to the atrocities as “ethnic cleansing,” a term that has no legal definition under international criminal law.
“It’s really signalling to the world and especially to victims and survivors within the Rohingya community and more broadly that the United States recognizes the gravity of what’s happening,” a second senior State Department official said of Mr. Blinken’s announcement on Monday.
A genocide determination does not automatically unleash punitive U.S. action.
Since the Cold War, the State Department has formally used the term six times to describe massacres in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and Darfur, the Islamic State’s attacks on Yazidis and other minorities, and most recently last year, over China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslims. China denies the genocide claims.
Mr. Blinken will also announce US$1-million of additional funding for the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), a United Nations body based in Geneva that is gathering evidence for potential future prosecutions.
“It’s going to enhance our position as we try to build international support to try to prevent further atrocities and hold those accountable,” the first U.S. official said.
Days after U.S. President Joe Biden took office, Myanmar generals led by Commander in Chief Min Aung Hlaing seized power on Feb. 1, 2021, after complaining of fraud in a November, 2020, general election won by democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi’s party. Election monitoring groups found no evidence of mass fraud.
The armed forces crushed an uprising against their coup, killing more than 1,600 people and detaining nearly 10,000, including civilian leaders such as Ms. Suu Kyi, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a campaign group, and setting off an insurgency.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the figures from the AAPP. The junta has said the group’s figures are exaggerated and that members of the security forces have also been killed in clashes with those opposing the coup. The junta has not provided its own figures.
In response to the coup, the United States and Western allies sanctioned the junta and its business interests, but have been unable to convince the generals to restore civilian rule after they received military and diplomatic support from Russia and China.
Mr. Blinken’s recognition of genocide and crimes against humanity refers mainly to events in 2017, before last year’s coup. The step comes after two State Department examinations – one initiated in 2018 and the other in 2020 – failed to produce a determination.
Some former U.S. officials told Reuters those were missed opportunities to send a firm message to the Myanmar generals who later seized power.
Activists believe a clear statement by the United States that genocide was committed could bolster efforts to hold the generals accountable, such as a case in the International Court of Justice where The Gambia has accused Myanmar of genocide, citing Myanmar’s atrocities against the Rohingya in Rakhine state.
Myanmar has rejected the charge of genocide and urged the court’s judges to drop the case. The junta says The Gambia is acting as a proxy for others and had no legal standing to file a case.
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