Myanmar govt has nowhere to hide

The recent Reuters report on the mass execution of 10 Rohingya men on September 2, 2017 in Inn Din village of Myanmar's Rakhine State is groundbreaking for many reasons. One, the chilling report is based on firsthand accounts of Rakhine Buddhist villagers who confessed to actively taking part in burning Rohingya homes and killing Rohingya Muslims. Second, this is the first time that soldiers and the paramilitary police of Myanmar have been implicated by the country's own security personnel.

The Reuters report exposes a long chain of complicity—Myanmar's military, police force and local Buddhist villagers—behind the brutal premeditated murder of 10 Rohingya men who, according to the military, were among a group of "200 terrorists" that attacked security forces but Buddhist villagers told Reuters that no such attack had taken place in Inn Din. The report goes on to reveal a lot of other horrifying details that only reconfirm the tales of atrocities that Rohingya refugees have told aid workers and journalists in Bangladesh.

We cannot help but ask, now that Rakhine Buddhists and Myanmar's security personnel themselves have come forward and substantiated evidence of the mass murder by the military and Buddhist villagers, how can Myanmar continue to deny the truth? What diversion and manipulation tactics will it use to discredit photographic evidence of the mass execution?

We would like to reiterate that in the face of such overwhelming evidence of the genocide taking place next door, influential regional powers of Asean, and in particular India and China, can no longer ignore the extent of human rights violations of Rohingyas. It is extremely disappointing that the two countries which wield significant power in the global arena have either voted against (China) or abstained (India) from voting on a UN resolution condemning the human rights situation in Myanmar—foiling efforts to send a strong message to the Myanmar government.

Myanmar has enjoyed impunity for far too long. UN member states need to go beyond "condemnation" with mere words and put pressure on Myanmar to allow for an independent investigation into the mass execution of the Rohingya men and the only way to ensure justice, we believe, is to try all those responsible in an international criminal court.