Tillerson tells Myanmar leaders to investigate attacks on Rohingya

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson briefly visited Myanmar on Wednesday and urged its two most influential leaders to investigate “credible reports of widespread atrocities” by the country’s security forces against Rohingya Muslims.

In a five-hour visit in Myanmar, Tillerson met with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the nation’s military commander, and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate and head of the country’s civilian government. He urged both to investigate and halt the violence that has driven more than 615,000 Rohingya to flee over the border to Bangladesh since late August. Less than one-third of the 1.1 million Rohingya who lived in Myanmar last year are thought to remain in the country.

Tillerson called the situation “horrific,” and at a news conference after the meeting said there had been “crimes against humanity.”

Members of the mostly stateless Muslim minority are still flooding into Bangladesh from Myanmar’s Rakhine state. They bring with them accounts of villages burned to the ground, women raped and children flung into fires. The accounts have been borne out by human rights investigators and, in the case of the villages, satellite evidence.

A senior United Nations official has called the campaign against the Rohingya a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” And on Sunday, Pramila Patten, a special representative of the U.N. secretary-general, accused the Myanmar military of systematic sexual violence against the Rohingya, noting that rape is a weapon of genocide.