Editorial: Junta Commits Yet Another Genocide With Impunity in Arakan

By Admin 17 Jun 2024

Human rights violations and massacres are everywhere in Myanmar since the country was plunged into civil war more than three years ago with the military takeover in February 2021. Every day, civilians are killed and civilian property is destroyed in both indiscriminate and calculated attacks by the regime.
 
In Arakan State, which has been hit hardest by the regime’s war crimes in recent months, the junta is violating the 1948 Genocide Convention.
 
The Myanmar military is facing trial at the International Court of Justice for genocide against the Muslim people internationally known as Rohingya during its area clearance operations in 2016-17 in northern Arakan State.
 
The regime is committing yet another genocide during the latest fighting in Arakan State, with local ethnic populations including Arakanese people becoming victims of the junta’s racial prejudice. Many residents have been killed by junta artillery strikes and aerial bombings, or in raids on the ground.
 
The massacre in Sittwe Township’s Byaing Phyu Village on May 29 is testament to the junta’s intent to commit ethnic cleansing against ethnic Arakanese people. Nearly 80 people were slaughtered in Byaing Phyu Village. Young and middle-aged men who had tattoos of Arakanese characteristics such as images of osprey birds and Byar La (a mythical creature) and the word “Arakan” were targeted. Women were raped and brutally killed.
 
The regime has targeted civilian populations with indiscriminate bombing raids and bombardment in the conflict, inflicting countless civilian casualties and damaging and destroying numerous houses, religious buildings, hospitals and markets. For many Arakan State residents, the emotional trauma they are going through is far worse than their physical pains.
 
The genocide convention defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
 
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
 
The regime has violated the first three provisions.
 
Myanmar ratified the Genocide Convention in 1956. The most recent iteration of military dictators to rule the country, however, are blatantly violating the terms of that convention under the thinnest of wartime covers as conflict rages in Arakan State.
 
It is time for the international community, including all other countries that have ratified the genocide convention, to act to stop Min Aung Hlaing and his regime from continuing their human rights violations and genocide in Arakan State, and to ultimately bring them to justice.