Myanmar, also known as Burma, continues to make international headlines … and not in a good way. Almost daily, there are developments that confirm the country’s utter disregard for human rights and humanitarian law. Despite consistent outrage from global media, scholars, leading organizations, and protesters, the United States has offered little in response. So far, America has levied sanctions against four mid-level military officials and two infantry divisions. Those at the top of the chain of command — the true masterminds of the genocide — continue unscathed.
August 25 marked the one-year anniversary of the Myanmar military’s crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state. Many Rohingya men, women, and children were brutally murdered, and more than 700,000 fled to neighboring Bangladesh, where they still remain today in sprawling, squalid camps [during a horrific monsoon season, on top of everything else.] Protestors assembled worldwide to voice their calls for action, including in Hollywood, where Jewish World Watch joined with the Rohingya American Muslim Association in impassioned cries of solidarity. On the eve of this painful anniversary, JWW’s Director of Advocacy and Grantmaking took the step too many governments and organizations have not been willing to take, declaring JWW’s official position that the methodical, premeditated actions of the Myanmar military and security forces constitute genocide. You can read the analysis here.
Two days later, on Aug. 27, the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar released a report based upon a year of investigations and interviews with survivors. The report affirmed JWW’s analysis: the UN experts found that Myanmar’s army commander, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and other top generals should face trial for “genocide.” Like the JWW analysis, the panel saw evidence of genocidal intent in the Myanmar military’s operation against the Rohingya, citing the pervasive rhetoric of hate directed at the Rohingya by civilians and military commanders, as well as “the level of organization indicating a plan for destruction; and the extreme scale and brutality of the violence.”
Aerial view of a burned Rohingya village in Rakhine state, Myanmar in Sept. 2017
Aug. 27 was also supposed to be the day that Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo faced sentencing before a court in Myanmar on fabricated charges of violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act for “possessing important and secret government documents” related to Rakhine state. Interestingly, the sentence did not come down that day. Sentencing was suspended until Sept. 3, apparently because Judge Ye Lwin had fallen ill. Human rights advocates worldwide hoped this was a stalling tactic by Myanmar’s military and that they would eventually release the journalists as a sign of good faith — a willingness to cooperate a little and uphold at least one fundamental right: freedom of the press.
But, alas, that did not happen. The Reuters journalists were sentenced to 7 years in prison for simply doing their jobs. They were arrested on Dec. 12, 2017 while investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys in a village in western Rakhine state. Moments before their arrest, in a restaurant in Yangon, they met with two police officers who planted documents on them. One police witness even testified that the restaurant meeting was a set-up to entrap the journalists to block or punish them for their reporting of the mass killing. This was a landmark case seen as a test of progress towards democracy. Unfortunately, Myanmar failed.
The sentence sparked international condemnation and calls for the journalists’ immediate release. One prominent voice on the issue was longtime JWW supporter and UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression David Kaye.
Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and co-sponsor of the Burma Act of 2018, also spoke out following the decision.
“This unjust verdict reaffirms that the Burmese government is complicit in the military’s atrocities … The U.S. should respond with more sanctions and a formal determination of genocide. We must act before it is too late,” said Rep. Royce.
Two weeks ago, JWW staff met with Rep. Royce’s staff in his Brea office to update the Congressman on the situation in Myanmar, asked that he acknowledge the atrocities against the Rohingya as genocide, urged him to push for stronger sanctions and demand the release of the journalists.
So, if Myanmar wouldn’t bend under the seriousness of the UN’s genocide determination by exonerating the journalists, what was the reaction to the “G” word? Did civilian leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi finally voice her disapproval of the military’s actions or express her sorrow over the gross violations suffered by the Rohingya? Not quite.
The UN report was largely ignored by the local news media and Internet users in Myanmar. Instead of expressing outrage over the military’s genocidal acts, the primarily Buddhist civilian population of Myanmar exploded over Facebook’s move to bar 20 individuals and organizations linked to the military from its network for committing or enabling “serious human rights abuses in the country.” This move “catalyzed a frenzied, vociferous response in Myanmar, where the social media platform is so popular that it is synonymous with the internet,” said the New York Times. The platform’s users in Myanmar hotly debated whether they should migrate to another platform to punish Facebook for denigrating their military and spiritual leaders.
