Myanmar army leaders ‘must face genocide charges’, says UN
● Report details alleged violations ● Satellite footage used in fact-finding
Investigators working for the UN’S top human rights body said Myanmar military leaders should be prosecuted for genocide against Rohingya Muslims, taking the unusual step of identifying six by name among those behind deadly and systematic crimes against the ethnic minority.
The call, accompanying a first report by the team of investigators, amounts to some of the strongest language yet from UN officials. They have denounced alleged human rights violations in Myanmar since a bloody crackdown started in August last year.
The three-member “factfinding mission” and their team, working under a mandate from the Un-backed Human Rights Council, assembled hundreds of accounts from expatriate Rohingya, as well as satellite footage and other information to assemble the report.
Chair Marzuki Darusman – a former Indonesian attorneygeneral – said: “The military’s contempt for human life, dignity and freedom, for international law in general, should be a cause of concern for the entire population of Myanmar and to the international community as a whole.”
The investigators cited six Myanmar military leaders as “priority subjects” for possible prosecution, including Commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing. A longer list of names is to be kept in the office of the UN human rights chief for possible use in future judicial proceedings. The United States and European Union have already slapped sanctions on some Myanmar military leaders.
The council created the mission in March last year, nearly six months before a string of deadly rebel attacks on security and police posts set off a crackdown that drove Rohingya to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh. The UN
estimates more than 700,000 have fled. The team compiled accounts of crimes, including gang rape, the torching of hundreds of villages, enslavement, and killings of children. The team was not granted access to Myanmar and has decried a lack of co-operation or even response from the government, which received an early copy of the report.
The team cited a “conservative” estimate from aid group Reporters Without Borders that some 10,000 people were killed in the violence, but outing
side investigators have had no access to the affected regions, making a precise accounting difficult to make. The investigators said the situation in Myanmar should be referred to the International Criminal Court or to a special tribunal.
Myanmar’s government last week rejected any co-operation with the ICC, to which it is not a party. China – a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power over whether the issue will be brought before the ICC – has been reticent about condemn- Myanmar’s government during the crisis.
UN leaders, foreign government officials and human rights watchers have for months cited evidence of genocide in Myanmar. The United States late last year said “ethnic cleansing” was occurring in Myanmar, but few experts have studied the issue as indepth and in such an official way as the fact-finding mission, with a mandate from the 46-nation council.
The United Nations does not apply the word “genocide” lightly. The team’s assessment suggests the crimes against the Rohingya could meet the strict legal definition used to highlight and condemn statesupported abuses in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan’s Darfur region.
Human rights watchers have said determining “genocidal intent” is perhaps the most difficult criteria to meet. The report said: “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.”