Massacre of 99 Hindus by Rohingyas could qualify as international crime – UN

The massacre of 99 Hindus by Rohingyas could qualify as an international crime, a UN investigator has said during a press briefing. Nicholas Koumjian, Head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), while responding to media questions on the situation in the country, said that the incident is a very serious one and could qualify as an international crime.

This significant statement by the United Nations (UN) is perhaps the first one acknowledging just one of the many crimes against Hindus albeit it comes three years after Amnesty International finally confirmed the massacre.

Referring to Amnesty International’s investigative report, a journalist asked the UN investigator, “Are you also investigating other crimes by non-state actors, for example, Amnesty International documented the massacre of 99 Hindus in August 2017. Do you have anything to report on that?”

Nicholas Koumjian responded by saying, “Our mandate is to investigate crimes regardless of the ethnicity, religion, and citizenship of the victims over the perpetrators. So we are looking at the non-state actors and the incident that you’re talking about we are very well aware of. I am not going to go into this cause I don’t list every incident we are working on for a variety of reasons. But I would say we are looking at actions by non-state actors, the particular incident you talk about was very serious and deserving of attention.”

“There are many other reports more recently also about assassinations or killings of people who are suspected to be informants for the military authorities. We are very concerned with that and we are looking at that. There are issues about whether those qualify as serious international crimes but we will continue to look at those. But the incident you are talking about massacre of close to a hundred people is very serious and could qualify as an international crime,” he added.

An investigation carried out by Amnesty International in May 2018 revealed that an armed Rohingya group is responsible for at least one, and potentially a second, massacre of up to 99 Hindu men, women and children as well as unlawful abductions in August 2017.

The report gives details of the massacre in Kha Maung Seik in August 2017, killing Hindus, executing style, sparing those who agreed to ‘convert’ to Islam. The report also states other killings and violent attacks against other ethnic and minority communities by the Rohingya terrorists.

“Eight Hindu women and eight of their children were abducted and spared after ARSA fighters forced the women to agree to “convert” to Islam. The survivors were forced to flee with the fighters to Bangladesh several days later, before being repatriated to Myanmar in October 2017 with the support of the Bangladeshi and Myanmar authorities,” an excerpt from the report read.

Amnesty reportedly based its report on dozens of interviews conducted in Rakhine and across the border in Bangladesh and threw light on the largely under-reported human rights abuses by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) fighters, who have sowed fear among Hindus and other ethnic communities with these brutal attacks.

The report was significant in the face of the Hindu genocide denial by Left-liberals and Islamists especially considering that it came from their ilk. Amnesty International shut shop in September 2020 after the Indian government froze all its accounts on the charges that the so-called NGO circumvented FCRA regulations.

Source : OpIndia