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The United States and the international community must formally declare the August 2017 genocide to help prevent further crimes by the Myanmar military.
Today is four years since the Myanmar military launched a violent campaign against the Rohingya (mainly the Muslim minority). Under the banner of “Purge Action”, Rohingya communities were attacked, Rohingya women were abused and raped, and men, women and children were mercilessly killed.
Soon after the brutal military operation against the Rohingya began, Human Rights Watch reported that at least 200 Rohingya villages were destroyed and burned by the army, and an estimated 13,000 Rohingya were killed.
Today, more than 890,000 Rohingya refugees have taken refuge in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh: the largest refugee camp in the world. Approximately 92,000 Rohingya refugees live in Thailand, 21,000 live in India, and 102,000 live in Malaysia. The Rohingya are also part of the 576,000 internally displaced persons (IDP) in Myanmar.
As we commemorate the fourth year since the events of August 2017, it is important to remember that the suffering of the Rohingya is not over yet. Due to forced displacement, the community continues to face various forms of violence and tragic deaths. Many people suffer under the terrible living conditions in refugee camps and camps for internally displaced persons, and some drown in order to escape and find shelter in other countries. Local authorities in the host country are sometimes responsible for the victims of Rohingya refugees. For example, Bangladesh moved tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char, a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, where camps were uninhabitable.
Although the US government paid certain attention to the military coup in Myanmar and condemned and sanctioned it, it did not take any measures to resolve the violence against the Rohingya. Despite clear and growing evidence of crime, the State Department has not declared human rights violations and mass atrocities against the Rohingya to be genocide.
It is worth noting that even before the violence in August 2017, the Rohingya suffered extreme forms of discrimination, especially when they were deprived of their citizenship under Myanmar’s Citizenship Law and separated from other civilians to create ” No room for Muslims. These targeted campaigns and systematic violence by the military led Gambia to file a lawsuit against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice. There is ample evidence that genocide is being carried out on the Rohingya, and the time when the United States named them this way has passed.
Now more than ever, it is necessary to declare genocide, as the Myanmar military suppresses civilian dissent amid the increasing death toll and continued atrocities against the country’s ethnic minorities. In August alone, the military shot and killed Chin civilians indiscriminately during the COVID-19 crisis, shelled villages in Shan State, and attacked clinics and health centers.
Refusal to attribute the Burmese military’s crimes to their actions allowed the regime to continue its violent activities across the country without interference.
A report published in 2002 by the Shan Human Rights Foundation and the Shan Women’s Action Network detailed the extent of military rape and sexual violence against women from 1996 to 2001. Since no serious international action was taken after these crimes, the same systemic abuse against Rohingya women occurred again in 2017.
The lack of serious international action by the military government against the crimes of the Rohingya will only make the military government more bold and aggravate the situation of all ethnic minorities. As we commemorate the fourth anniversary of the violence in August 2017, the US government must reflect on its failure to classify the Myanmar military’s crime as genocide and take action. The genocide declaration can prompt the international community to take action to help protect the rights of ethnic minorities in Myanmar and their democratic development.
As a refugee from Myanmar, I call on the international community and the United States to recognize the violence against the Rohingya as genocide. Although simply stating that crimes will not immediately bring peace and justice, acknowledging what happened four years ago is closer to holding the Burmese military accountable and stopping further human rights violations.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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