U_S_ officials say the Biden administration intends to declare that Myanmar’s years of repression of the Rohingya Muslim population is a “genocide”.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to make the long-awaited name Monday at an event at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the movement has not yet been publicly announced.
The designation does not in itself indicate drastic new measures against the Myanmar military-led government, which has already been hit with multiple layers of US sanctions since the campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority in the country in western Rakhine state began in 2017.
But it could lead to additional international pressure on the government, which is already accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Human rights groups and lawmakers have pressured both Trump and Biden administrations to make the designation.
At least one member of Congress, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, welcomed the move, as did Refugees International.
“I applaud the Biden administration for finally recognizing the atrocities committed against the Rohingya as a genocide,” he said in a statement released immediately after the State Department announced that Blinken had commented on Monday in the Holocaust Museum. Myanmar would deliver in an exhibition entitled “Burma’s Road to Genocide.” Myanmar is also known as Burma.
“While this determination is long overdue, it is a powerful and critically important step in holding this brutal regime to account,” Merkley said. “Such processes must always be conducted objectively, consistently and in a way that transcends geopolitical considerations.”
The humanitarian group Refugees International also praised the movement. “The U.S. Genocide Declaration is a welcome and deeply meaningful step,” the group said in a statement. “It is also a solid sign of the commitment to justice for all those people who continue to abuse the military junta to this day.”
Merkley has called on the administration to continue the pressure campaign on Myanmar by imposing additional sanctions on the government to contain its oil and gas sectors. “America needs to lead the world to make it clear that graves like these are never allowed to be buried unnoticed, no matter where they occur,” he said.
More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Buddhist majority Myanmar and refugee camps in Bangladesh since August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched a clearance operation in response to attacks by a rebel group. Myanmar security forces are accused of mass rapes, murders and the burning of thousands of homes.
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