Myanmar’s army has used unfathomable levels of violence against minority Rohingya, UN investigators said Tuesday, calling for the military to be removed from politics and top generals to be prosecuted for genocide.
The UN report, which laid out in meticulous detail a vast array of violations committed by the country’s powerful military, came just hours before the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor announced a preliminary probe into crimes against Rohingya Muslims.
“It is hard to fathom the level of brutality of Tatmadaw operations, its total disregard for civilian life,” head of the UN fact-finding mission Marzuki Darusman told the UN Human Rights Council, referring to the nation’s military.
Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN, Kyaw Moe Tun, slammed Tuesday’s report as “one-sided” and “flawed”.
The ICC’s preliminary examination could lead to a formal investigation and then possible indictments.
“I have decided to proceed to the next phase of the process and to carry out a full-fledged preliminary examination of the situation at hand,” ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement.
A brutal military crackdown last year forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee over the border into Bangladesh amid accounts of arson, murder and rape at the hands of soldiers and vigilante mobs in the mainly Buddhist country.
Myanmar’s army has denied nearly all wrongdoing, insisting its campaign was justified to root out Rohingya insurgents who staged deadly raids on border posts in August 2017.
