US Rules Myanmar Army Committed Genocide Against Rohingya, What Next?

Rohingya Muslims’ torment in Myanmar dates back to the 1970s and continues to the present day; they have been persecuted on a regular basis by the government and nationalist Buddhists.

This large Muslim group have been among the most persecuted under Myanmar's military regime, resulted by tensions with Myanmar's Buddhist majority leading to discrimination and harassment.

After so long awaited, US has finally considered violence committed against the Rohingya minority by Myanmar's military as a genocide and crimes against humanity.

Advocates say the announcement should bolster efforts to hold the junta, which now runs Myanmar, accountable.

The decision was announced on Monday, March 21, 2022, in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, as US officials said; the museum currently features an exhibit on the plight of the Rohingya, Reuters reported.

 

Charged With Genocide

This Monday, Biden administration has finally declared Myanmar’s mass killing of the Rohingya Muslims to be a “genocide,” said The Guardian.

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, made the announcement at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“The United States has concluded that genocide has been committed seven times. Today marks the eighth. I have determined that members of the Burmese military committed genocide and crimes against humanity,” Blinken declared.

The secretary of state pointed in his speech to numerous common points between the Myanmar military’s campaign to eradicate the Rohingya and the Holocaust, and other genocides.

“The attack against Rohingya was widespread and systematic, which was crucial for reaching a determination of crimes against humanity,” Blinken said.

“The evidence also points to a clear intent behind these mass atrocities, the intent to destroy Rohingya in whole or in part,” The Guardian quoted.

Before the decision, US investigators interviewed more than 1,000 Rohingya refugees who have been forcibly displaced between 2016 and 2017.

Blinken said that three quarters of them admitted “they personally witnessed members of the military kill someone.”

“More than half witnessed acts of sexual violence. One in five witnessed a mass casualty event – that is the killing or injury of more than 100 people in a single incident,” he said.

 

Welcoming US Decision

Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh have welcomed US announcement considering the violent repression of their Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar a genocide.

60-year-old Sala Uddin, living at Kutupalong camp said: “We are very happy on the declaration of the genocide; many many thanks.”

This camp is one of the many in Cox’s Bazar district being now home to roughly 1 million Rohingya.

“It has been 60 years starting from 1962 that the Myanmar government has been torturing us and many other communities including Rohingya,” the same man said.

“I think a path to take action by the international community against Myanmar has opened up because of the declaration.”

The US determination to call the funnel a genocide was actually based on confirmed accounts of mass atrocities on unarmed civilians by the military in Myanmar’s, it is still a widespread and systematic campaign against the Rohingya; this was confirmed by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, during his speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Through a military operation in 2017 Myanmar's armed forces forced more than 730,000 of Rohingya Muslims to leave their homes to neighboring Bangladesh, where they witnessed killings, rape and arson, and in 2021, Myanmar's military held power after a coup.

On the other hand, it has denied committing genocide against the largely Rohingya Muslims, who were denied citizenship in Myanmar, and said it was just conducting an operation against terrorism in 2017.

Since the coup, security forces have killed at least 1,600 people and detained more than 12,000. Over 500,000 people have been internally displaced, and the junta is deliberately blocking aid to populations in need, as a form of collective punishment. Rohingya remaining in the country have faced even greater movement restrictions and harsher treatment, abuses that amount to the crimes against humanity of persecution, apartheid, and severe deprivation of liberty.

 

What Behind US Decision

The director of the Centre for Genocide Studies at the University of Dhaka, Imtiaz Ahmed, said the Monday’s announcement was “a positive step,” but it would be important to see what actions and “concrete steps” to take following the declaration.

“Just by saying that genocide had been committed in Myanmar against the Rohingya is not good enough. I think we need to see what would follow this decision,” Ahmed said.

According to him, it was too early to say how the new development would ensure the recognition of Rohingya refugees, who have long been prevented from citizenship in Myanmar, but the most important questions are how and when they would go back to Myanmar.

More economic US sanctions against Myanmar could be the next step, as he predicted, saying it was also very important to see whether the US would be really ready to support the international court of justice in The Hague where Myanmar is facing a trial which was filed by the Gambia.

Since a military coup ousted the democratically elected government in February 2021, Myanmar’s government has been already under US sanctions.

Thousands of civilians have been killed and imprisoned as part of ongoing repression of anyone opposed to the ruling junta.

Now, Bangladesh is hosting more than 1 million Rohingya refugees. Since August 2017, over 730,000 Rohingya have escaped from Buddhist-majority Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh, when the military launched an operation aimed at ethnic cleansing.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on every occasion that their repatriation to Myanmar is the solution to the crisis.