Both the JWW analysis and the UN mission’s report highlighted Facebook’s role in turning the majority of the country’s population against the Rohingya and fomenting violence. The platform’s current efforts to curb vitriolic hate speech posted by the military, government officials, Buddhist leaders, and citizens came far too late. The damage has been done. And, despite the world’s placing commander in chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing in a class of infamy alongside war criminals like Hitler and Milosevic, Myanmar’s majority remains both stalwart in its support of its leaders and in denial of what really happened in Rakhine state.
Another incident on Aug. 30 highlighted the type of propaganda Myanmar military leaders resort to in order to maintain support. In a book aimed at illustrating the army’s account of last year’s events in the western state of Rakhine, the military used pictures that were, in fact, archive photos of different conflicts, Reuters reported.
Myanmar’s military produced fake photos as part of a continued effort to deny Rohingya genocide
Myanmar has long claimed that the Rohingya are not an ethnic group of Myanmar, but Bengali illegal immigrants that have stolen the country’s land and resources. So, it’s telling that the military publication faded out a photo depicting the migration of Rwandan Hutu refugees in 1996 following the genocide in Rwanda, and captioned it “Bengalis intruded into the country after the British Colonialism occupied the lower part of Myanmar.” Not only is this factually inaccurate, but the use of a photo of African migrants encapsulates Myanmar’s efforts to emphasize the otherness of the Rohingya, in both appearance and religion. The only accurate element of the photo is that genocide occurred in both lands.
Despite the local solidarity, it may not matter what officials or civilians of Myanmar think. Last week, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber 1 ruled that the Court may exercise jurisdiction over the alleged mass deportation, (or forcible transfer) of the Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh.
Why? Because Bangladesh is a signatory of the Rome Statue establishing the ICC, even if Myanmar is not. Since an element of the alleged deportation took place in Bangladesh, the Court can prosecute Myanmar officials for their crimes. Notably, in a move few experts had foreseen, the Chamber found the Court’s jurisdiction extends to any other crimes set out in article 5 of the Rome Statute[1], such as the crimes against humanity of persecution and potentially genocide — even though they did not take place in Bangladesh. The decision opens the door for chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to gather enough evidence in a preliminary investigation to convince the Court to greenlight a full-blown probe into Myanmar’s actions.
Unsurprisingly, Myanmar rejected the Court’s unprecedented ruling. In a stinging response, the government said the decision was “of dubious legal merit” and that Myanmar was “under no obligation” to respect its determination.
So where do we go from here? Despite the veritable witches’ brew of egregious acts by Mynamar’s civilian and military officials alike, the Trump Administration has remained relatively quiet on the subject. Though officials like Rep. Royce, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley have raised their voices, the Trump Administration as a whole has not.
Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley
Despite messages from the U.N. and ICC that there is something wrong going on here, the U.S. has not instated harsher sanctions; it has not brought the issue before the Security Council; it has not called this what it is — a genocide.
The U.S. must immediately and significantly increase its food and medical aid to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. It should also put forward a UN Security Council Resolution with targeted sanctions against everyone named in the U.N. fact-finding mission, including asset and visa freezes, plus banking and business bans on activities with military-controlled Myanmar banks and companies. It should also join the U.N. General Assembly in declaring the crisis a genocide. Even though the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC can initiate an investigation proprio motu (“on one’s own initiative” in Latin) now that the Court has found a jurisdictional basis, the U.S. must show its support for the ICC process and push for cooperation with the OTP.
All of this MUST HAPPEN NOW! The longer we wait, the higher the likelihood that these types of atrocities will recur, both in Myanmar and throughout the world. Already, the Myanmar military has started to discriminate against and persecute religious and ethnic minorities in its other provinces, like Kachin and Shan.
And, it’s not just Myanmar we should worry about. Other governments attacking ethnic minorities will perceive inaction as a sign that they are free to continue perpetrating their crimes, with impunity. Both India and China are actively suppressing large Muslim minority populations, stripping them of their rights. China has sent more than 3 million Uyghur Muslims to concentration camps, while India has showed signs of following Myanmar’s model of robbing 4 million Muslims in Assam of citizenship.
Inaction now will create greater problems in the future.
The U.S. must step up to the plate, acknowledge the Rohingya crisis as genocide, and take a leadership role in ensuring that the abuses stop and those responsible are held to account.
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The Burma Act was introduced to the House of Representatives by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) earlier this year and currently has 80 co-sponsors. We ask that you urge your representatives to support the bill at this crucial time.
[1] Article 5 states the following crimes are within the jurisdiction of the Court: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression.