Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to make the long-awaited designation at an event at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday
Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to make the long-awaited designation at an event at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday
US officials said on Sunday that the Biden administration intends to declare that Myanmar’s years of repression of the Rohingya Muslim population is a “genocide”.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to make the long-awaited designation at an event at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday, according to officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the move has yet to be publicly announced. was not done.
The designation itself does not portend drastic new measures against Myanmar’s military-led government, which has already faced several layers of US sanctions since the launch of a campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority in the country’s western Rakhine state in 2017. is affected by.
But that could put additional international pressure on the government, which already faces genocide charges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Human rights groups and lawmakers are pressuring both the Trump and Biden administrations to create the designation.
At least one member of Congress, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkle of Oregon, welcomed the anticipated move.
“I commend the Biden administration for recognizing the atrocities committed against the Rohingya as genocide,” he said in a statement issued shortly after the State Department’s announcement that Blinken would comment on Myanmar at the Holocaust Museum on Monday and that a The exhibition is titled “Burma’s Way to Genocide.” Myanmar is also known as Burma.
“While this determination is long overdue, it is still a powerful and critically important step in the light of this brutal regime,” Merkle said. “Such procedures should always be carried out fairly, consistently and in a way that goes beyond geopolitical considerations.” Merkle urged the administration to pressurize Myanmar by imposing additional sanctions on the government to contain its oil and gas fields. Called to continue. “America must lead the world in making it clear that atrocities like this will never be allowed to go unnoticed, no matter where they occur,” he said.
More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh since August 2017, when Myanmar’s military launched an evacuation operation in response to attacks by a rebel group. Myanmar’s security forces have been accused of gang rape, murders and burning of thousands of homes. (AP) AIIMS AIIMS