Sanctions on military commanders over Rohingya ‘ethnic cleansing’

[Hindustani78]

Sanctions military commanders over Rohingya ‘ethnic cleansing’

Commanders Aung Kyaw Zaw, Khin Maung Soe, Khin Hlaing, and Thura San Lwin were accused of leading violent campaigns against Rohingyas in Rakhine state.
Updated: Aug 17, 2018 23:38 IST

Government on Friday hit four military commanders and two military units with punitive sanctions, accusing them of “serious human rights abuses” and “ethnic cleansing” in violently expelling minority Rohingya from their homes.

Military and border guard commanders Aung Kyaw Zaw, Khin Maung Soe, Khin Hlaing, and Thura San Lwin were accused of leading violent campaigns against the Rohingya in Rakhine state.

Aung Kyaw Zaw was singled out for having presided over the operations that drove some 700,000 Rohingya from their homes in Rakhine state, in southwest Myanmar, and into neighbouring Bangladesh since 2016.

The campaign has been marked by numerous extrajudicial killings, rape and burning of villages by security forces.

Khin Maung Soe was in charge of a command which participated in a massacre of Rohingya on August 27, 2017 in Maung Nu, where soldiers “reportedly beat, sexually assaulted and summarily executed or otherwise killed dozens of Rohingya villagers”.

Thura San Lwin was the leader of the Border Guard Police, allegedly responsible for extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and assault .

The two military units also sanctioned for involvement in those abuses were the 33rd Light Infantry Division, which participated in Rohingya abuses, and the 99th Light Infantry Division, which was led by Khin Hlaing.

“There must be justice for the victims and those who work to uncover these atrocities, with those responsible held to account for these abhorrent crimes,”.

“We will continue to systematically expose and bring accountability to human rights abusers in this region and many others and greatly appreciate the efforts of civil society who are doing the same.”

Myanmar sacks top general involved in Rakhine crackdown

 

[Hindustani78]

https://www.thehindu.com/news/inter...-in-rakhine/article24746391.ece?homepage=true
Singapore, August 21, 2018 21:09 IST
Updated: August 21, 2018 21:09 IST

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday defended her government’s actions in Rakhine State, where about 7,00,000 Rohingya Muslims fled from a brutal counterinsurgency campaign to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Ms. Suu Kyi said terrorism, not social discrimination or inequality, triggered the crisis. She made the comments in a lecture in Singapore in which she reviewed her two years in power.

“We who are living through the transition in Myanmar view it differently than those who observe it from the outside and who will remain untouched by its outcome,” she said.

Ms. Suu Kyi said it was difficult to say when the Rohingya who fled will be able to return to Rakhine State because her nation needs the cooperation of Bangladesh.

She said Myanmar has mapped out general sites for the resettlement of returning Rohingya, but the timing of the repatriation also depends on Bangladesh.

 

[Tshering22]

https://www.thehindu.com/news/inter...-in-rakhine/article24746391.ece?homepage=true
Singapore, August 21, 2018 21:09 IST
Updated: August 21, 2018 21:09 IST

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday defended her government’s actions in Rakhine State, where about 7,00,000 Rohingya Muslims fled from a brutal counterinsurgency campaign to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Ms. Suu Kyi said terrorism, not social discrimination or inequality, triggered the crisis. She made the comments in a lecture in Singapore in which she reviewed her two years in power.

“We who are living through the transition in Myanmar view it differently than those who observe it from the outside and who will remain untouched by its outcome,” she said.

Ms. Suu Kyi said it was difficult to say when the Rohingya who fled will be able to return to Rakhine State because her nation needs the cooperation of Bangladesh.

She said Myanmar has mapped out general sites for the resettlement of returning Rohingya, but the timing of the repatriation also depends on Bangladesh.

This isn't a pogrom the way it is being reported as. There are some violations for sure but terrorists hiding among common people with their support is definitely not innocent. US and its lackey UK hace a habit of portraying everyone as the evil guys. Who cares about what they say?

Myanmar is doing what is necessary for its security.

 

[Hindustani78]

This isn't a pogrom the way it is being reported as. There are some violations for sure but terrorists hiding among common people with their support is definitely not innocent. US and its lackey UK hace a habit of portraying everyone as the evil guys. Who cares about what they say?

