Top Myanmar military officers should be tried for crimes against humanity - Amnesty International

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Top Myanmar military officers should be tried for crimes against humanity - Amnesty International

By Rodrigo Campos

 

A satellite image taken on September 24, 2017 and provided by Amnesty International on June 26, 2018 shows what they describe as the geography of Myanmar's Min Gyi village, divided between a Rohingya area surrounded by the Purma River on the north, east, and south, and an ethnic Rakhine area to the west. Amnesty International say that approximately 385 structures in the Rohingya area appear razed. Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe/Handout via REUTERS

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Senior Myanmar military officials, including the commanders of its defence services and army, should face trial for crimes against humanity over the treatment of Rohingya minorities, Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday.

 

Amnesty called for the United Nations Security Council to refer the report's findings to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and impose a "comprehensive arms embargo" on the Southeast Asian country and financial sanctions against senior officials.

 

Contacted late on Tuesday, neither the Russian delegation to the United Nations, currently presiding over the UN Security Council, nor the Myanmar Mission to the United Nations were available for comment.

 

A spokesman for the Myanmar government also was not available for comment.

 

About 700,000 mostly Muslim Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh from largely Buddhist Myanmar since a military crackdown last August that the United Nations has called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing."

 

A separate Reuters special report https://reut.rs/2yLzrsV on Tuesday gave a comprehensive account of the roles played by two light infantry divisions in the offensive against the Rohingya.

 

Amnesty, which began its investigation in September, said in its report that the "military-led operations ... amounted to an orchestrated campaign of murder, rape, torture, and destruction aimed at punishing the Rohingya population in northern Rakhine State and at driving them out of the country."

 

It named Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the commander of Myanmar's Defense Services, and his deputy and commander of the army, Vice Senior General Soe Win, and commanders of specific units that "committed many of the worst atrocities."

 

The report also named eight other military members and three members of the Border Guard Police.

 

Amnesty said these people should face justice "for their command responsibility, their direct responsibility, or both."

 

A spokesman for the Myanmar military was not available for comment.

 

In Myanmar, Rohingya are widely called "Bengali," which they see as a derogatory term implying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Despite many Rohingya tracing their roots in Myanmar back generations, they have been denied citizenship.

 

Amnesty called on Myanmar to halt restrictions on freedom of movement and restore citizenship to the Rohingya.

 

In February, Reuters reported on the killing of 10 Rohingya men and boys by Rakhine Buddhists and security forces in the village of Inn Din.

 

Two Reuters journalists were jailed in December in Myanmar while reporting that story and remain in prison in Yangon, facing up to 14 years behind bars for allegedly violating Myanmar's Official Secrets Act.

 

Myanmar has rejected most accusations of wrongdoing and has said it launched a legitimate counter-insurgency operation after attacks against its military by Rohingya militants last August.

 

In Myanmar there is no civilian oversight of military justice. The International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent war crimes court, does not have automatic jurisdiction over Myanmar because it is not a member state.

 

However, the ICC has already been asked to consider a separate case dealing with Myanmar allegedly deporting Rohingya to Bangladesh, which is an ICC member state.

 

The ICC did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours in The Hague.

 

If the UN Security Council referred Amnesty's findings to the ICC, it would also grant the court jurisdiction to investigate.

 

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-06-27

[taipan1949]

Myanmar dealing with muslims before they become another England.

[Emster23]

5 hours ago, taipan1949 said:

Myanmar dealing with muslims before they become another England.

Muslims have been living in that area for hundreds of years, if having  very old mosques is any indication.

Watching BBC news other day saw report general high up in genocide sacked. "Good" thinks me.... then turns out given the boot more or less for being too soft...

[tifino]

the area on the Sat photo looks something like a part time rice field, and the whole area may have been wiped clear by  the river itself!

  You can see the flow has deviated many times, seeing the multiple courses of the river over the years

[phantomfiddler]

But didn,t the muslims start the violence with a co-ordinated attack on about a dozen police stations along the border ?

[Ulic]

A complicated issue not explained at all in Western Media.

1/ Referring to them as Bengalis as the Myanmar officials do is correct. They are religiously, linguistically and genetically linked to Bangladesh. They may have lived for generations in Myanmar/Burma but they have never been recognized as citizens of Burma/Myanmar. Just long-term illegal migrants.

2/ Like Thailand, Singapore and most South East Asian countries Myanmar does not recognize citizenship by birth. If your parents were not citizens of Myanmar, neither are you.

3/ While they like to complain that the government treats them as second-class citizens, they are actually treated as not citizens who would have been deported decades ago to Bangladesh, but Bangladesh does not want them either. 

4/ Everything was continuing on in a nonprogressive stalemated existence until a group of Rakhine State Bengalis attacked the police pushing for independence/autonomy.  The reaction by a de facto military government was both predictable and remarkably restrained compared to what it could have been. The West will have to offer inducements to Myanmar to allow these Bengalis back. The government of Myanmar considers them to be back where they belong.

[DekDaeng]

9 hours ago, phantomfiddler said:

But didn,t the muslims start the violence with a co-ordinated attack on about a dozen police stations along the border ?

That's what was reported, but army was set up already??? Curious -

 

 

 

[DekDaeng]

Myanmar gov is like the old saw - if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.

 

Replace hammer with AK 47, or AR 15, or or ................. 

[Saladin]

Apologists can wrap it up in cotton wool and silk but nothing can excuse what the Burmese army and its gangster generals did to these people. In my earlier lifetime, 'Beacons of Democracy' like the US and Australia would have been at the forefront in condemning the disgraceful behaviour  of countries like Myanmar, Saudi, UAE, Israel, and Egypt but now they are complicit in their support of it. It seems that compassion, decency, and democracy are rapidly dying and the average citizen doesn't give a damn.  

[cooked]

On 6/28/2018 at 3:12 AM, DekDaeng said:

That's what was reported, but army was set up already??? Curious -

 

 

 

There were (mostly Muslim) riots in the Rakhine since June 2012 and the army was forced to take action. Many refugee centres were set up for Bengalis that chose to flee South rather than to Bangladesh. Of course the army was there in strength.

Here's something else that is curious: Kofi Anan's committee was supposed to be presenting its proposals for solving this on the 26th August. ARSA started their armed rebellion on the 25th. 

A video of Muslims pouring out of their mosque in Maungdaw on June 8th 2012 has been removed from Youtube. as have many reports that show a very different side to what happened. 

Here's the video from Maungdaw, which has been verified independently.