Biden administration formally determines Myanmar's military committed genocide

CNN

By Jennifer Hansler,
Sun March 20, 2022

Rohingya refugees gather near a fence during a government organized media tour, to a no-man's land between Myanmar and Bangladesh, near Taungpyolatyar village, Maung Daw, northern Rakhine State, Myanmar, June 29, 2018.

(CNN)The Biden administration has formally determined that Myanmar's military committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, a US official told CNN on Sunday.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will publicly announce the determination, which human rights groups have been advocating for years, at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, on Monday.

Reuters first reported on the administration's recognition of genocide.

Why the US Should Recognize the Rohingya Genocide The Biden administration has a chance to reasse

THE I DIPLOMAT
Michael P. Scharf, Paul R. Williams, and Milena Sterio
June 01, 2021

The Biden administration has a chance to reassert the United States’ moral authority on human rights.

Justice delayed is justice denied. As lawyers who have advised nearly every international criminal and hybrid tribunal, as well as over two dozen peace negotiations around the world, we have seen firsthand the consequences of ignoring atrocities in the name of preserving peace or alliances.

 

Minara Begum, 22, in her shelter at Balukhali

refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 5, 2018.

Credit: UN Women/Allison Joyce

The Biden administration is faced with an historic opportunity. By labeling the atrocities committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State as genocide, the Biden administration has a chance to reassert the United States’ moral authority on human rights and to lead the international community on issues of justice and accountability. The Biden administration should speak out firmly and clearly in favor of holding Myanmar and the individual perpetrators accountable for “the crime of all crimes.”

McConnell offers praise for Biden administration's response to Myanmar coup

THE HILL 
TAL AXELROD
05/26/21

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered praise Wednesday for the Biden administration over its response to the military coup in Myanmar.

McConnell, who has spoken extensively with deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi over the past several years, touted moves the White House and State Department have taken to address the coup, including slapping sanctions on companies that support the ruling military junta and calling out human rights abuses.

Biden Administration Moves to Protect Myanmar Nationals Residing in US

VOA

By Aline Barros
May 25, 2021

FILE - Myanmar soldiers walk along a street during a protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 28, 2021.

WASHINGTON - Nearly four months after a coup in Myanmar triggered a prolonged period of violence and upheaval in the country, the Biden administration has designated Myanmar nationals for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), allowing many in the U.S. to be shielded from deportation and obtain work permits.

The registration period is set from May 25 to November 22. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that about 1,600 Burmese nationals "continuously residing" in the U.S. since March 11 now can obtain protected status.

Senators urge Biden to impose more sanctions on Myanmar junta

REUTERS
Timothy Gardner
April 28, 2021

Myanmar's junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing (L) gestures as he is welcomed upon his arrival ahead of the ASEAN leaders' summit, at the Soekarno Hatta International airport in Tangerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, April 24, 2021. Courtesy of Rusman/Indonesian Presidential Palace/Handout via REUTERS

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to slap more sanctions on the military junta in Myanmar, including choking revenues to a state energy company, in response to its coup and violent crackdown on protesters.

Senators Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Republican, and four others urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a letter to "explore new avenues to support the people of Burma in their ongoing struggle for democracy in the face of escalating crimes against humanity."

Biden, first lady send 'warmest greetings' to Muslims for Ramadan

THE HILL

BY MARINA PITOFSKY

04/12/21

Getty Images

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden marked the start of Ramadan on Monday, sending their “warmest greetings and best wishes to Muslim communities in the United States and around the world.”

“As many of our fellow Americans begin fasting tomorrow, we are reminded of how difficult this year has been. In this pandemic, friends and loved ones cannot yet gather together in celebration and congregation, and far too many families will sit down for iftar with loved ones missing,” the president and first lady said in a statement Monday.

Muslim people celebrating the annual holy month fast daily from sunrise to sundown.

U.S. 'horrified' by Myanmar violence, Blinken says after bloodiest day since military coup

nbc News

By Yuliya Talmazan
March 28, 2021, 

The courageous people of Burma reject the military’s reign of terror,” Blinken said after the worst day of violence in Myanmar since last month's coup..

 

The United States is “horrified” by the bloodshed in Myanmar, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday, after the country’s bloodiest day of protests since last month’s military coup.

