Myanmar Leaders Could Face Genocide Charges against Muslims: UN

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein told the BBC that attacks on the Rohingya had been “well thought out and planned” and he had asked Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to do more to stop the military atrocities.

Zeid has already called the campaign “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and asked rhetorically if anyone could rule out “elements of genocide”, but his latest remarks put the case plainly, toughening his stance.

“The elements suggest you cannot rule out the possibility that acts of genocide have been committed,” he said, according to excerpts of his interview.

“It’s very hard to establish because the thresholds are high,” he said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me in the future if the court were to make such a finding on the basis of what we see.”

Zeid said Myanmar’s “flippant” response to the serious concerns of the international community made him fear the current crisis “could just be the opening phases of something much worse”.

He did not say, in the excerpts provided, which court could prosecute suspected atrocities. Myanmar is not a member of the International Criminal Court, so referral to that court could be done only by the UN Security Council.

The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in contexts including Bosnia, Sudan and an Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria.

Almost 870,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh, including about 660,000 who arrived after Aug. 25, when the Myanmar army started a new round of violence against this minority group. Last week, Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF said that at least 6,700 members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority group were killed in ongoing state-sponsored ethnic only in a period of one month beginning on August 25.

UN investigators have heard Rohingya testimony of a “consistent, methodical pattern of killings, torture, rape and arson”.