It’s been an important few days for the Rohingya Muslim minority of Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Aug. 25 marked the first anniversary of the Myanmar military’s crackdown on the Rohingya — the killing of thousands, destruction of villages, mass rapes of women and children, and the exodus of nearly 700,000 Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh. Rallies world-wide marked the date on Saturday, and in Los Angeles, JWW staff and supporters attended a march organized by Burmese American Muslims Association to demonstrate solidarity with the Rohingya cause.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm_Y_FTh9SU
The persistent rallying cry at these events was: A genocide of the Rohingya is occurring in Myanmar (formerly Burma), and the United Nations and the rest of the world needs to name the violence a genocide so more can be done to stop it. A genocide is defined as an intentional action to destroy an entire group of people, usually defined by their ethnicity, nationality, race or religion. Genocide requires a proactive and significant response, not just on political grounds, but also out of moral obligation.
Last Friday, as the one-year anniversary approached, Jewish World Watch Director of Advocacy and Programming Ann Strimov Durbin published an editorial blog post calling upon the world to name the violence against the Rohingya a genocide. You can read the article here.
Now, this morning the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar released a report based upon a year of investigations and interviews with survivors. 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 article, 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 alike, as well as “the level of organization indicating a plan for destruction; and the extreme scale and brutality of the violence.”
Senior Myanmar General Min Aung Hlaing
This naming is a huge victory for the Rohingya and for the many human rights and humanitarian organizations that have been working on their behalf over the past year, and in some cases longer. With the UN’s impramateur, more and more countries and organizations will be willing to categorize the atrocities suffered by the Rohingya people for what they really are: genocide. And, hopefully, they will take the steps for criminal charges, trials, convictions, as well as sanctions against those responsible for such heinous crimes.
The report also highlighted others in Myanmar as complicit in the atrocities, namely Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Facebook. As the JWW analysis did, the UN report said Aug San Suu Kyi not only has denied that the military was responsible for such grave crimes, but she “contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes” by failing to use her position to stop them. Moreover, she and other civilian leaders failed to curb virulent hate speech posted on Facebook, which contributed to turning the majority of the country’s population against the Rohingya and fomenting violence. Despite an expose published by Reuters that highlighted Facebook’s failure to address the vitriol on its Myanmar site, Facebook failed to do enough to stop the animosity from spreading.
Now that the UN officially has called the Rohingya victims of genocide, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo must do the same. Any day now, the State Department will issue its own findings on the plight of the Rohingya. We ask you to please continue to let Pompeo know that the United States must step up, call this crisis what it truly is, and act accordingly. America cannot shun its responsibilities to help the Rohingya by refusing to acknowledge the true level of atrocities they have endured. We cannot stand idly by!
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We all must also contact our Senators to resuscitate the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act, S. 2060, which has already passed in the House of Representatives with bipartisan support. How better to honor the late Senator John McCain, who introduced the Burma Act to the Senate, than by pressuring Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to move forward with a vote on this horrific situation.
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We should also let UN Ambassador Nikki Haley know that the UN Security Council must either refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court, or set up an international tribunal like those that investigated genocide and atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
We hope that you will look to JWW as your guide for cutting-edge analysis on genocide and mass atrocities around the world. We remain more committed than ever to being at the forefront of genocide studies, looking for indicators, analyzing situations, and making sure people take notice and don’t stand idly by.