Genocide is defined as murder and other acts with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” according to a 1948 United Nations treaty.
The Tatmadaw has not reserved its violent campaign just for the Rohingya. It “has committed killings, rape and other atrocities against members of other ethnic and religious minority groups” for decades, Blinken said.
In February 2021, the military seized control of Myanmar’s democratically elected government. Since the takeover, the Tatmadaw has repeated its anti-Rohingya tactics against “all ethnic and religious communities,” USCIRF reported.
Buddhism is Myanmar’s “de facto state religion,” USCIRF said in its 2021 annual report. Nearly 88 percent of the population is Buddhist, while 6.2 percent is Christian and 4.3 percent is Muslim, according to USCIRF.
Myanmar, located in Southeast Asia, is one of 10 governments the State Department has designated as “countries of particular concern,” a category dedicated to the world’s most severe violators of religious freedom.
In June 2021, the United States led a successful attempt – which was joined by 119 other countries and opposed by only one government – to adopt a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly that urged members to halt the transfer of weapons into Myanmar, Blinken said. A report in February by a U.N. official showed China, Russia and Serbia still have provided arms to the military regime, he said.
Prior to the designation for Myanmar, the most recent genocide determination was issued in January 2021 against the Chinese Communist Party for its campaign against the Uyghurs, a primarily Muslim group in western China. Pompeo announced on the last full day of the Trump administration the genocide determination for China, and Blinken affirmed that designation after he took office under President Biden.
The Southern Baptist Convention became the first Christian denomination to denounce China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide by vote of the messengers to its annual meeting in June 2021.
This article originally appeared here.
