Burma’s military junta said Tuesday that it “vehemently rejects” the United States’ declaration that the military committed genocide against the Rohingya minority, claiming that the declaration was “politically motivated.”
The Ministry of Information said in a statement that the Min Aung Hlaing-led military harbored no genocidal intent to destroy any minority groups and denied that genocide had even occurred in Burma, also known as Myanmar.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s declaration that the military junta committed genocide against the Rohingya was based on “false allegations” and amounted to political interference with the internal affairs of a sovereign state, the ministry added.
Citing a 2018 State Department report that surveyed more than 1,000 Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, Blinken said that the findings demonstrate that the Burmese military’s violence against the Rohingya “were not isolated cases.”
Three-quarters of those surveyed claimed to have witnessed the military kill someone and more than half witnessed acts of sexual violence. One in five witnessed a mass-casualty event, killing or injuring more than 100 people in a single incident.
The National Unity Government (NUG), which considers itself as the legitimate civilian-led government of Burma, welcomed the U.S. determination.
NUG’s acting president Duwa Lashi La said the group acknowledges that “discriminatory practices and rhetoric against the Rohingya also laid the ground for the atrocities” in Burma.
“The impunity enjoyed by the military’s leadership has since enabled their direction of countrywide crimes at the helm of an illegal military junta. Those crimes against the Myanmar people continue until today by the military,” Duwa said in a statement.
John Sifton, Human Rights Watch’s Asia advocacy director, also backed the United States’ declaration but said that its condemnation against the Burmese military regime should come with action.
“For too long, the U.S. and other countries have allowed Myanmar’s generals to commit atrocities with few real consequences,” Sifton said in a statement.
The U.N. on March 15 urged the international community to take “immediate measures” to stop the Burmese military junta’s systematic human rights violations, which it said amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.