How the United States Is Culpable for Ethnic Cleansing in Myanmar

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Through their efforts to form a partnership with Myanmar’s government, the leaders of the United States have for years displayed a callous disregard for the fate of the country’s Rohingya people.

Since late August, more than 620,000 Rohingya have fled their homes in terror. Vigilantes and security forces have sexually assaulted and killed civilians and burned down hundreds of villages. The Rohingya, a predominantly Sunni Muslim community from Rakhine State in western Myanmar, are portrayed by Myanmar’s government and the country’s Buddhist majority as illegal immigrants.

When an estimated 30,000-35,000 of Myanmar’s security forces began their operations in late August, they said they were responding to terrorist attacks in which militants had attacked security facilities and outposts, killing over a dozen security personnel. The government described the response as “clearance operations.”

The official acknowledgement of ethnic cleansing from the U.S. government has been a long time coming, and it is too little too late.

In late November, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged that “the situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.” A senior State Department official added, “we feel it was, again, organized, planned, systematic.”

This official acknowledgement from the U.S. government has been a long time coming, and it is too little too late.

The leaders of the United States have been signaling for years that the fate of the Rohingya is not a priority. The Obama Administration largely overlooked discrimination and oppression of Rohingya as it pursued its goals of building friendly relations with Myanmar’s government.

In November 2010, Myanmar’s military government began making significant political changes, holding the country’s first parliamentary elections in more than twenty years. That same month, it released opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.

In response, the Obama Administration gradually worked to restore formal diplomatic ties with the country, introducing new aid programs and easing various restrictions and sanctions.

Waves of sectarian violence in late 2012, during which more than 100,000 Rohingya were displaced and many were killed, did nothing to change these overtures. Administration officials argued that continued efforts to build positive relations were necessary to keep encouraging the military government to do more to open the country’s political process.

“I stand here with confidence that something is happening in this country that cannot be reversed, and the will of the people can lift up this nation and set a great example for the world,” President Obama said when he visited Myanmar in November 2012.

During his final year in office, President Obama sent a strong signal of U.S. support. Standing beside Aung San Suu Kyi, who had gained a leadership role in Myanmar’s government, Obama pledged to lift all remaining sanctions. “It is the right thing to do in order to ensure that the people of Burma see rewards from a new way of doing business and a new government,” he insisted.

A month later, sectarian violence erupted again. After militants attacked outposts of Myanmar’s border police, killing nine police officers, government security forces expelled about 87,000 Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh and relocated many others into temporary camps.

As the operations began, Human Rights Watch repeatedly published satellite imagery showing the destruction of Rohingya villages. News outlets reported atrocities, including rape and the killings of children. One U.N. official argued that Myanmar officials were pursuing “their ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority in Myanmar.”

In spite of these reports, President Obama announced on December 2, 2016 that the government of Myanmar had “made measurable and substantial progress in improving human rights practices and implementing democratic government.”

Indeed, in one of his final acts in office, Obama provided more rewards for Myanmar’s government, praising it for its political transformation even as it was escalating its campaign against the Rohingya.

“I was fortunate to be there and present and part of the change,” Derek Mitchell, one of the main architects of the Obama administration’s policy, said at a hearing earlier this year. “But that situation only got worse when I was there,” he acknowledged. “These people are kept in pens. Their humanity and dignity are taken away from them.”

The Trump Administration has made matters worse.

In February 2017, U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar Scot Marciel delivered a wide-ranging speech in which he downplayed the government’s treatment of the Rohingya and celebrated the beginning of “a new chapter” in the relationship between Myanmar and the United States.

“The old relationship which had been very focused on sanctions and trying to put pressure on the military regime of the past was now changed to a much more normal relationship without sanctions,” Marciel said.

The ambassador noted that both sides were working closely to increase trade and even to form a new military relationship.

“Our approach is, bottom line, to try to approach everything as a friend,” Marciel said.

The ambassador made his points just days after human rights investigators at the United Nations charged Myanmar’s security forces with waging “a calculated campaign of terror” against the Rohingya.

“Drive. Them. Out,” Trump demanded. “DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship. DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities. DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, and DRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH.”

President Trump, who prided himself on his tough talk on terror, has had little to say about the plight of the Rohingya. Instead, he continues to associate terrorism with Islam, just as he had done during the presidential campaign, when he called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

When Trump visited the Middle East this past May, he continued to push the connection in a speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit, calling for terrorists to be driven out of the area. “Drive. Them. Out,” Trump demanded. “DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship. DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities. DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, and DRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH.”

Secretary of State Tillerson repeated Trump’s demands just days later, insisting that “we must drive the extremists out of our communities, we must drive them out of any country that would provide them safe haven, and we must drive them off the face of the Earth.”

Then, going against the recommendations of numerous senior U.S. diplomats, Tillerson removed Myanmar from the official U.S. list of countries that use child soldiers. His decision lifted a significant barrier to the normalization of military relations and provided a strong signal that humanitarian concerns were not a priority for the United States.

Tillerson’s decision was so controversial that many senior U.S. diplomats formally objected to the move, calling it inconsistent with U.S. law.

The diplomats said in a July 28 memo, “this decision risks marring the credibility of a broad range of State Department reports and analyses and has weakened one of the U.S. government’s primary diplomatic tools to deter governmental armed forces and government-supported armed groups from recruiting and using children in combat and support roles around the world.”

It was in this context that Myanmar’s military leaders began one of their most devastating campaigns against the Rohingya. Around the same time that militants in the country launched a series of coordinated attacks on security facilities and outposts in late August 2017, security forces and vigilantes began the massive campaign against the remaining Rohingya, portraying them as terrorists and terrorist sympathizers.

Although Trump Administration officials condemned what was happening, they also stated they understood the need for Myanmar’s security forces to act. The initial attacks by militants had created “a lot of concern, a lot of fear, and a requirement for security forces to respond,” State Department official W. Patrick Murphy stated.

As the operations continued, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled their homes in one of the largest and quickest displacements of people in recent history. A top U.N. human rights official said, “the situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Trump then delivered one of the most shocking speeches of his presidency. Speaking at the United Nations, Trump appeared to endorse genocide as a legitimate policy option. He made the remarks in reference to North Korea, threatening to “totally destroy” the country.

In his speech, Trump also repeated his demand that extremists and terrorists must be driven out of their nations. “We must drive them out of our nations,” Trump said. Citing U.S. military actions in the Middle East as an example, he boasted that the U.S. and its allies were working to “crush the loser terrorists and stop the reemergence of safe havens they use to launch attacks on all of our people.”

Trump’s statements were, in essence, an implicit endorsement of everything that the Myanmar government was doing.

Trump’s statements were, in essence, an implicit endorsement of everything that the Myanmar government was doing.

While the Trump Administration has now officially identified the campaign against the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing, it has done nothing to change course or display regret for how its own rhetoric and actions may have inflamed the situation. Administration officials insist they will continue working closely with Myanmar’s government.

“The United States views this as an important relationship,” Tillerson explained during his recent visit the country. “We’re here to support Myanmar. We want Myanmar to succeed.”

Edward Hunt writes about war and empire. He has a PhD in American Studies from the College of William & Mary.