Rohingya refugees welcome US decision to call Myanmar atrocities a genocide

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have welcomed the announcement by the US that it considers the violent repression of their largely Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar a genocide. “We are very happy on the declaration of the genocide; many many thanks,” said 60-year-old Sala Uddin, who lives at Kutupalong camp, one of the many in Cox’s Bazar district that are now home to about 1 million Rohingya.

“It has been 60 years starting from 1962 that the Myanmar government has been torturing us and many other communities including Rohingya,” he said. “I think a path to take action by the international community against Myanmar has opened up because of the declaration.”

The US made the determination on Monday to call the repression a genocide based on confirmed accounts of mass atrocities on civilians by Myanmar’s military in a widespread and systematic campaign against the Rohingya, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said in a speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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