The violent crackdown on demonstrators by Myanmar’s security forces showed that the junta will “sacrifice the lives of the people to serve the few,” Blinken said in a tweet.

nited States: Biden Administration Imposes Sanctions On Burma Following Military Coup

JONES DAY

24 March 2021
by Sean T. Boyce , Michael Gurdak , Lindsey Nelson , Schuyler J. Schouten and D. Grayson Yeargin, Jones Day

As part of the U.S. government response, the Department of the Treasury imposes sanctions on certain Burmese persons, and the Department of Commerce heightens export restrictions relating to Burma.

In response to the military coup in Burma (Myanmar), President Biden issued Executive Order 14041, "Blocking Property with Respect to the Situation in Burma," authorizing sanctions against, among others, foreign persons determined to be a leader or official of the military or security forces of Burma, or a leader or official of the Government of Burma on or after February 2, 2021.

USA.- Biden called on members of the Security Council to act on the crises in Burma and Ethiopia

The Daily Guardian

Tony Joseph

Madrid, 19 (Europa Press)

02/10/2021 Joe Biden, President of the United States International President of North America, Michael Reynolds of the United States of America – POOL VIA CNP / ZUMA PRESS / CON

It requests action in Libya, Syria and Yemen and reaffirms the US commitment to multilateralism.

US President Joe Biden has called for members of the Security Council to act “urgently” in regional crises in Burma and Ethiopia, as well as in Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Through a statement, the White House has confirmed this meeting between the president and the council, where it has “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to world leadership on the basis of values ​​and reunification with international institutions, Especially with the United Nations. “

Biden Sanctions Myanmar Coup Leader’s Children, Their Businesses

Bloomberg News 

11 March 2021 

Min Aung Hlaing, Photographer, Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Image

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The U.S. sanctioned the adult children of Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing along with their business holdings, saying they “have directly benefited from their father’s position and malign influence.”-

The U.S. Treasury Department put the children -- Aung Pyae Sone, 36, and Khin Thiri Thet Mon, 39 -- on a list that prohibits American citizens from doing business with them or their six businesses. Their operations include a restaurant, gyms, a gallery and a media production business.-

A new Biden

ahramonline

Abdel-Moneim Said,

Tuesday 9 Feb 2021 

A week ago, on her nightly CNN interview programme “Amanpour & Company”, Christiane Amanpour interviewed the director of a Moscow-based political think tank. The subject was Alexey Navalny, the political dissident who has just returned to Russia from Germany where he was treated for poisoning allegedly administered at the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Enumerating the mass demonstrations that have erupted around the country in support of Navalny, Amanpour asked whether this was a tipping point for Russian public opinion. Striking a rather aloof pose, the Russian political scientist did not deny the wave of demonstrations, but he stressed that it reflected only a small sliver of Russia’s population of almost 150 million.

Amanpour then asked his opinion on the global outcry against the Russian authorities and Putin personally, censuring their treatment of Navalny and crackdown on the opposition. Amanapour’s guest countered that the statements of condemnation did not come from the “world” but rather from the handful of countries that make up the Western coalition. In fact, he said, most other countries of the world were either sympathetic to Russia or preferred to remain silent on a matter about which, according to him, the available information is inaccurate and biased.

The Genocide Label Complicates Biden’s China Policy

Bloomberg  

Eli Lake
January 28, 2021, 

Diplomacy could be difficult with a state officially designated as genocidal. 

 

Now it’s an issue for Biden. Photographer: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP

 In the final weeks and months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the State Department took some steps that are likely to be reversed. President Joe Biden’s administration is now reviewing these last-minute actions, such as designating the Houthi movement in Yemen a terrorist organization and imposing new sanctions on Iranian leaders and organizations, with a red marker in hand.

One 11th-hour policy change, however, may be here to stay: the designation of China’s repression of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province as genocide. At his confirmation hearing last week, and in his first press briefing this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed that what China’s government has done to the Uighurs was genocide.

Biden Administration Should Tread Carefully on Myanmar’s Rights Issues: Observers

Irrawaddy

Nyein Nyein
27 January 2021

Then US Vice President Joe Biden and Myanmar State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi meet in Washington in September 2016. / State Counselor’s Office

 

US foreign policy under new President Joseph Biden will be centered on promoting democracy and human rights around the world, Antony Blinken, the administration’s nominee for secretary of state, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Jan. 19. Unlike Republican President Donald Trump, the new Democratic administration is likely to make human rights its top priority in dealing with Myanmar.