Myanmar is doing what is necessary for its security.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/world/asia/kofi-annan-myanmar-rohingya.html
Dec. 6, 2016
Kofi Annan, the former head of the United Nations, said in Myanmar on Tuesday that he was “deeply concerned” by reports of human rights abuses in the country’s restive Rakhine State

Mr. Annan, who leads a commission that was formed in August to study conditions in Rakhine, spoke to reporters at the end of a weeklong visit to Myanmar, which included a trip to the northern areas of northern Rakhine where the army has been conducting a counterinsurgency campaign. Activists have relayed stories of rapes, arson, targeted killings and other atrocities said to have been committed against the Rohingya there by the army since Oct. 9

Mr. Annan’s commission was formed with backing from Myanmar’s de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, weeks before the military crackdown began in October.

But the panel has faced criticism from multiple directions. Some rights groups have accused it of playing down the Rohingya’s plight, while some critics in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, say it has advocated for the Rohingya at the expense of Rakhine’s majority, some of whom clashed with the Rohingya in 2012 in a spasm of violence further south in the state that left dozens dead.

Speaking of Mr. Annan, Syed Hamid Albar, a former Malaysian foreign minister and the special Myanmar envoy for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, said, “He’s a former secretary general, a very experienced diplomat and very well accepted, and he does not want a repeat of Rwanda” in Southeast Asia, referring to that African country’s 1994 genocide.

Commission’s mandate was flawed from the start. Myanmar, they note, has said that the panel will operate in accordance with a 1982 law that is used to deny the Rohingya citizenship, on the pretext that they are not among Myanmar’s recognized “national .”

 

[Hindustani78]

https://www.thehindu.com/news/inter...ar-violence/article24777594.ece?homepage=true
Cox’s Bazar (Bangladesh): , August 25, 2018 09:39 IST
Updated: August 25, 2018 09:39 IST

Rohingya refugees on Saturday marked the anniversary of a deadly military crackdown in their Myanmar homeland that drove 700,000 of the persecuted minority into Bangladesh, stateless and confronting a grim future.

Raids by Rohingya militants on August 25 last year across Myanmar’s Rakhine state spurred an army crackdown which the United Nations has likened to “ethnic cleansing”. Waves of Rohingya fled by foot or boat to Bangladesh in an exodus unprecedented in speed and scale.

Rohingya activists in Bangladesh’s refugee camps vowed to mark the “black day” with prayers, speeches and song. The latest influx has placed enormous pressure on Bangladesh’s impoverished Cox’s Bazar district, which quickly grew into the world’s largest refugee settlement. The squalid camps already hosted generations of Rohingya expelled from Rakhine and the latest arrivals pushed numbers close to one million.

Abdul Malek, a 27-year-old refugee who fled an attack on his village last year, said the plight of the Rohingya was far from over. “This one year is just the beginning of many more to follow,” he told AFP in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar says it is ready to take back those who fled. But it refuses to recognise the Rohingya as citizens, falsely labelling them “Bengali” illegal immigrants. A deal between Myanmar and Bangladesh to start sending them back has stalled. Fewer than 200 have been repatriated so far.

Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi this week said it was up to Bangladesh “to decide how quickly” repatriation can be done, while insisting the “terrorist threat” posed by Rohingya militants remains “real and present”.

The Rohingya say they will not return without a guarantee of their safety, citizenship and compensation for homes and land torched. “We don’t want to [go] back without justice and without our rights and a proper guarantee that we won’t be driven out again,” 18-year-old Aman Ullah told AFP in Cox’s Bazar.

The Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship decades ago by Myanmar and have been hunted from the country in successive convulsions of violence. Access to healthcare and freedom of movement remains out of reach for the stateless people in Rakhine. And the Rohingya exodus from western Myanmar continues today, with refugees still trickling over the border throughout this year.

The UN and international rights groups say conditions are not ready for them to go back. “It may be decades until they can safely return to Myanmar, if ever,” Medecins Sans Frontieres head of mission in Bangladesh, Pavlo Kolovos, said in a statement.

Calls have mounted for Myanmar’s military to be held responsible for the campaign, with security forces accused of torture, rape and murder. The U.S. has sanctioned two army brigades and several commanders who oversaw the expulsion, in which thousands are estimated to have died. But Myanmar says it was simply defending itself and bristles at international calls for justice.

