REUTERS reported that the US government is conducting an intensive investigation of alleged atrocities against Rohingya Muslims, documenting accusations of murder, rape, beatings and other offenses that could be used to prosecute Myanmar’s military for crimes against humanity. This is hopefully a good step to try the perpetrators who committed the worst exodus and genocide on the most persecuted people and snatch their citizenship. If other powerful countries, the member state of United Nations Security Council, truly take the side of oppressed, the plights of the Rohingya people would be ended. We ask Chinese and Russian governments not to support the atrocities as the inhumane genocide which triggered exodus and ravaged the Rakahine.
The undertaking has involved more than a thousand interviews of Rohingya men and women in refugee camps in Bangladesh, where over 700,000 Rohingya have fled after a military crackdown last year in Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine State. The information will be analyzed in Washington and the report will be sent to the State Department in May or early June. It is anticipated that the purpose of this investigation is to contribute to justice processes, including community awareness rising, international advocacy efforts, and community-based reconciliation efforts, as well as possible investigations, truth-seeking efforts, or other efforts for justice and accountability.
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 accountable for brutal violence against the stateless Rohingyas. In November, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared that the Rohingya crisis constituted “ethnic cleansing” though the Myanmar government denied the accusations. The US in December imposed sanctions on one Myanmar general and threatening to penalize others. Washington has also scaled back already-limited military ties with Myanmar since the Rohingya crisis began. Human rights groups and Democratic lawmakers in Washington have urged the Republican White House to widen sanctions and designate the violence as “crimes against humanity”.
We hope, the US effort to collect data should be used to prosecute the perpetrators, within government and military in Myanmar, send back Rohingyas to their homeland and return their citizenship. It’s a humanitarian crisis. So, the US government’s initiative should be on humanitarian ground.
