Call It Genocide
Dhaka Courier|November 24, 2017

Call It Genocide

Gregory Stanton
Call It Genocide

The UN calls the Myanmar army’s aggression against the Rohingya “ethnic cleansing”. “Ethnic cleansing” is a term invented by Slobodan Milosevic. It’s a euphemism for forced displacement and genocide. It’s an insidious term because there is no international treaty law against it, whereas there are international laws against forced displacement and genocide.

“Ethnic cleansing” is not a crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It has no legal meaning in international law. Another term without legal meaning is “atrocities”.

Genocidal massacres are acts of genocide. Genocide is defined as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. They include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and inflicting conditions of life on a group calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part.

Over 600,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh in the past three months to escape systematic massacres by the Myanmar army that has slaughtered thousands of Rohingya and burned over 500 Rohingya villages to the ground. The killings continue today.

Genocidal massacres are precisely what the Myanmar army and Rakhine militias are committing against the Rohingya. Myanmar is committing both “ethnic cleansing” [forced displacement] and genocide. The crimes often go together. Genocidal massacres are used to terrorise a victim group into fleeing.

Why does the so-called “international community” avoid using the word “genocide”?

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