US Senators introduce bill to probe whether Myanmar attacks on Rohingya constituted genocide

JURIST

Valeria Negron | U. Pittsburgh School of Law, US
APRIL 17, 2021 

A group of 10 US senators led by Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced legislation Wednesday that would require Secretary of State Antony Blinken to investigate Myanmar’s military attacks on the Rohingya minority and decide whether they constitute genocide.

Since 2017, more than 750,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh hoping to escape the military’s systemic killing of their people, says the legislation. The bill points to the documented history of the attacks, which have been investigated by the UN, the Department of State and the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (IIFFMM). In 2018, the IIFFMM stated that they “ha[d] reasonable grounds to conclude 5 that the evidence that infers genocidal intent on the part of the State, identified in its last report, has strengthened that there is a serious risk that genocidal actions may occur or recur.”

SENATOR MARKEY AND COLLEAGUES REINTRODUCE LEGISLATION DIRECTING THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE TO ISSUE A ROHINGYA GENOCIDE DETERMINATION

PRESS RELEASE

APRIL 14, 2021

Washington (April 14, 2020) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the East Asia Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, along with Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) today introduced legislation requiring the Secretary of State to determine whether attacks by Burmese military and security forces against the Rohingya minority constitute genocide. Since August 25, 2017, around 740,000 Rohingya have fled Burma (also known as Myanmar) to neighboring Bangladesh to escape a brutal campaign of atrocities by Burma’s military and security forces, including systematic murder and sexual and gender-based violence. On February 1, 2021 the Burmese military carried out a coup against the democratically elected, civilian-led government and has since killed more than 700 civilians during widespread peaceful protests and strikes in opposition to the coup.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other State Department officials have committed to Senator Markey that there will be an interagency process to determine whether the atrocities committed against the Rohingya in Burma constitute genocide, but have not indicated a timeline for that decision to be announced.

Burmese opposition figure Dr Sasa: 'The world has to stop another genocide'

FRANCH 24   

Marc Perelman
08/04/2021

THE INTERVIEW © FRANCE 24

Exiled Burmese opposition figure Dr Sasa is the UN envoy for Myanmar's CRPH, a committee representing the parliament that was elected in November but which has not been able to take office because of the military coup. Dr Sasa called on the international community – Russia and China included – to stop the junta's military crackdown on Myanmar's people. He called on world leaders to act now to prevent the civil unrest from turning into a "genocide" that might soon send refugees into neighbouring countries.

Link : Here

UN rights chief, genocide aide warn Myanmar on killings

AA

Peter Kenny

GENEVA 
28.03.2021

Top UN officials call killing of 141 by military in bloodiest day of Myanmar anti-coup protests 'shameful, cowardly, brutal'

The UN human rights chief and the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide on Sunday issued a clear warning of a heightened risk of atrocity crimes in Myanmar, following another day of widespread bloodshed by the Myanmar military.

Michelle Bachelet, the high commissioner for human rights, and Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, issued a joint statement as the death toll in Myanmar's bloodiest day on Saturday rose to 141, including at least seven children.

"The shameful, cowardly, brutal actions of the military and police – who have been filmed shooting at protesters as they flee, and who have not even spared young children – must be halted immediately," said Bachelet and Nderitu.

Special Report: Pompeo rejected U.S. effort to declare 'genocide' in Myanmar on eve of coup, officials say

REUTERS

By Simon Lewis, Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the last days of the Trump administration, some U.S. officials urged outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to formally declare that the Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingya minority was a genocide.

An exhausted Rohingya refugee woman touches the shore after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border by boat through the Bay of Bengal in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh, September 11, 2017. Picture taken September 11, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo SEARCH "POY DECADE" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "REUTERS POY" FOR ALL BEST OF 2019 PACKAGES. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY.

Such a determination, a culmination of years of State Department investigation and legal analysis, would send a signal that the generals would not enjoy impunity for their persecution of the Muslim group since 2017, the officials hoped.

Pompeo never made that call. Less than two weeks after he left office on Jan. 20, Myanmar’s generals seized power in a coup.

Dictionary of Genocide

Dictionary of Genocide by albi.

The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies ( PDFDrive ).pdf

The Oxford Handbook of Geno... by Jusuf

Genocide in Myanmar

Genocide in Myanmar by Let's Save Myanmar

Eight Stages of Genocide and Preventing Genocide by Gregory Stanton, Genocide Watch May 2008

Eight Stages of Genocide an... by Carl Cord

Genocide

Genocide by adie rathi

Genocides in History

Genocides in History by Srebrenica Genocide Library

The Rohingya Genocide - Compilation and Analysis of Survivors' Testimonies

The Rohingya Genocide - Com... by Free Rohingya Coalition

Sri Lanka races to be another genocidal Myanmar

TAMIL GUARDIAN

Article Author:
New Straits Times

15 March 2021

An editorial by the New Straits Times raises concern over the discriminatory legislation adopted by the Sri Lankan government, warning that the burqa ban and closure of over a thousand madrasahs, highlight that Sri Lanka “races to be another genocidal Myanmar”.

In their piece, they highlight how Muslim and Christians launched legal challenges against the government’s draconian policy of forced cremations which violated religious liberty and noted the Supreme Court’s dismissal without calling for evidence.

For ‘love’: charity-washing colonialism, fascism and genocide

Aljazeera

Azeezah Kanji
Legal academic and writer based in Toronto.
12 Mar 2021

From India and the US to Israel and Myanmar, the ‘non-profit industrial complex’ is serving to enforce deeply-rooted structures of domination.

