US investigates Myanmar crisis
Alleged atrocities against Rohingya probed
THE US government was conducting an intensive examination of alleged atrocities against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, documenting accusations of murder, rape, beatings and other possible offences in an investigation that could be used to prosecute Myanmar’s military for crimes against humanity, US officials said.
The undertaking, led by the State Department, has involved more than a thousand interviews of Rohingya men and women in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, where almost 700 000 Rohingya have fled after a military crackdown last year in Myanmar’s north-western Rakhine State, two US officials said.
The work is modelled on a US forensic investigation of mass atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region in 2004, which led to a US declaration of genocide that culminated in economic sanctions against the Sudanese government.
The interviews were conducted in March and April by about 20 investigators with backgrounds in international law and criminal justice, including some who worked on tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the US officials said.
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will publicly release the findings, or whether they will be used to justify new sanctions on the Myanmar government or a recommendation for international prosecution.
The Myanmar government and military had not responded to questions. Myanmar has said its operations in Rakhine were a legitimate response to attacks on security forces by Rohingya insurgents.
The interviewers in the camps asked the refugees basic demographic questions, the date the person left Myanmar, and to recount their experiences during the wave of violence unleashed against the Rohingya in Rakhine State by the Myanmar military and local Buddhist residents.
Zohra Khatun, 35, a Rohingya refugee in the camps, said she told investigators that soldiers waged a campaign of violence and harassment in her village in Rakhine State starting last August. They made arrests and shot several people, driving her and others to flee, she said.
“One military officer grabbed me by the throat and tried to take me,” she said. The military, she said, burned homes in the village, including hers.
The investigation coincides with a debate inside the US government and on Capitol Hill over whether the Trump administration has done enough to hold Myanmar’s military to account for brutal violence against the largely stateless Rohingya.
The Rohingya are a small Muslim minority in majority Buddhist Myanmar. Violence against them has increased in recent years as the country has made a partial shift to democratic governance.
In November last year, following the lead of the UN and the EU, then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson declared that the Rohingya crisis constituted “ethnic cleansing”. The Myanmar government has denied the accusations. The US responded in December by imposing targeted sanctions on one Myanmar general and threatening to penalise others. Human rights groups have urged the White House to widen sanctions and designate the violence as “crimes against humanity”.
A Reuters investigation published in February provided the first independent confirmation of what had taken place in the village of Inn Din, where 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys were hacked to death by Rakhine Buddhist villagers or shot by security force members. The story was based on accounts not only from Rohingya refugees but also from soldiers, police officers and Buddhist locals who admitted to participating in the bloodshed. Pictures showed the men and boys with their hands tied behind their backs and their bodies in a shallow grave. Two journalists were jailed while reporting the story and remain in prison in Yangon, where they face up to 14 years in jail.
So far, there has been resistance by lawyers in the White House and State Department to adopt the terms “crimes against humanity” or “genocide” in describing deaths of Rohingya in Myanmar, the US officials said.
US diplomats in Yangon have also been reluctant to jeopardise Washington’s relationship with Aung San Suu Kyi, a democratic icon who has faced criticism for failing to do more to rein in the violence.