Humanitarian agencies spearheading the relief effort in Bangladesh say just one third of the roughly USD 1 bn needed for the refugees until March has been raised.

 

[Hindustani78]

NEW DELHI, August 25, 2018 17:24 IST
Updated: August 25, 2018 17:31 IST
https://www.thehindu.com/news/natio...fence-acquisition-council/article24780133.ece

In all, the DAC gave approvals for procurement deals worth approximately ₹46,000 crores.

The DAC also cleared the procurement of 14 Vertically Launched Short Range Missile Systems for the Navy which will boost the self-defence capability of ships against Anti-Ship Missiles. Of these, 10 systems will be indigenously developed.

 

[Hindustani78]

https://www.thehindu.com/news/inter...nocide-case/article24790669.ece?homepage=true

Investigators working for the U.N.’s top human rights body say top Myanmar military leaders should be prosecuted for genocide against Rohingya Muslims.

The call, accompanying a first report by the investigators, amounts to some of the strongest language yet from U.N. officials who have denounced alleged human rights violations in Myanmar since a bloody crackdown began last August.

The three-member “fact-finding mission” working under a mandate from the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council meticulously assembled hundreds of accounts by expatriate Rohingya, satellite footage and other information to assemble the report released on Monday.

The U.N.-backed Human Rights Council created the mission six months before a rebel attack on security posts set off the crackdown that drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh.

 

[Hindustani78]

Myanmar’s armed forces released 75 children and young people on Friday, the UN commission said, amid international outrage over alleged abuses committed by troops in the country’s numerous ongoing conflicts.

Myanmar has now discharged 924 underage since signing up to a joint action plan with UN agencies in June 2012, said Knut Ostby, the United Nations resident humanitarian coordinator for Myanmar.

Both the military - known as the Tatmadaw - and the ethnic guerrilla groups it has been fighting for decades have been blacklisted by the United Nations for using child by soldiers. The United States took Myanmar off its list of the worst offenders in the use of child by soldiers in 2017, before reinstating it this year.

The Tatmadaw and seven other groups remained “‘persistent perpetrators’ in the recruitment and use of children in Myanmar,” the United Nations said.

Spokespeople for the Myanmar military and the government were not immediately available for comment.

Myanmar’s military was condemned internationally for human rights abuses including the recruitment of child soldiers during half a century of military rule.

Allegations of abuses have continued to be levelled against Myanmar soldiers despite a transition from full military rule that saw Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi assume control over the civilian administration in 2016.

In the western Rakhine state, the military has launched harsh crackdowns in response to attacks by Rohingya Muslims insurgents since 2016, sending hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh.

UN-mandated investigators on Monday accused the army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, of overseeing a campaign with “genocidal intent” against the Rohingya and recommended he and other senior officials be prosecuted.

The International Criminal Court is considering whether it has jurisdiction over events in Rakhine, while the United States, the European Union and Canada have sanctioned Myanmar military and police officers over the crackdown.

 

[Foxtrot Delta]

These fucksers dont have control over their own infantry devisions and no checks on chain of command . one of the worst 3rd world military. Scum

 

[Hindustani78]

People march to show solidarity for jailed Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo in Yangon, Myanmar on September 1, 2018. | Photo Credit: Reuters


In the latest U.S. expression of concern, Washington’s envoy to the United Nations said the Trump administration expected to see the two journalists acquitted of all charges.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had pleaded not guilty to violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. They contended they were framed by police. The verdict was postponed from a week ago because the presiding judge was ill.

The case has drawn worldwide attention as an example of how press freedom is suffering under the government of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Her taking power in 2016 had raised hopes for an accelerated transition to full democracy from military rule, but she has since disappointed many former admirers.


Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, both testified they suffered from harsh treatment during their initial interrogations. Their several appeals for release on bail were rejected. Wa Lone’s wife, Pan Ei Mon, gave birth to the couple’s first child in Yangon on August 10, but Wa Lone has not yet seen his daughter.

The two journalists had been reporting last year on the brutal crackdown by security forces on the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Some Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh to escape the violence targeting them after attacks by Rohingya militants killed a dozen members of the security forces.

Investigators working for the U.N.’s top human rights body said last week that genocide charges should be brought against senior Myanmar military officers over the crackdown.

The accusation of genocide was rejected by Myanmar’s government, but is the most serious official
recommendation for prosecution so far. Also last week, Facebook banned Myanmar’s powerful military chief and 19 other individuals and organizations from its site to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation in connection with the Rohingya crisis.

