U.N.: Myanmar generals had genocidal intent, must face justice

 Myanmar’s military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Muslim Rohingya with “genocidal intent” and the commander-in-chief and five generals should be prosecuted for orchestrating the gravest crimes under law, U.N. investigators said on Monday.

The civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi has allowed hate speech to thrive, destroyed documents and failed to protect minorities from crimes against humanity and war crimes by the army in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states, they said in a report.

In doing so, it “contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes,” the report said.

A year ago, government troops led a brutal crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army on 30 Myanmar police posts and a military base. About 700,000 Rohingya fled the crackdown and most are now living in refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.

The U.N. report said the military action, which included the scorching of villages, was “grossly disproportionate to actual security threats.”

The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in countries including Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sudan and for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant group campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria.

“The crimes in Rakhine State, and the manner in which they were perpetrated, are similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal intent to be established in other contexts,” said the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar.