U.S. declares attacks on Burmese Rohingya Muslims as ‘ethnic cleansing’

By Brian Murphy and Max Bearak 

The Washington Post

November 22, 2017

The United States sharply escalated pressure on Burmese officials Wednesday, describing apparent state-backed violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority and their massive refu­gee flight as “ethnic cleansing.”

The statement by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signals a greater push by the Trump administration to possibly impose targeted sanctions against Burmese authorities and others blamed for the humanitarian crisis. But it does not automatically trigger broader action against Burma, also known as Myanmar.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled from Burma’s western Rakhine state to neighboring Bangladesh, creating one of the world’s most dire refu­gee dilemmas.

“No provocation can justify the horrendous atrocities that have ensued,” said Tillerson, who cited Burmese forces and “local vigilantes” as responsible.

Last week, following talks with Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Tillerson cited “credible reports” of atrocities committed by Burma’s security forces and said Washington could consider pinpoint sanctions against some Burmese officials.

Authorities in Burma deny accusations of a systematic offensive against the Rohingya and claim the military intervened in Rakhine to battle Muslim insurgents in the mostly Buddhist nation.

On Aug. 25, militants belonging to the extremist group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked outposts of Burmese security forces. According to human rights groups, those forces responded with a brutal and indiscriminate crackdown on Rohingya communities, drawing in local Buddhist mobs as they went.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, as well as many who remain in Burma, have provided chilling testimony of the campaign, which they say was accompanied by widespread arson, rape, and summary executions.

An exact death toll is unknown, and most aid groups and journalists have been prevented from traveling freely to the affected areas. Satellite imagery shows hundreds of Rohingya villages reduced to ashes.

A spokeswoman at the State Department said the decision to employ the term ethnic cleansing was the result of a long, deliberative process, but also said that international definitions of the term are varied and using it carries no imperative to act.

The term “ethnic cleansing” is largely descriptive, as opposed to “genocide,” which carries legal weight.

“Congress has at various points referred to ethnic cleansing but it doesn’t have clear implications for U.S. law,” said David Bosco, an associate professor in Indiana University’s School of Global and International Studies and author of a number of books on international law.

As such, the labeling is distinct from the Bush administration’s 2005 decision to label the killings in Darfur, then a region of Sudan, a genocide. In either case, however, the legal implication was unclear and there were no automatic policy responses mandated by law.

“Ultimately these things come down to the politics of it,” Bosco said. Even if the United States did declare a genocide in Burma, “it’s really just a question of whether that helps generate pressure for action,” he added.

Matthew Smith, co-founder of Fortify Rights, a human rights organization working in Burma, said Tillerson’s statement was nevertheless a significant step toward holding Burmese officials accountable.

“The civilian and military authorities are aligned in their outright denials and crude whitewashing,” said Smith. “Ethnic cleansing is as reprehensible as genocide and crimes against humanity.”

Not lost on Rohingya commentators was the symbolic significance of Tillerson’s statement coinciding with the International Criminal Court’s sentencing of former Bosnia Serb commander Ratko Mladic, convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.

“The U.S. government should find more facts to declare the persecution against Rohingya is genocide,” said Ro Nay San Lwin, a prominent Rohingya blogger and activist based in Europe. “Myanmar’s military commanders must be punished as Ratko Mladic was.”

The United States sharply escalated its pressure on Burma officials on Wednesday over widening attacks on the country’s Muslim minority, describing the violence and massive refu­gee flight as “ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya Muslims.

The statement by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could signal a greater push by the Trump administration to impose wider sanctions against Burmese authorities and others blamed for the humanitarian crisis.

More than 600,000 Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine State have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, creating one of the world’s most dire refu­gee dilemmas.

“No provocation can justify the horrendous atrocities that have ensued,” said Tillerson, who cited Burmese forces and “local vigilantes” for the campaign against the Rohingya.

Last week, following talks with Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Tillerson cited “credible reports” of atrocities committed by Burma’s security forces and said Washington could consider targeted sanctions against Burmese officials.

Officials in Burma, a mostly Buddhist nation also known as Myanmar, deny accusations of a systematic offensive against the Rohingya and claim the military intervened in Rakhine to battle Muslim insurgents.

Adam Taylor and Carol Morello contributed to this report.