UNITED NATIONS: Amnesty International released a report Wednesday that details new evidence of atrocities inflicted on Myanmar’s Rohingya population and names 13 top military commanders the human rights group says should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
The report is titled “We Will Destroy Everything.” Amnesty said those words, spoken by a military commander in a recording of a telephone call obtained by the group’s investigators, sum up the mindset of Myanmar soldiers in dealing with the Muslim Rohingya.
About 700,000 Rohingya have fled into neighboring Bangladesh since last August to escape what United Nations and US officials have called an “ethnic cleansing” campaign by Myanmar’s government.
Amnesty said its investigative team spent nine months gathering evidence of the brutal treatment of Rohingya in a crackdown that began in August after a radical Rohingya group attacked Myanmar security force posts in the country’s western Rakhine state.
The report said the Amnesty team interviewed hundreds of victims and collected harrowing new evidence of the murderous methods used to drive the Rohingya out of Myanmar. Photographs and video clips, as well as expert forensic and weapons analysis, were used to bolster information.
Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay was not available for comment Wednesday morning, with calls to his cellphone not going through.
Amnesty said its evidence implicates Myanmar’s military commander in chief, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, and 12 others in the commission of nine out of 11 types of crimes against humanity listed in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It says those 12 — nine of the general’s subordinates and three border guard police officers — are “those with blood on their hands.” It urged that they be put on trial by the international court.
“The explosion of violence — including murder, rape, torture, burning and forced starvation — perpetrated by Myanmar’s security forces in villages across northern Rakhine State was not the action of rogue soldiers or units,” Matthew Wells, an Amnesty crisis researcher who spent weeks at Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh, said in the report. “There is a mountain of evidence that this was part of a highly orchestrated, systematic attack on the Rohingya population.”
Myanmar’s senior command deployed fighting battalions with a reputation of being the military’s most brutal units, Amnesty said.
Wells said several hundred Rohingya villages were burned down and people were tortured, raped and starved. Some men and boys were hanged upside down and then beaten to death. He said homes for other ethnic groups in Myanmar are now being built in the decimated villages, some of which lie under new roads.
Soldiers used systematic rape of women and girls as a war weapon in at least 16 villages, according to Amnesty, which interviewed 11 who were gang-raped. The group said satellite images it obtained show fires set to consume entire villages, with people burning inside their homes.
The report said massacres took the lives of thousands who were bound and executed or fatally shot while fleeing. The military especially targeted the elderly and children, it said.
The 200-page report also provides detailed information on the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, the armed Rohingya group whose attacks set off the crackdown by Myanmar. It said that fighters who were detained were often tortured for information, using waterboarding or having their genitals burned.
One farmer told Amnesty he was standing with his hands tied behind his head when a border police guard pulled down his sarong-like garment “and put a candle under my penis.” The soldier’s superior ordered the farmer to “tell the truth or you will die.”
Wells expressed “extreme disappointment” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s Nobel Prize-winning de facto political leader, who does not have direct control of the military.
“Her office failed to speak out against the crimes that have been committed,” Wells said, adding that her aides “often inflamed the situation further by repeatedly denying that any crimes have taken place.”
Amnesty Intl urges trials for Myanmar military over Rohingya
Amnesty Intl urges trials for Myanmar military over Rohingya
- About 700,000 Rohingya have fled into neighboring Bangladesh since last August to escape what United Nations and US officials have called an “ethnic cleansing” campaign by Myanmar’s government
- The report said the Amnesty team interviewed hundreds of victims and collected harrowing new evidence of the murderous methods used to drive the Rohingya out of Myanmar
Trump to meet Venezuelan opposition leader Machado after praising its government
- Machado finds herself competing for Trump’s ear with members of Venezuela’s government
- The lunch marks the first time the two have met in person
WASHINGTON: Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado arrived at the White House for lunch with Donald Trump on Thursday, a meeting that could affect how the US president seeks to shape the South American country’s political future.
Machado, who fled Venezuela in a daring seaborne escape in December, finds herself competing for Trump’s ear with members of Venezuela’s government and seeking to ensure she has a role in governing the nation going forward.
The lunch marks the first time the two have met in person.
HOPES OF MOVE TO DEMOCRACY
After the US captured Venezuela’s longtime leader, Nicolas Maduro, in a snatch-and-grab operation this month, various opposition figures, members of Venezuela’s diaspora and politicians throughout the US and Latin America have expressed hope that Venezuela will begin the process of democratization.
But for now, Trump has said he is focused on economically rebuilding Venezuela and securing US access to the country’s oil. The day after the January 3 operation, he expressed doubts that Machado had the backing needed to return to the country and govern, telling reporters, “She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” Trump has on several occasions praised Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s interim president, telling Reuters in an interview on Wednesday, “She’s been very good to deal with.”
Machado was banned from running in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election by a top court stacked with government allies. Maduro claimed victory, but outside observers widely believe Edmundo Gonzalez, an opposition figure backed by Machado, in fact won more votes by a substantial margin. While the current government has freed dozens of political prisoners in recent days, outside groups and advocates have said the scale of the releases has been exaggerated by Caracas.
One potential topic of conversation for Thursday’s White House meeting will be the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to Machado last month, a snub to Trump, who has long sought the award. Machado has suggested she would give the prize to the US president for having deposed Maduro, though the Norwegian Nobel Institute has said the prize cannot be transferred, shared or revoked.
Asked if he wanted Machado to give him the prize, Trump told Reuters on Wednesday: “No, I didn’t say that. She won the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Pressed on what he would do if she brought the prize nonetheless, he responded: “Well, that’s what I’m hearing. I don’t know, but I shouldn’t be the one to say.”
“I think we’re just going to talk,” Trump told Reuters. “And I haven’t met her. She’s a very nice woman. I think we’re just going to talk basics.”
After her visit with Trump, Machado will meet with a bipartisan group of senior senators on Capitol Hill in the afternoon. The opposition leader has generally found more enthusiastic allies in Congress than in the White House, with some lawmakers having expressed concerns about Trump’s dismissals of her ability to govern.
