U.S. Targets Myanmar Military Over Killings, Human-Rights Abuses -- Update
August 17 2018 - 4:00PM
Dow Jones News
By Samuel Rubenfeld
The U.S. imposed sanctions on two Myanmar military units and
four border guard and police commanders amid a global outcry from
human-rights groups about abuses and mass killings of religious
minority groups, including Rohingya Muslims, by the Myanmar
government.
The Myanmar military has committed widespread, systematic and
brutal acts of violence against Rohingya villagers, the U.S.
Treasury Department said Friday, echoing comments from the State
Department in November that the situation involving the villagers
constitutes ethnic cleansing. The military has also used similar
tactics against a number of other ethnic and religious minority
groups, such as the Kachin or Shan, Treasury alleged.
"The U.S. government is committed to ensuring that Burmese
military units and leaders reckon with and put a stop to these
brutal acts," said Sigal Mandelker, undersecretary of Treasury for
terrorism and financial intelligence.
Treasury imposed the sanctions using the Global Magnitsky Act,
which allows the U.S. to target human-rights abusers across the
globe and freeze their assets.
Human-rights groups have called for sanctions and other
accountability measures against the Myanmar government. The
sanctions announced Friday are welcome, overdue and "not enough,"
said Richard Weir, the Myanmar researcher at Human Rights
Watch.
Military operations by Myanmar have driven more than 700,000
Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority group, into neighboring
Bangladesh, where they are jammed in refugee camps. Displaced
Rohingya can return, the Myanmar government said amid international
pressure, but it imposes hurdles on who is allowed back, saying
they need to keep out terrorists.
There are roughly 600,000 Rohingya still in Myanmar, according
to the United Nations, and their situation is precarious, The Wall
Street Journal reported earlier this month. Nearly a dozen Rohingya
residents still in Myanmar told the Journal that they lacked access
to sufficient food, were stripped of land and belongings, and faced
severe movement restrictions.
Myanmar's government blames Rohingya terrorists for the
conflict. The country's embassy in Washington, D.C., was closed
Friday afternoon and officials there couldn't be reached.
There is a global outcry for action, said Erin Murphy, founder
and principal of Inle Advisory Group, a Myanmar-centric consulting
firm. The Global Magnitsky Act, which was also used in December to
target the general Maung Maung Soe for overseeing military
operations in Myanmar's Rakhine State, is a useful method for
imposing the sanctions, she said.
"This is one way to do it without creating a whole new Burma
sanctions program," she said, using the country's alternate
name.
The U.S. decision to impose sanctions on individual units and
commanders responsible for the abuses should serve as a warning
sign to the security forces that they must immediately cease the
behavior, Treasury said.
One of the units targeted by Treasury, the 33rd Light Infantry
Division, killed 350 people in the village of Chut Pyin in Rakhine
State, about a quarter of the village's Rohingya population, in a
single day in August 2017, the Journal reported in May.
Due to Myanmar's isolation, the individual commanders and units
targeted Friday may not have much exposure to the international
financial system, limiting the effect of the sanctions, but "naming
someone specifically may have some impact," said Ms. Murphy.
Write to Samuel Rubenfeld at samuel.rubenfeld@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 17, 2018 15:45 ET (19:45 GMT)
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