Report: ‘Security forces committed war crimes’
AN INDEPENDENT commission established by Myanmar’s government has concluded there are reasons to believe that security forces committed war crimes in operations that led 700,000 members of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.
However, the commission, headed by a Philippine diplomat, said in a report given on Monday to President Win Myint that there is no evidence supporting charges that genocide was planned or carried out against the Rohingya.
The Independent Commission of Inquiry announced its findings in a press release posted on its Facebook page.
It came just ahead of a decision by the United Nations’ top court, scheduled for Thursday, on a request that Burma be ordered to halt what has been cast as a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.
The African nation of Gambia brought legal action last year to the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands, alleging on behalf of the 57-country Organisation
of Islamic Cooperation that genocide occurred and continues.
State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s top leader, strongly denied wrongdoing by government forces at the initial hearing on the case in December.
Monday’s report issued by the commission said it found no evidence of genocide.
But it went further than any public statements issued by Burma’s government in suggesting government forces were guilty of major abuses.
“Although these serious crimes and violations were committed by multiple actors, there are reasonable grounds to believe that members of Burma’s security forces were involved” in war crimes, serious human rights violations, and violations of domestic law in 2017, it said.
“The killing of innocent villagers and destruction of their homes were committed by some members of Burma’s security forces through disproportionate use of force during the internal armed conflict,” it said.