Rohingya people are seen near a makeshift house in Maungdaw, Rakhine State in western Myanmar. According to the United Nations, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar since the army launched a military offensive in August 2017. File Photo by Nyunt Win/EPA-EFE
March 21 (UPI) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to announce on Monday the United States has determined that the Myanmar military committed genocide and crimes against humanity against its minority Rohingya population in 2017.
CNN, NPR and The New York Times reported that sources said the announcement will be part of comments Blinken will make early Monday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
The State Department said in a statement that Blinken will visit to the museum and “deliver remarks” on Myanmar.
Experts have long called on the U.S. government to make the designation to put more pressure on Myanmar’s military government, which overthrew the civilian regime a year ago in a coup. The junta government is already facing accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands.
Camps for Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are seen in UKhiya, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on February 12, 2018. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar since the beginning of what many call a genocide began in 2017. File Photo by Abir Abdullah/EPA-EFE
“The U.S. genocide declaration is a welcome and profoundly meaningful step,” Daniel Sullivan, Refugees International deputy director for Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, said in a statement. “It is also a solid sign of commitment to justice for all the people who continue to face abuses by the military junta to this very today.
“The United States must now use the momentum of this genocide determination to spur concrete actions.”
“I’ll never forget the painful stories I heard in 2017 from members of the Rohingya community in Burma and Bangladesh — stories of violence and crimes against humanity,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said in a tweet.
“Good to see the [administration] take this overdue step to hold this brutal regime accountable, which I’ve pushed for years.”
In a 2018 State Department report, U.S. officials said that military actions in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State against the Muslim population was “extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents.”
