The US Documents Systematic Violence Against Myanmar Rohingyas

On Monday, September 24, 2018, The US said it has found evidence of systematic violence by Myanmar's military against the Rohingya minority, which includes widespread killings and rape.

The State Department of the US released the report just as the US announced USD 185 million in new funding for Rohingya refugees in Myanmar, during a meeting at the United Nations.

The State Department study, based on interviews in April 2018 with 1,024 Rohingya adults who have taken refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh, provided accounts consistent with reports from human rights groups but kept largely to dispassionate descriptions of events.

The report notably did not use the terms genocide or ethnic cleansing to describe the mass killings of the Rohingya. The Rohingyas are a group which consists of Muslim majority, They were previously concentrated in the Rakhine State of Myanmar which was despised by Buddhist-majority of Myanmar. The Myanmar Government did not give them citizenship rights. 

READ: Rohingya Crisis: ''UN Has 'No Right To Interfere'' Says Myanmar Army Chief Min Aung Hlaing

The report by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research stated;

"The survey reveals that the recent violence in the northern Rakhine state was extreme, large-scale, widespread and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents".

"The scope and scale of the military's operations indicate they were well-planned and coordinated," The report stated

"In some areas, perpetrators used tactics that resulted in mass casualties, for example, locking people in houses to burn them, fencing off entire villages before shooting into the crowd or sinking boats full of hundreds of fleeing Rohingya."

The report also stated that 82 percent of the interviewed refugees personally witnessed killings, with 51 percent also reporting sexual violence.

The State Department said witnesses hailing from multiple villages reported similar rapes, in which military men would force all the women to leave their homes.

"They would then choose a smaller number of women -- often four or five, but some refugees reported up to 20 -- whom as many as 15 soldiers would then take to fields, forests, houses, schools, mosques or latrines to gang rape," it said.

"Many victims were reportedly killed afterward, though not in all cases," it said, adding that soldiers in some cases would go door to door to find the "prettiest girls" to gang-rape.

In an overwhelming 88 percent of cases, the witnesses said the military was behind the atrocities. Few said they saw attacks against them by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the Islamic militant group whose assaults on military posts in October 2016 triggered the crackdown.

The violence in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was unleashed soon after the country transitioned to democracy, undermining what Western governments had hailed as a triumph of engagement.

The campaign against the Rohingya has especially tarnished the reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi, the long-detained democracy advocate and Nobel laureate who has been reticent in addressing the violence.

READ: Indian Citizens Come First For Us, Will Deport Illegal Rohingyas: MHA

More than 7,00,000 Rohingya took refuge in Bangladesh, fearful of returning to Myanmar despite a repatriation deal between the two countries.

Meanwhile, Britain hosted a meeting of about a dozen foreign ministers that was also attended by Myanmar's state counselor Kyaw Tint Swe and International Cooperation Minister Kyaw Tin, although Suu Kyi did not come to New York.

Fresh from a visit to Myanmar, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned that military leaders must answer for any atrocities committed against the Rohingya, a foreign office spokesperson said.

"If, in a year's time, we have not made a meaningful difference to the lives of the million or more people affected, then we have failed as an international community," Hunt told the closed meeting, according to the spokesperson.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley announced the USD 185 million for food, water, health care and other critical aid to the refugees, even as the US dramatically scales back its admission of refugees.