One year ago, a terrible human rights crisis erupted in Myanmar. The Myanmar military embarked on a vicious and systematic campaign against the ethnic Rohingya in Rakhine state, burning villages to the ground and killing thousands of civilians, including men, women and children.
In the past year, Amnesty International has documented extensively this relentless campaign of ethnic cleansing, and the squalid camps on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border where more than 900,000 Rohingya who managed to escape are now housed.
The Myanmar military assaulted civilians, including children, shooting and killing them as they fled in horror. They laid landmines along the path to safety. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been killed with their homes destroyed and women sexually assaulted. The United Nations called this crisis “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
It’s time for United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to move for an international mechanism that will pave the way for bringing the perpetrators of these crimes to justice. Ask your Member of Congress to push for an investigation of crimes against the Rohingya now.
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Since the outbreak of violence in August, the Myanmar authorities have refused to grant access to northern Rakhine State to Amnesty International and other independent investigators, which has made it incredibly difficult to access those communities affected by ARSA and to corroborate witness accounts. Despite the restrictions, Amnesty International has now determined that ARSA fighters are responsible for the unlawful killing and abduction of members of the Hindu community in northern Rakhine State. These are serious crimes and abuses of human rights. They should be investigated by a competent body, and where sufficient, admissible evidence is found, those responsible should be held to account before independent civilian courts, in trials which meet international standards of fairness and which do not impose the death penalty.