Dozens of journalists and pro-democracy activists marched Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, in support of the reporters. But in the country at large, with an overwhelming Buddhist majority, there is widespread prejudice against the Rohingya, and in the government and military, there is near-xenophobic sensitivity to foreign criticism.

Myanmar’s courts are one of the country’s most conservative and nationalistic institutions, and the darkened political atmosphere had seemed unlikely to help the reporters’ cause.

The court earlier this year declined to stop the trial after an initial phase of presentation of evidence, even though a policeman called as a prosecution witness testified that his commander had ordered that documents be planted on the journalists. After his testimony, the officer was jailed for a year for violating police regulations and his family was kicked out of police housing.

Other testimony by prosecution witnesses was contradictory, and the documents presented as evidence against the reporters appeared to be neither secret nor sensitive. The journalists testified they did not solicit or knowingly possess any secret documents.


“These two reporters should have never been put on trial in the first place because all they were doing was their jobs as journalists but apparently the government is more interested using this trial to intimidate the local media than anything else,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said last week.

“Eventually Myanmar is going to wake up and realize that these kind of politically driven prosecutions in a judicial system lacking both independence and competence are a major drag on the country’s political, social and economic development,” he said.

A court sentenced two Reuters journalists to seven years in prison on Monday for illegal possession of official documents, a ruling that comes as international criticism mounts over the military’s alleged human rights abuses

 

[Hindustani78]

The Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Myanmar Defence Services & Commander-in-Chief (Army), Vice Senior General Soe Win laying wreath at Amar Jawan Jyoti, India Gate, in New Delhi on September 18, 2018.

The Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Myanmar Defence Services & Commander-in-Chief (Army), Vice Senior General Soe Win inspecting the Guard of Honour, in New Delhi on September 18, 2018.

The Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Myanmar Defence Services & Commander-in-Chief (Army), Vice Senior General Soe Win meeting the Chief of Army Staff, General Bipin Rawat, in New Delhi on September 18, 2018.

The Chief of Army Staff, General Bipin Rawat and the Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Myanmar Defence Services & Commander-in-Chief (Army), Vice Senior General Soe Win exchanging the mementos, in New Delhi on September 18, 2018.

The Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar Defence Services & Commander-in-Chief (Army), Vice Senior General Soe Win calling on the Union Minister for Defence, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, in New Delhi on September 18, 2018.

The Union Minister for Defence, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman and the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar Defence Services & Commander-in-Chief (Army), Vice Senior General Soe Win exchanging the memento, in New Delhi on September 18, 2018.

The Union Minister for Defence, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman and the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar Defence Services & Commander-in-Chief (Army), Vice Senior General Soe Win exchanging the memento, in New Delhi on September 18, 2018.

 

[Hindustani78]

This file photo taken on July 19, 2018 shows Myanmar's Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the Myanmar armed forces, saluting to pay his respects to Myanmar independence hero General Aung San and eight others assassinated in 1947, during a ceremony to mark the 71th anniversary of Martyrs' Day in Yangon. | Photo Credit: AFP

https://www.thehindu.com/news/inter...cs-un-probe/article24976138.ece?homepage=true


Myanmar’s military dominates the Buddhist-majority country, holding a quarter of seats in parliament and controlling three ministries.

Myanmar’s powerful army should be removed from politics, UN investigators said on Tuesday, as they released the final part of a damning report reiterating calls for top generals to be prosecuted for “genocide” against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

A brutal military crackdown last year forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee over the border to Bangladesh.

The UN’s 444-page probe called for the military’s top leadership to be replaced and for the institution - locally known as the Tatmadaw -- to have no further influence over the country’s governance.

Myanmar’s military dominates the Buddhist-majority country, holding a quarter of seats in parliament and controlling three ministries.

But the report said that the country’s civilian leadership “should further pursue the removal of the Tatmadaw from Myanmar’s political life”, referring to the nation’s armed forces.

The UN’s meticulously detailed analysis, based on 18 months’ work and more than 850 in-depth interviews, calls on the international community to investigate military top brass for genocide, including commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Myanmar’s army has denied nearly all wrongdoing, insisting the military campaign was justified to root out Rohingya insurgents.

But the UN team said the military’s tactics had been “consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats“.

