Stop Myanmar atrocities

As the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar grows more grim, it shows every sign of taking its place on the shameful list of mass atrocities that the world did nothing to stop.

Since August, the Myanmar government has systematically engaged in what the United Nations, human rights groups and (finally) the U.S. State Department have called atrocities against its long persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority. The UN and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have gone so far as to call it ethnic cleansing.

According to accounts from numerous survivors, government forces and their supporters have raped, killed, set people on fire and pillaged villages, causing the mass exodus of more than 600,000 Rohingya — mainly to refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh. That’s about half the Rohingya population of Myanmar.

How much more savage do people have to be before the global community outside Myanmar is moved to act?

Clearly, hatred of the Rohingya in Myanmar is so entrenched, from the citizenry up to the military leadership and civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, that only outside intervention might be sufficient to stop the government from wiping out the Rohingya minority. At the very least, the U.S. should restore the economic sanctions it only recently lifted. The government of Myanmar has to be shown that, this time, the world will not sit idly by as another country tries to ethnically cleanse its population.