Myanmar Junta Hits Back at U.S.’s Rohingya Genocide Declaration

Bloomberg
Khine Lin Kyaw
22 March 2022,

• Foreign Ministry says ‘never engaged in any genocidal actions’
• Shadow government urges U.S. to refer situation to ICC

Rohingya refugees wait for food distribution at the refugee camp of Balukhali in Bangladesh in Sept. 2017.Photographer: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images

Myanmar’s military government on Tuesday rejected U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s declaration that the Min Aung Hlaing-led military committed genocide against the Rohingya minority in 2016 and 2017.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement that “Myanmar has never engaged in any genocidal actions” and harbors no “genocidal intent” for any group. Blinken’s remarks were “politically motivated and tantamount to interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”

The US Says Myanmar Committed Genocide in Assaults on Rohingya

THE I DIPLOMAT
Sebastian Strangio
March 21, 2022

The declaration is long overdue, but accountability for Myanmar’s military remains a long way off.

Yesterday, Reuters published an exclusive report claiming that the United States is intending to declare that Myanmar’s brutal treatment of the Rohingya Muslim population is a “genocide.” According to the article, which cited Biden administration officials with knowledge of the matter, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will make the long-anticipated designation today at an event at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where there is currently an exhibit detailing the plight of the Rohingya.

 

Blinken declares Myanmar's military committed genocide against Rohingya

CNN  

Jennifer Hansler,
March 21, 2022

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a press conference in Brussels, on March 4, 2022.

Washington (CNN)US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Monday he has determined that the military of Myanmar committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the country's minority Rohingya population in 2016 and 2017.

 
The formal declaration, announced at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, is a significant step and comes after the Trump administration declined to classify the atrocities -- including mass killings, rape, and torture -- as genocide or crimes against humanity. 

 

US Declares Myanmar’s 2017 Atrocities Against Rohingya A ‘Genocide’

BenarNews

March 22, 2022
By Shailaja Neelakantan

Displaced Rohingya in Myanmar. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

The United States has declared as a genocide the Myanmar military’s 2017 deadly crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority that killed thousands and forced an exodus to neighboring Bangladesh, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Monday.

Human rights activists welcomed the move as overdue and essential for stepping up pressure on the military, and making it accountable for crimes against humanity. According to American investigators, the military was responsible for atrocities including mass killings, gang rapes, mutilations, crucifixions, and the burning and drowning of children.

Facebook failed to detect calls for violence against Rohingya after it played role in genocide, report finds

Morning Star
Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Rohingya Muslim children who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, wait squashed against each other to receive food handouts distributed to children and women by a Turkish aid agency at Thaingkhali refugee camp, Bangladesh, Saturday, October 21, 2017

FACEBOOK failed to detect dangerous hate speech and calls to violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya people, years after such posts were found to have played a determining role in the genocide against the Muslim minority, a report has found.

Reports: US to declare Myanmar’s 2017 atrocities against Rohingya a ‘genocide’

RFA

By Shailaja Neelakantan for BenarNews
2022.03.20

The move will bring greater scrutiny on the Myanmar military, says a Rohingya activist.

Ten Rohingya men with their hands bound kneel as members of the Myanmar security forces stand guard in Inn Din village of Rakhine State, Myanmar, Sept. 2, 2017.

The United States is set on Monday to declare as a genocide the Myanmar military’s 2017 deadly crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority that killed thousands and forced an exodus to neighboring Bangladesh, news agencies reported.

Human rights activists and a U.S. lawmaker Sunday welcomed the move as overdue and essential for stepping up pressure on the military, and making it accountable for crimes against humanity. According to U.S. investigators, the military was responsible for atrocities including mass killings, gang rapes, mutilations, crucifixions, and the burning and drowning of children.

Why America Just Said Myanmar Carried Out a Genocide

The Atlantic

By Timothy McLaughlin

America finally used the word human rights activists had long argued applied to the campaign against Rohingya Muslims.

Four years ago, the State Department began an investigation into the Myanmar military’s brutal operation against the country’s Rohingya Muslims the prior year, which had resulted in scores of deaths and hundreds of thousands of Rohingya being pushed into Bangladesh. The report, spanning thousands of pages, was finalized when Mike Pompeo was still Secretary of State, and he ultimately opted to call the armed forces’ actions “ethnic cleansing,” a descriptive term not defined by international law.

