The Secretary of
State plans to speak this week about a State Department investigation into a
horrific campaign of violence against Myanmar's Rohingya minority.
By NAHAL TOOSI
A State Department
investigation has found that Myanmar’s military exhibited “premeditation and
coordination” ahead of a slaughter of Rohingya Muslims last year in one of the
decade’s most horrifying mass atrocities.
But days before
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to deliver a speech on the subject, the
Trump administration has apparently not yet decided whether to call it a
“genocide.”
Draft excerpts from
a Pompeo statement obtained exclusively by POLITICO include the bracketed
phrase “hold for determination” in a passage that will offer Pompeo’s
conclusion about how to describe the vicious campaign against one of Myanmar’s
most vulnerable ethnic minority groups.
That conclusion has
been the subject of intense debate within the Trump administration, officials
say. Declaring a genocide — typically defined as a premeditated effort to wipe
out some or all of a specific ethnic or religious group — could commit the U.S.
to punitive steps toward a country in which President Donald Trump has shown
little interest.
State Department
officials expect Pompeo to issue the statement later this week, ahead of the
Aug. 25 one-year anniversary of the Myanmar bloodshed, which left thousands of
Rohingya dead and prompted around 700,000 to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.
It’s not clear whether the drafts excerpts, which describe the investigation’s
findings, are from Pompeo’s planned speech or a separate public message.
Rohingya Muslims
have faced persecution for decades in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which is also
known as Burma. Investigators hired by the State Department gathered testimonies
from survivors who described seeing villages torched, children tossed into
rivers and flames, and women gang-raped, the draft excerpts say.
A State Department
spokesman declined to comment on the investigation’s findings or any upcoming
Pompeo’s statement. A Trump administration official warned that the draft text,
which is marked “sensitive but unclassified,” could still change as State
Department and White House officials jockey over the outcome, a process that
has already entailed tense meetings and many a frustrated email.
The United States
has often avoided labeling atrocities “genocide,” in part because doing so
could in theory obligate the U.S. under international law to intervene,
especially if the violence is ongoing. An international convention on genocide,
to which the U.S. is a party, declares genocide to be “a crime under
international law” which the nations who signed the document “undertake to
prevent and to punish.”
Thus far, the State
Department has described what happened to the Rohingya as “ethnic cleansing,”
which has little weight in international law.
One prominent
official who appears to support declaring a genocide is the U.S.
ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, Sam Brownback. He is supported by
many officials in State’s human rights bureau.
The State
Department’s legal division, on the other hand, opposes the label “genocide”
because it’s not convinced the U.S. can clearly establish the Myanmar
military’s intent, according to the administration official. That office is
supported by officials in the department’s East Asian and Pacific Affairs
bureau who are concerned about a possibly counterproductive effect on U.S.
relations with Myanmar, a country under hybrid civilian-military rule that
American officials hope to move out of China’s orbit.
Supporters of a
genocide ruling point to former Secretary of State John Kerry’s decision to
apply the word to Islamic State brutality against Christians, Yazidis and
Shiite Muslims in Iraq and Syria. The Trump administration has endorsed that
Barack Obama-era decision.
It’s not clear if
Pompeo will release the full State Department report of its investigation’s
findings. But the draft excerpts provided to POLITICO are unsparing in
describing accounts by more than 1,000 Rohingya survivors scattered in decrepit
refugee camps in Bangladesh.
The survivors
described actions by Myanmar’s armed forces that were “widespread, systematic
and extreme,” the draft excerpts state. Women, the elderly were often treated
the most brutally — along with small children.
“Soldiers threw
infants and small children in open fires, rivers, wells and burning huts,” the
draft excerpts state. “One refugee reported that a soldier threw an infant in
the air and impaled it on a long sword.”