The UN Human Rights Commission said in September that ongoing and severe human rights violations continue to occur in armed conflict areas of Myanmar, including in the ethnic states of Kachin, Shan, Rakhine and Chin, despite the country’s ongoing democratic reform and peace-building processes.

It urged Myanmar to take concrete steps toward accountability for rights violations and said the current government’s initiatives to address the situation have been “inadequate and fallen short of international standards”.

Barred From U.S. Under Trump, Muslims Exult in Biden’s Open Door

The New York Times

Declan Walsh
Jan. 23, 2021

Few foreigners welcomed President Biden’s election victory as enthusiastically as the tens of thousands of Muslims who have been locked out of the United States for the past four years.

A protest in New York in 2017 in opposition to President Donald J. Trump’s executive order preventing people from several majority Muslim countries from entering the country.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times 

 

NAIROBI, Kenya — As the results of the American presidential election rolled in on Nov. 4, a young Sudanese couple sat up through the night in their small town south of Khartoum, eyes glued to the television as state tallies were declared, watching anxiously. They had a lot riding on the outcome.

A year earlier, Monzir Hashim had won the State Department’s annual lottery to obtain a green card for the United States only to learn that President Donald J. Trump, in his latest iteration of the “Muslim ban,” had barred Sudanese citizens from immigrating to the United States.

သမ္မတ Biden လက်ထက် ဖြစ်လာနိုင်တဲ့ ကန်-မြန်မာဆက် ဆံရေး ပုံစံ

VOA
ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာဌာန)
မစုမြတ်မွန်
22 ဇန်နဝါရီ၊ 2021 

 အမေရိကန်သမ္မတသစ် Joe Biden ရဲ့ ဦးစားပေးအစီအစဉ်တွေထဲမှာ ကမ္ဘာတဝန်းက ဒီမိုကရေစီမဟာမိတ်တွေ နဲ့ ဒီမိုကရေစီ ပြန်လည်ခိုင်မာအောင်လုပ်ပြီးတော့ အမေရိကန်ရဲ့ စံတန်ဖိုး ဒီမိုကရေစီမြှင့်တင်ဖို့အတွက်လည်း ပါဝင်ပါတယ်။ ဒီမိုကရေစီနဲ့ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ကိစ္စတွေ ပြန်လည်မြှင့်တင်တဲ့အခါမှာ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးအားနည်း တယ် လို့အမြင်ခံနေရတဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံနဲ့ဆက်ဆံရေးမှာရော ဘယ်လိုဖြစ်လာနိုင်ပါသလဲ။ နိုင်ငံတကာ ငြိမ်းချမ်း ရေးနဲ့လုံခြုံရေးဆိုင်ရာ အမေရိကန်အခြေစိုက် Stimson Center တတ်သိပညာရှင်များအဖွဲ့က သုတေသီ ကိုအမ ရသီဟကို မစုမြတ်မွန်က ဆက်သွယ် မေးမြန်းထားပါတယ်။

Biden executive order repeals Trump travel ban

 Washington Examiner

Anna Giaritelli, Homeland Security Reporter

January 20, 2021

 Memorable Moments from Past Presidential Inaugurations

 

President Biden rescinded the Trump administration's travel ban against citizens from seven countries just hours after being sworn into office.

Biden on Wednesday afternoon repealed the first executive order that former President Donald Trump signed upon arriving at the White House in January 2017. The move was one of 17 reversals aimed at altering policies Trump put into effect.

That ban on travel affected countries in northern Africa and the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan. It was the first of three the Trump administration would set into action on the basis that those countries did not adequately vet travelers headed to the United States.

Dhaka-Washington ties to get stronger under Biden administration: Ambassador Miller

The Daily Star  

UNB, Dhaka

January 17, 2021

Photo courtesy: UNB

US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl R Miller has said Bangladesh-US relations will only get stronger under the Biden administration.

"I think the relationship between the US and Bangladesh will only grow from strength to strength. I don't see any major changes at this point," he told UNB in an interview.

US President-elect Joe Biden and his team are now all set to take over office on January 20, 2021.

Ambassador Miller, however, said they will have to see what the new administration's policies are and mentioned that many of the people who will be moving to cabinet positions are well-known to him. "Many of them have real focus on the Indo-Pacific region, especially in South Asia."