US Slams Sanctions on Burma Over Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing

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Washington, DC – The United States on Friday imposed punitive sanctions on four Myanmar military commanders and two military units, citing “serious human rights abuses” and expelling Rohingya minority with the aim of ”ethnic cleansing.”

Announcing the sanctions, Sigal Mandelker, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence said, “Burmese security forces have engaged in violent campaigns against ethnic minority communities across Burma, including ethnic cleansing, massacres, sexual assault, extrajudicial killings, and other serious human rights abuses.”

“Treasury is sanctioning units and leaders overseeing this horrific behavior as part of a broader US government strategy to hold accountable those responsible for such wide scale human suffering,” said Mandelker, adding, “There must be justice for the victims and those who work to uncover these atrocities, with those responsible held to account for these abhorrent crimes.”

Stressing that the US government “is committed to ensuring that Burmese military units and leaders reckon with and put a stop to these brutal acts,” Mandelker promised to, “continue to systematically expose and bring accountability to human rights abusers in this region and many others and greatly appreciate the efforts of civil society who are doing the same.”

Burmese military commanders Aung Kyaw Zaw, Khin Maung Soe, Khin Hlaing, and border guard commander Thura San Lwin, along with the 33rd Light Infantry Division (LID) and the 99th LID, were accused of leading violent campaigns against the Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine state as well as minorities in Kachin and Shan states.

As a result of these designations, any property, or interest in property, of those designated today within US jurisdiction is blocked. Additionally, US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with blocked persons, including entities 50 percent or more owned by designated persons.

Burma’s military denied the accusations of targeting civilians or human rights abuses and says it is fighting Rohingya militants.

According to media reports, the plight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people is emerging as one of the major recent refugee crises as nearly 700,000 have fled the destruction of their homes and persecution in the northern Rakhine province of Burma to the neighboring Muslim dominated Bangladesh since August 2017.

Earlier, the United Nations described the military offensive in Rakhine, which provoked the exodus, as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

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