Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

In its most damning report yet, a United Nations investigative team has flatly accused the government of Myanmar (ex-Burma) of perpetrating gross genocidal crimes against the ethnic minority known as the Rohingya people. The main focus of genocidal incidents has taken place in Rakhine State, where the largest Rohingya settlements have traditionally been located. But the UN study also drew on testimonies regarding criminal abuse in Kachin and Shan States. The Rohingya people claim that their roots in Myanmar go back at least a thousand years. Their name—which is also the name of the Indo-European language that they speak—means, literally, “the people of Rohing”. Rohing was the ancient name of the kingdom that would later be known in British colonial times are Arakan, and today is known as Rakhine State. The Rohingya, therefore, justly consider themselves indigenous to the region. The Myanmar government, for its part, brands the Rohingya as “foreigners”—refusing to term them...

In what has swiftly become the world’s latest tragic humanitarian crisis, the truly hapless victims are the Rohingya people of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). Despite the Burmese government’s statements to the contrary, not for an instant has there been any question among human rights activists about what they were witnessing: vengeance, pure and simple, used as an excuse to undertake full-blown ethnic cleansing and, hence, genocidal actions. But a top UN human rights official this past week formalized that assessment, calling Myanmar’s persecution of minority Rohingya Muslims a case of “textbook ethnic cleansing”.   More than 400,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee to Bangladesh.  Addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the institution’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, referred to the Myanmar military’s attacks on the Rohingya community in Rakhine State as a “brutal security operation” that represented a “clearl...