UN report a call for action
Myanmar chiefs accused of genocide
The first thing that struck me was the haunted, glazed look in a toddler’s eyes. Tiny, malnourished, the boy stared blankly into space as he sat listlessly on his teenage aunt’s knee at an overburdened clinic in a sprawling Rohingya refugee camp.
Then it was the 16-yearold girl, who tried to conceal her face and avoided eye contact out of heartbreaking, but unwarranted, shame at being forced out of her home and raped by soldiers.
She was mute from trauma, but did not need words to express the pain of lost innocence and shattered hopes. It screamed out from her face.
The scale of the genocidal intent of the rape and killing pursued by Myanmar’s military has been obvious for a year.
On Monday, a United Nations report called for the investigation and prosecution of Myanmar’s senior generals for genocide and accused Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s civilian leader and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, of failing to use her “moral authority” to prevent violence against the Rohingya.
Among the military leaders who should go on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, according to the report, is Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s army’s commander-in-chief.
The scale of the crisis sparked by the mass exodus of at least 700,000 Rohingya refugees last autumn has been overwhelming.
Bangladesh’s vast, dusty Kutupalong and Balukhali refugee camps stretch as far as the eye can see. And the innumerable, crudely built shacks contained story upon story of cruelty.
Many children, after weeks of rehabilitation in the hands of dedicated aid workers, have a playful demeanour.
But their crayon drawings of extreme violence and candour about the murder of their parents were horrifying.
“I think she has been killed by the military,” Jane Alam, 12, told me matter-offactly, speaking about his mother who had been lost among the refugees fleeing their burning homes.
“I don’t want to go back to Burma. They will shoot us,” said Yasminara, 11, who had seen footage of her father’s murder on a mobile phone.
Independent accounts of brutality and mass murder, of babies being tossed into fires in front of their screaming mothers, of women being gang-raped in front of their children, all bore striking similarities.
Their stories have been woven together over the past year in investigations by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The UN’S report, based on interviews with 875 witnesses, not only corroborates earlier investigations but issues a cry for justice that can no longer be ignored.
Investigators concluded that the civilian government “through acts and omissions” had “contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes”.
The report, coinciding with the first anniversary of the brutal military crackdown, sharply contradicts Myanmar’s army’s claim that it merely responded to security challenges in states with minority populations.
“Military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children, and burning entire villages. The Tatmadaw’s (the army) tactics are consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats, especially in Rakhine state, but also in northern Myanmar,” the report states.
“They are shocking for the level of denial, normalcy and impunity that is attached to them. The Tatmadaw’s contempt for human life, integrity and freedom, and for international law generally, should be a cause of concern for the entire population.”
Amnesty International said the report added “to a mountain of evidence of crimes under international law committed by the military [and] shows the need for ... criminal investigation”.
Bob Rae, Canada’s special envoy to the Rohingya crisis, said the international community faces tough legal challenges if it hopes to prosecute Myanmar’s military leaders.
While he stopped short of using the genocide label — as have many western governments — Rae said Monday’s finding puts more pressure on the international community to finding a forum to prosecute those named by the UN investigators.
The UN’S damning conclusions should mark the end of empty talk and the time for action.