Myanmar soldiers admit role in Rohingya genocide directed by senior officers, rights group claims
- The comments appear to be the first public confession by soldiers of involvement in massacres, rape and other crimes against Rohingya Muslims
- More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh since August 2017 to escape what Myanmar’s military called a clearance campaign
Two soldiers who deserted from Myanmar’s army have testified on video that they were instructed by commanding officers to “shoot all that you see and that you hear” in villages where minority Rohingya lived, a human rights group said on Tuesday.
The group Fortify Rights, which focuses on Myanmar, said the two army privates fled the country last month and are believed to be in the custody of the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, which is examining the violence against the Rohingya. Asked about the two soldiers, an ICC spokesman said on Tuesday that: “We have no new persons under arrest.”
The two men “separately claimed to be acting on orders from senior commanders to ‘exterminate all [Rohingya]’, to ‘shoot all that you see and that you hear’, and to ‘kill all’ Rohingya in specific areas,” Fortify Rights said in a statement.
The Associated Press has not seen the videos and was not able to independently corroborate the account of the two soldiers’ testimony released by Fortify Rights.