Hossen Sohel of DOT
A bipartisan group of US senators on Wednesday called on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to designate the Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority a genocide, reports Reuters.
More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state for neighboring Bangladesh since August last year, when attacks on security posts by Rohingya insurgents triggered a military crackdown that the United Nations, the United States, Britain and others described as ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar denies the accusations of ethnic cleansing.
“We are deeply concerned that despite clear evidence of genocide amassed by the Department’s own report … that the Department has not made a formal determination that the crime of genocide has been committed,” said a letter to Pompeo from the senators, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.
In September, leaders of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee called on the Trump administration to declare the military campaign a genocide, days after a State Department report stopped short of that description.
A declaration of genocide by the US government could have legal implications of committing Washington to stronger punitive measures against Myanmar’s government, which is led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. This has made some in the Trump administration wary of issuing such an assessment.
The areas where the Rohingya lived in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State before the army ousted them were being dramatically transformed, making their return increasingly unlikely, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The senators asked Pompeo to provide a formal determination about the actions of Myanmar’s military.
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