Myanmar Rohingya violence is genocide, US to say Published

 B B C

2022-03-21

Rohingya Muslims are continuing to flee Myanmar

The Biden administration is to declare that Myanmar's military has committed genocide against the Rohingya minority, US officials have said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to make the announcement when he visits the Holocaust Museum in Washington later on Monday.


Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar since the military crackdown that began in 2017.

More than 6,000 people were killed in the first month of the onslaught.

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.

More than 100 Rohingya land on beach in Indonesia's Aceh

The Washinton Post
By Yayan Zamzami | AP
March 6, 2022

Ethnic Rohingya people rest at a temporary shelter in Bireuen, Aceh province, Indonesia, Sunday, March 6, 2022. More than 100 hungry and weak Rohingya Muslims were found on a beach in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh on Sunday after weeks at sea, officials said. (AP Photo/Zik Maulana)

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — More than 100 hungry and weak Rohingya Muslims were found on a beach in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh on Sunday after weeks at sea, officials said.

The group arrived on Jangka beach near Alue Buya Pasi, a fishing village in Bireuen district, early Sunday. The villagers who saw the 114 ethnic Rohingya on a rickety wooden boat helped them to land and then reported their arrival to authorities, said Badruddin Yunus, the leader of the local tribal fishing community.

ICC Prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan QC, concludes first visit to Bangladesh, underlines commitment to advance investigations into alleged atrocity crimes against the Rohingya

International Crime Court
Press Release 
1 March 2022

On Sunday, 27 February 2022, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court ("ICC" or "the Court"), Mr Karim A. A. Khan QC, concluded a five-day visit to Dhaka and Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. This represented the first visit by the Prosecutor of the Court to Bangladesh.

Sheltering Rohingyas should not be lead to instability in South Asia: Japanese envoy

The Daily Star
Star Digital Report

Mon Feb 28, 2022

 Displacement and poverty are the inevitable results of wars and internal conflicts, and the Rohingyas are a prime example of that. File Photo: Reuters

The world should not allow the one million Rohingyas sheltered in Bangladesh to be the cause of instability in the region, said Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ito Naoki today.

He also urged all to join hands for a sustainable solution to the crisis.

"We should work for creating an enabling environment in Rakhine state of Myanmar for early repatriation," he said at the inaugural of a seminar today.

Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) and Japanese Embassy in Dhaka co-organised the event titled "Geopolitics of Indo-Pacific and Reconnecting the Bay of Bengal Littorals" at BIISS auditorium.

Addressing healthcare needs of Rohingya in Bangladesh

Financial Express
Hasnat M Alamgir
Published: March 02, 2022 

Refugee populations represent one of the most marginalised groups in whichever host country they come to settle and this is clearly the case with Rohingya population, a majority of whom are now living in Bangladesh. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defined a refugee as someone who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country".At the end of 2020, there were more than 82 million forcibly displaced people worldwide as a consequence of violence, oppression, war/conflict, human rights abuses and serious public order-disturbing events.

 

Rohingya Optimistic over International Prosecutor’s Trip to Bangladesh Refugee Camps

Benar News

Kamran Reza Chowdhury and Sunil Barua

Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
2022-02-28

Rohingya walk along a dirt path inside the Ukhia camp in Cox’s Bazar, Feb. 15, 2022.
Sunil Barua/BenarNews

Rohingya leaders in Bangladesh expressed optimism on Monday about getting justice for alleged crimes against humanity committed in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor wrapped up his first visit to refugee camps.

Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said The Hague-based ICC had authorized an investigation in November 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic had slowed efforts to visit Bangladesh to gather evidence at Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern district along the border with Myanmar.

ICJ begins oral arguments in Myanmar genocide case

JURIST
Pooja Mehta | Gujarat National Law U., IN
February 22, 2022 09:52:30 am

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) Monday began hearing oral arguments in a case to determine whether Myanmar has violated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention).

The Gambia filed an application instituting proceedings against Myanmar concerning alleged violations of the Genocide Convention on November 11, 2019. The Gambia also filed an application for the indication of provisional measures. In the proceedings that ensued, the court granted certain provisional measures. Myanmar then made preliminary objections to the court’s jurisdiction and the admissibility of the Application.

