Ensure justice for Rohingya, end military’s impunity for genocide
Restore Rohingya’s citizenship and rights, coordinate support for refugees
Marking the sixth-year remembrance of the Rohingya genocide in 2017, 356 civil society organizations reaffirm our solidarity with the Rohingya community in the pursuit of justice and accountability for victims and survivors, call for an end to impunity of grave crimes perpetrated by the Myanmar military, and urge for the immediate restoration of Rohingya’s rights and citizenship. The world must not forget the Rohingya’s plight. Most importantly, the international community must take responsibility for their human rights and humanitarian obligations for the Rohingya community.
Six years ago, the Myanmar military launched “clearance operations” and unleashed a wave of massacres, torture, rape, and burning of villages against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, forcing over 750,000 – many of them children – to seek refuge in Bangladesh where a quarter of a million Rohingya had previously fled from persecutions by the military. Today, almost one million Rohingya are suffering in squalid, overcrowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, longing to return to their home in Myanmar with dignity, citizenship and with their full rights restored and justice served.
To actualize Rohingya’s sustainable return to Myanmar, the military’s prevailing impunity must end, and accountability must be established for its grave atrocity crimes, primarily through criminal prosecution of individuals most responsible. Yet, minimal progress towards justice and accountability has been achieved by the international community. Following the coup attempt of 1 February 2021, the passivity, negligence and in some cases total inaction of the international community, in particular ASEAN, once again emboldens Myanmar’s war criminals to further their atrocities against the people across Myanmar unabated and unpunished.
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