Signage is seen during the Jewish National Fund Los Angeles Tree Of Life Dinner at Loews Hollywood Hotel on October 29, 2017, in Hollywood, California [Michael Kovac/Getty Images]

In the name of “charity”, the Jewish National Fund of Israel is buying up Palestinian land in the West Bank for colonial settlements and calling it “environmentalism”; far-right Hindutva nationalist organisations are propagating their fascist-inspired ideology across the world and calling it “decolonisation” and “anti-racism”; and monks who justify genocide in Myanmar are running tax-exempt centres across the United States for the practice of “religion for peace” Buddhism.

Boris Johnson condemns Myanmar coup, but is silent on genocide

MIDDLE EAST EYE

Peter Oborne
12 February 2021

British inaction in the face of the Rohingya slaughter shows, yet again, that atrocities against voiceless Muslims count for little or nothing in the chanceries of the West 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks in London on 10 February 2021 (AFP)

Within hours of last week’s Myanmar coup d’etat, the denunciations came pouring in. Britain began considering new sanctions. US president Joe Biden pledged action against the military leaders who had directed the coup, which dislodged Myanmar’s Nobel-prize-winning leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

In London, the British Foreign Office hauled in Myanmar Ambassador U Kyaw Zwar Minn, citing the need for “a peaceful return to democracy”. Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the “unlawful imprisonment” of Aung San Suu Kyi.

US hints at looking into Rakhine genocide, Rohingya repatriation: FM

Prothum Alo------  

UNB
Dhaka
Published: 26 Jan 2021, 

Migrants who were found adrift at sea in a boat are repatriated across the Bangladesh-Myanmar border at Ukhia on the outskirts of Cox's Bazar on June 8, 2015. AFP

Bangladesh on Tuesday said there are indications that the new US administration under President Joe Biden will look into the issue of genocide of Rohingyas in the Rakhine State and hopefully will proactively take action for their safe return to Myanmar.

"It's good news. There are indications," Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said, adding that Rohingya problem was created by Myanmar and its solution also lies with them.

He said Bangladesh is thankful of USA’s principled stand and steadfast humanitarian and diplomatic support to Bangladesh in dealing with the Rohingya crisis since August 2017.
                                                                             

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်း ရိုဟင်ဂျာတို့အပေါ် Genocide ကျူးလွန်မှု ရှိ-မရှိ စိစစ်ရေးကြီးကြပ်ဖို့ ကန်ဝန်ကြီးသစ် Blinken သဘောတူ

VOA
ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာပိုင်း)
28 ဇန်နဝါရီ၊ 2021

အမေရိကန် နိုင်ငံခြားရေး ဝန်ကြီးသစ် Antony Blinken က အထက်လွှတ်တော် ကြားနာ စစ်ဆေးပွဲမှာ တုံ့ပြန်

အမေရိကန် နိုင်ငံခြားရေး ဝန်ကြီးသစ် Antony Blinken က သူ့ကို ရာထူး ရာထူး ခန့်အပ် ဖို့ အတည်ပြုရေး အ ထက်လွှတ်တော် ကြားနာ စစ်ဆေးပွဲမှာ ရိုဟင်ဂျာအရေးနဲ့ပတ်သက်ပြီး အခုလို တုံ့ပြန် ဖြေကြားခဲ့ပါတယ်။

Biden Administration to Probe Rohingya Genocide Claim

THE I DIPLOMAT

Sebastian Strangio
January 21, 2021

What would it mean for the U.S. government to officially declare the Myanmar atrocities “genocide”?

The incoming Biden administration is reportedly planning to launch an interagency review to determine whether Myanmar’s fierce persecution of its Muslim Rohingya minority amounts to genocide. The plan was revealed by incoming Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this week, during which he said that if confirmed, he would oversee the review process.

The review would examine events that have taken place since August 2017, when the Myanmar army, or Tatmadaw, launched a brutal “clearance operation” in Rakhine State in the west of the country. Justified as a response to scattered attacks by Rohingya militants, the offensive saw soldiers and vigilantes torch villages, shoot civilians, and drive an estimated 750,000 desperate people over the border into Bangladesh.

There is compelling case to be made that the actions of the Myanmar military amount to genocide, as defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines the crime as an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” The United Nations’ human rights chief has previously described the military’s actions as possible “acts of genocide,” while formal charges of genocide were later brought against Myanmar by The Gambia in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. In January 2020, the ICJ declared that there was prima facie evidence of breaches of the Genocide Convention, warning that the estimated 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar were “extremely vulnerable” to attacks by the military.

Biden to review whether Rohingya persecution genocide

AA

Michael Gabriel Hernandez 

WASHINGTON 

20.01.2021 

Incoming president's pick to lead State Department says he would oversee process should he be confirmed by Senate 

Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden's nominee to lead the State Department 

 

The incoming Biden administration will launch an interagency review to determine whether Myanmar's persecution of its Rohingya minority amounts to genocide, President-elect Joe Biden's nominee to lead the State Department said Tuesday.

Antony Blinken said during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that if confirmed, he would oversee the process.

British Banks Tied to A Military Accused of Genocide

BYLINE TIMES 

 Steve Shaw
24 December 2020

Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Archive/PA Images

Steve Shaw reports on the loans that connect British banks to a telecommunications firm that provides money for Myanmar’s military, which has been accused of genocide

Standard Chartered and HSBC have provided tens of millions in loans to Viettel Global Investment, a defence company owned by the Vietnamese Government and the biggest investor in Mytel, a telecommunications firm part-owned by Myanmar’s military. Along with being the biggest shareholder in Mytel, Viettel is authorised to provide Myanmar with “defence and security products”.