Calling genocide by its name

An excerpt from an editorial in The Guardian:

The Trump administration, Congress and most other Western governments have gingerly responded to the assault by Myanmar’s army on the country’s Rohingya minority, though it stands out as one of the most vicious campaigns of ethnic cleansing in recent history...

So it was bracing as well as constructive that a three-member panel appointed by the UN to investigate Myanmar’s wars against the Rohingya and other minorities did not prevaricate in a report this week. Instead, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar bluntly concluded “The gross human rights violations committed ... are shocking for their horrifying nature and ubiquity” and “undoub- tably amount to the gravest crimes under international law.”

The army operations, said the reports, “were strikingly similar.” Troops would arrive early in the morning, firing indiscriminately at civilians. By mid-August, nearly 725,000 Rohingya had been driven into Bangladesh, where most still live in overcrowded camps. While the death toll is unknown, the panel said an estimate of up to 10,000 killed was “conservative.”

The investigators’ call for the UN Security Council to refer the case of Myanmar, also known as Burma, to the International Criminal Court is unlikely to be taken up. But the Trump administration should apply its own sanctions and cut off all cooperation. Genocide must be called by its name.