MYANMAR GENERALS ‘SHOULD FACE CHARGES OF GENOCIDE’
Damning UN report points finger at six army chiefs for crimes committed against Rohingya
Myanmar’s military chief and at least five other top commanders must be prosecuted for genocide against Rohingya Muslims, UN investigators said yesterday.
The report by a fact-finding mission working under a mandate from the UN Human Rights Council also called for an international investigation and for the Security Council to impose sanctions and an arms embargo on the country.
The report also criticised the Myanmar government and its de facto head, Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for abetting or failing to prevent the crimes against the Rohingya.
In Geneva, the mission said the actions in Myanmar amounted to the “gravest crimes under international law” and called for prosecutions for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
It called for the Myanmar military’s commander-in-chief, Gen Min Aung Hlaing, his deputy and four other commanders to be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court or an international tribunal.
The report prompted Facebook, which has been criticised for allowing the spread of hate speech against the Rohingya, to ban the army chief and remove other pages linked to the military.
Thousands of Rohingya were killed in sweeping military operations in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last year in response to attacks on border posts by a little-known group of Rohingya militants. About 700,000 Rohingya who crossed the border into Bangladesh said they had fled widespread killings, rape and arson by soldiers and civilian mobs. The Muslim minority has long been maligned in largely Buddhist Myanmar and is denied citizenship.
The report found sufficient evidence to fulfil a complex definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention, which Myanmar has ratified.
Rohingya in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, where most have settled after they fled over the border, welcomed the report.
“We are happy for this. If these army people are punished the world will take note of it,” Mohammed Hasan, 46, told Associated Press.
“They killed thousands, we have seen that. They torched our homes, that’s a fact. They raped our women, that’s not false,” he said.
The report said further that to expect justice from a domestic investigation in Myanmar was “simply naive, there is no accountability and there is no impartiality”.
The investigators, who were not allowed to visit Myanmar, based their report on the accounts of displaced Rohingya, satellite images, videos, photographs and the findings of forensic experts.
The UN report accusing the Myanmar military’s commanders of genocide and criticising Aung San Suu Kyi for failing to stop the violence against the Rohingya last year is the strongest indictment of the atrocities against the minority since the crisis broke out last year.
“The gross human rights violations and abuses committed are shocking for their horrifying nature and ubiquity,” the report said. “Many of these violations undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law.
“Myanmar’s top military generals, including commander-in-chief Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing, must be investigated and prosecuted for genocide in the north of Rakhine state, as well as for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states.”
Yet the report released yesterday by the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission is just the latest indictment of the Myanmar government and senior military officials, who are believed to have breached human rights despite repeated warnings from the international community.
And it is unclear if the report will have any effect on the actions of the military.
The mission members said the actions in Myanmar were the “gravest crimes under international law”, stating that “criminal prosecution is warranted” under the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The mission also warned that to expect justice from a domestic investigation in Myanmar is “simply naive, there is no accountability and there is no impartiality”.
About 25,000 Rohingya Muslims were killed and 700,000 have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh since last August as the army launched an assault on the minority, with accounts of widespread murder, rape and arson.
The army has consistently denied the accusations, saying it was responding to Rohingya insurgents threatening national security.
“The crimes in Rakhine state, and the manner in which they were perpetrated, are similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal intent to be established in other contexts,” the report said.
“There is sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw [Myanmar army] chain of command.”
The report said the army’s destructive tactics were “consistently and grossly disproportionate to security threats”.
It also held Ms Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of government and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, responsible for failing to use her authority to stop the violence.
The report found she had not used her “moral authority to stem or prevent the unfolding events, or seek alternative avenues to meet a responsibility to protect the civilian population”.
“We are very much happy with the report’s undeniable conclusions and the terms they have used in their report,” Ro Nasy San Lwin, a leader of the Free Rohingya Coalition, told The National.
“As this was official report of the UN, the Security Council must take action. I believe it will make much of an impact.
“As the UN is the world’s largest organisation and a legitimate body, all governments will consider now the crimes of the Myanmar military committed during the genocide against Rohingya.
“Now is the right time to take actions against Myanmar military and government. Genocide victims deserve justice. The UNSC must refer Myanmar criminals to the International Criminal Court.”
The UN said civilian authorities had spread false news, failed to acknowledge the crimes of the army, prevented independent investigations and oversaw destruction of evidence.
“Through their acts and omissions, the civilian authorities have contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes,” the report found.
But it did acknowledge that the government had little control over the military.
Genocide has a complex definition under the Genocide Convention, which Myanmar has ratified. The report found evidence of four out of five possible genocidal acts, and said “the necessary genocidal intent is present in Rakhine state”.
The four acts that were found were killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting on a group conditions with intent to bring about its physical destruction, and measures to prevent births within the group.
Examples of genocidal intent included oppressive context, hate speech, exclusionary policies, a high level of organisation, and the extreme scale and brutality of the violence.
The commander-in-chief of the army said the “clearance operation was defined as completing an unfinished job of solving the long-standing Bengali problem”, which the mission members said was an example of genocidal intent.
But as with most cases of genocide, there was no “smoking gun”, they said.
Myanmar’s justice system was described as woefully ineffective with “impunity deeply entrenched” in the country’s law.
The report said the army “can independently adjudicate its own matters, with the commander-in-chief having the final word.
“The rare cases, brought mostly before military courts without transparency, are wholly insufficient to counter the overall trend of impunity,” it said.
A recently created government commission was deemed unable to provide a real path to accountability. The report said that a complete overhaul of the domestic security services and legal system were required.
The report said the UN and the international community had to take the lead in protecting locals from genocide and crimes against humanity.
The UK government, which has a long history with Ms Suu Kyi, quickly commended the report and urged the Myanmar government to act on it.
“Anyone like myself who has been engaged directly in this terrible crisis, or has spoken to Rohingya refugees, knows the Burmese military is primarily to blame for such appalling human rights violations as the widespread rape and murder of the Rohingya people,” said Mark Field, State Minister for Asia and the Pacific.
“The fact-finding mission provides yet more damning evidence of their culpability.
“There cannot and must not be impunity for such acts, which the mission has concluded warrants the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw chain of command.”
The UN said the desperate situation would preferably be referred to the ICC, despite Myanmar not being a signatory to the Rome statute and therefore not under the court’s jurisdiction.
Facebook was regarded as a key outlet in which hate speech was propagated against the Rohingya Muslims, the report said. The social media giant worked with the mission and has tried to take down hate speech.
A longer report is to be published in coming weeks and will be presented to a UN council on September 18.
Myanmar’s top military generals must be prosecuted for genocide in Rakhine state, and for crimes against humanity UN’S FACT-FINDING MISSION REPORT