Rohingyas at ICJ

The Statesman
Statesman News Service | Kolkata | February 23, 2022 1:32 am

While the court is yet to respond to the nature of Myanmar’s representation at the hearings, “there is little doubt that if it is the junta that is in court, this is not something that should be taken to confer legitimacy on the junta this is not something that should be taken to confer legitimacy on the junta,” is the reaction of the Global Justice Centre.

representational image /Myanmar (iStock photo) 

 

It is early days and therefore presumptuous to aver that there may be hope yet for the Rohingyas in what has come to be known as the genocide case. Gambia, a tiny country in Africa, has come to the rescue of the persecuted segment from Myanmar. It has acted on behalf of the organisation of Muslim nations that have accused Myanmar of genocide in course of its crackdown on Rohingyas.

Is ICJ genocide case legitimising junta?

The Bangkok Post

Published : 23 Feb 2022 at 04:00

Following the military-led "clearance operation" that forced 750,000 Rohingya to flee neighbouring Bangladesh, the West African nation of Gambia brought a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in November 2019 accusing Myanmar of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Secondary photo File photo dated Dec 11, 2019 shows then Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi defends Myanmar government on the alleged genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya population, at ICJ, The Hague, the Netherlands. The Myanmar junta recently appointed replacement as Suu Kyi, has been jailed since Feb 2021's coup.

In response to the court's unanimously indicated and legally binding provisional measures to protect the Rohingya from further atrocities, Myanmar's then-civilian government filed a preliminary objection to the jurisdiction of the court and the admissibility of the application in January 2021.

 

ICJ တွင် စစ်ကောင်စီကို ခုခံခွင့်ပေးခြင်းက အစဉ်အလာ ဆိုးကို ဖြစ်စေနိုင်

ဧရာဝတီ

Parvej Siddique Bhuiyan
20 February 2022

၂၀၁၉ ဒီဇင်ဘာတွင် ICJ တရားရုံးတွင် ပြုလုပ်ကြားနာသော ဂမ်ဘီယာ-မြန်မာအမှု / CJ

ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၇၅၀,၀၀၀ ကျော်ကို အိမ်နီးချင်း ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံသို့ ထွက်ပြေးစေသည့် ၂၀၁၇ ခုနှစ်က မြန်မာစစ်တပ်၏ နယ်မြေရှင်းလင်းမှု စစ်ဆင်ရေးအပြီး ၂၀၁၉ ခုနှစ် နိုဝင်ဘာလတွင် အနောက် အာဖရိက နိုင်ငံတခုဖြစ်သော ဂမ်ဘီယာက ထိုအမှုကို နိုင်ငံတကာ တရားရုံး (ICJ) တွင် စွဲဆိုကာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် ၁၉၄၈ ခုနှစ် လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုဆိုင်ရာ နိုင်ငံတကာ သဘောတူစာချုပ်ကို ချိုးဖေါက်ကြောင်း စွပ်စွဲသည်။

Myanmar Junta Asks UN's Top Court to Drop Rohingya Genocide Case at Hearing in The Hague

Irrawaddy
By AFP 22 February 2022

The junta’s delegation defends Myanmar in the genocide case at a public hearings at the ICJ on Feb. 21, 2022. / ICJ

Myanmar hit out Monday at a genocide case brought against it by Gambia for alleged persecution of Rohingya Muslims, urging the UN’s highest court to drop the claim on legal grounds.

Gambia dragged Myanmar before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019, accusing the predominantly Buddhist country of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority after a bloody 2017 military crackdown.

ရိုဟင်ဂျာစခန်းတွင် ဆယ်ကျော်သက် နှစ်ဦး ပစ်သတ်ခံရ

UKIYA NEWS
Ukhia (Cox's Bazar) Representative
Published: Monday, February 21, 2022, 3:36 p.m.

  Ukhia ရှိ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ စခန်းတစ်ခုတွင် ယာဘ ဖြန့်ဖြူးမှု ဖြစ်စဉ်ကို တွေ့မြင်ရပြီးနောက် ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ဆယ်ကျော် သက် နှစ်ဦးကို အကြမ်းဖက် သမားများက ပစ်သတ်ခဲ့သည်။ ပြင်းထန်သော ဒဏ်ရာများဖြင့် ဆယ်ကျော်သက် နှစ်ဦးအား ကော့ဘဇားခရိုင် ဆာဒါဆေးရုံသို့ ပို့ဆောင်ထားသည်။ ဒီအဖြစ်အပျက်ဟာ Ukhia မှာရှိတဲ့ Kutupalong 1 / East Lambasia ရိုဟင်ဂျာစခန်းမှာ တနင်္ဂနွေနေ့ ညနေ ၄ နာရီ ၃၀ လောက်က ဖြစ်ခဲ့တာပါ။