Investigators said the Tatmadaw should be restructured and that the process should begin by replacing the current leadership.

Myanmar only emerged from military junta rule after 2011 and civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically-elected government remains in a delicate power balance with the generals.

Their presence in parliament means they have an effective veto on constitutional changes, making any transition to full civilian control extremely difficult.

The three key ministries -- home affairs, border and defence -- are also in their hands, giving them carte blanche to conduct security operations with little oversight.

 

[cerilchan]

hi

 

[Hindustani78]

https://www.thehindu.com/news/inter...-on-suu-kyi/article24988324.ece?homepage=true
A former columnist for state media has been jailed for seven years for “abusive” Facebook posts about leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a court official said on Wednesday, the latest case threatening free expression in the country.

Ngar Min Swe was sentenced for sedition on Tuesday, Yangon’s Western District Court spokesman Htay Aung told AFP.

“He was convicted... for writing abusive posts on Facebook against State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, making people get the wrong impression of her,” Htay Aung said.

Myanmar has already faced widespread condemnation for infringing on freedom of expression following the jailing earlier this month of two Reuters journalists who reported on the Rohingya crisis.

Ngar Min Swe worked as a columnist under the previous military-backed government. Since Ms. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party rose to power in 2016, he has written posts against her and the party.

He was arrested on July 12, the same day he posted about Ms. Suu Kyi receiving a kiss on the cheek from U.S. President Barack Obama during his visit in 2013.

The innocuous gesture came in for criticism from a conservative Myanmar public, especially supporters of the army-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party – like Ngar Min Swe, who took to social media to lob sexist jibes at Ms. Suu Kyi.

Facebook is wildly popular in Myanmar but users who have hit out at senior leaders of the military or civilian government have faced jail time.

Independent analyst David Mathieson said the sentence is yet another example of “the strangulation of free speech” in the country. “Myanmar is in free-fall to resurgent autocracy and imprisoning journalists for colonial-era sounding 'sedition' is yet another warning sign,” he told AFP.

Under the junta, Myanmar routinely jailed journalists and activists but gradually opened up from 2011 and promised greater freedoms for the media.

But supporters of Ms. Suu Kyi have been disappointed in recent years by the deterioration of human rights within the country, most notably in the jailing of the Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo who had exposed a massacre of Rohingya Muslims committed by soldiers.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt promised to raise the Reuters case in meetings with Ms. Suu Kyi this week during a high-profile visit in which he would go to Rakhine state, the epicentre of the Rohingya crisis.

Mr. Hunt's visit comes as the UN has called for the Myanmar military to be held accountable for the “genocide” committed against the Muslim minority.

 

[Hindustani78]

UN investigators went into horrific detail about the atrocities allegedly committed by army troops last year in their“clearance operations” against the ethnic Indians, which forced more than 700,000 of the stateless Muslims to flee over the border into Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s army chief said the United Nations had no right to interfere in the sovereignty of the country a week after a UN probe called for him and other top generals to be prosecuted for “genocide” against the ethnic Indians

The defiant response is the army chief’s first public reaction since a UN fact-finding mission urged the Security Council to refer Myanmar’s top military brass to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

No country, organisation or group has the “right to interfere in and make decisions over sovereignty of a country,” Senior General Min Aung Hlaing told troops in a speech Sunday, according to the military-run newspaper Myawady.

“Talks to meddle in internal affairs [cause] misunderstanding.”

UN investigators went into horrific detail about the atrocities allegedly committed by army troops last year in their“clearance operations” against the ethnic Indians, which forced more than 700,000 of the stateless ethnic Indians to flee over the border into Bangladesh.

Troops, often aided by ethnic Rakhine mobs, committed murder, rape, arson and torture, employing unfathomable levels of violence and with a total disregard for human life, they concluded.

The military has denied nearly all wrongdoing, justifying its crackdown as a legitimate means of rooting out Rohingya militants.

Myanmar’s civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, had already rejected the report’s finding as “one-sided” and “flawed” and dismissed a separate decision at the criminal court that found it had jurisdiction over the crisis.

Suu Kyi’s civilian government shares power with the still mighty army, which has retained control over a quarter of parliamentary seats and three key ministries since the nation emerged from direct junta-rule in 2011.

The UN team also criticised the Nobel Laureate’s government for “acts and omissions” that had “contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes”.