Aug. 27 (UPI) -- United Nations investigators said Monday top generals in Myanmar should be investigated and prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Though another international human rights group, Fortify Rights, condemned the country's violence against the Rohingya as genocide last month, the new U.N. investigative report, based on 875 interviews, is considered the strongest condemnation from the United Nations of the violence so far.

The U.N. Human Rights Council's independent investigative report said that Myanmar's armed forces have failed to respect international humanitarian law since its counterinsurgency policy began in the 1960s with civilians being killed, entire villages being destroyed and displacement of hundreds of thousands.

The latest violence was sparked in August 2017, when a small number of Rohingya insurgents attacked police outposts, some with improvised explosive devices, killing 12 security officers.

"The security forces' response, starting within hours, was immediate, brutal and grossly disproportionate," the report said, with operations that "terrorized the entire Rohingya population."

"As a result, nearly 725,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh by mid-August 2018."

The Independent Fact Finding Mission said thousands of people have been killed or injured with a conservative estimate of up to 10,000 deaths with large-scale killings, gang rapes and arson attacks.

The inquiry said in one village alone in the Rakhine State, Min Gyi, "women and girls were taken to nearby houses, gang raped, then killed or severely injured.

"Houses were locked and set on fire. Few survived. In numerous other villages the number of casualties was also markedly high. Bodies were transported in military vehicles, burned and disposed of in mass graves."

"These policies and practices violate Myanmar's obligations under international law and amount to criminal conduct," it added. "They are also unwarranted; military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children, and burning entire villages. The Tatmadaw's (Myanmar's armed forces') tactics are consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats, especially in Rakhine State, but also in northern Myanmar."

The report said that generals carried out these crimes with "genocidal intent" and the commander in chief and five generals should be prosecuted in relation to recent events in the Rakhine State.

The independent investigators said that the Security Council should ensure accountability for the crimes under international law committed in Myanmar by referring the case to the International Criminal Court.</s>Following a United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission on Myanmar, a damning U.N. report published Monday concludes that the nation's military leaders, including its top commander, should be further investigated and prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed against Rohingya Muslims in the wake of a violent crackdown last August that forced more than half a million refugees to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

"The international community, through the United Nations, should use all diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means to assist Myanmar in meeting its responsibility to protect its people from genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes."

—U.N. report"The gross human rights violations and abuses committed in Kachin, Rakhine, and Shan states," which "stem from deep fractures in society and structural problems that have been apparent and unaddressed for decades," the report asserts, "undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law."

The report (pdf) comes from a yearlong investigation conducted by a three-member panel, which relied on 875 in-depth interviews with victims and eyewitnesses, satellite images, and verified documents, photographs, and videos. It documents crimes including murder, enforced disappearance, enslavement, imprisonment, torture, rape, and sexual slavery.

While the report determines that six leaders of the Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw—most notably Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing—bear the greatest responsibility for such crimes, it also charges that State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, "has not used her de facto position as head of government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events in Rakhine State."

Among the report's key recommendations, it declares, "The international community, through the United Nations, should use all diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means to assist Myanmar in meeting its responsibility to protect its people from genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes."

It also urges the U.N. Security Council to "ensure accountability for crimes under international law committed in Myanmar, preferably by referring the situation to the International Criminal Court or alternatively by creating an ad hoc international criminal tribunal," as well as to "adopt targeted individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against those who appear most responsible for serious crimes under international law" and to "impose an arms embargo on Myanmar."

Human rights advocates responded to the findings, which bolster previous reports from U.N. officials and international news agencies, with immediate calls for actions.

"The international community has the responsibility to act to ensure justice and accountability. Failing to do so sends a dangerous message that Myanmar's military will not only enjoy impunity but is free to commit such atrocities again."

—Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said that the "powerful report and clear recommendations demonstrate the obvious need for concrete steps to advance criminal justice for atrocious crimes, instead of more hollow condemnations and expressions of concern," especially considering that "so far, condemnations without action by U.N. member states have only emboldened a culture of violence and oppression in Myanmar."

Tirana Hassan, director of crisis response at Amnesty International, said the report makes "clear that the Myanmar authorities are incapable of bringing to justice those responsible," which means that "the international community has the responsibility to act to ensure justice and accountability. Failing to do so sends a dangerous message that Myanmar's military will not only enjoy impunity but is free to commit such atrocities again."

The report will "have a big impact internationally, coming from the main U.N.-mandated body investigating the violence against the Rohingya, and also covering armed conflict in Shan, and Kachin states," Richard Horsey, a former U.N. diplomat in Myanmar and longtime Yangon-based analyst, told the Washington Post. "Its specific finding that there is sufficient grounds for investigation and prosecution of military commanders for genocide is likely to have particularly serious diplomatic, not only legal, consequences."

After the report's release, Facebook—according to a company blog post—removed "18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account, and 52 Facebook Pages, followed by almost 12 million people," specifically banning 20 individuals and organizations, including the commander-in-chief and the military's Myawady television network, "to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation." Reuters noted that the "action means an essential blackout of the military's main channel of public communication."</s>UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27 (APP):Myanmar’s army commander and other top generals should face trial in an international court for genocide against Rohingya Muslims and for crimes against humanity targeting other ethnic minorities, United Nations experts said Monday after a year-long investigation.

 Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the commander in chief of Myanmar’s army, is one of six generals named as priority subjects for investigation and prosecution by a independent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar in a report detailing military campaigns involving atrocities that “undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law.”

 The three-member panel leveled the most serious charge, genocide, over the ferocious campaign unleashed by the Buddhist-majority security forces against Rohingya Muslims a year ago. That campaign, in the state of Rakhine, sent more than 700,000 fleeing across the border to Bangladesh.

 The Mission, established by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council in March 2017, found patterns of gross human rights violations and abuses committed in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan States that “undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law”, principally by Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, but also by other security forces.

 “Military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children, and burning entire villages. The Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) tactics are consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats, especially in Rakhine State, but also in northern Myanmar,” the report states.

 “They are shocking for the level of denial, normalcy and impunity that is attached to them. The Tatmadaw’s contempt for human life, integrity and freedom, and for international law generally, should be a cause of concern for the entire population.”

 The crimes against humanity committed in Kachin, Shan and Rakhine States include murder; imprisonment; enforced disappearance; torture; rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence; persecution and enslavement. In addition, in Rakhine State, the elements of the crimes against humanity of extermination and deportation are also present.

 The Mission also concluded “there is sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw chain of command, so that a competent court can determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine State.”

 “The crimes in Rakhine State, and the manner in which they were perpetrated, are similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal intent to be established in other contexts,” the report states. “Factors pointing at such intent include the broader oppressive context and hate rhetoric; specific utterances of commanders and direct perpetrators; exclusionary policies, including to alter the demographic composition of Rakhine State; the level of organization indicating a plan for destruction; and the extreme scale and brutality of the violence.”

 The Mission has drawn up a list of alleged perpetrators as priority subjects for investigation and prosecution, whom it believes had effective control and bear the greatest responsibility. Responsibility starts at the top, with the Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing. Five other military commanders are also named in the report: the Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Vice Senior-General Soe Win; the Commander, Bureau of Special Operations-3, Lieutenant-General Aung Kyaw Zaw; the Commander, Western Regional Military Command, Major-General Maung Maung Soe; the Commander, 33rd Light Infantry Division, Brigadier-General Aung Aung; the Commander, 99th Light Infantry Division, Brigadier-General Than Oo. A longer list of names will be kept in the custody of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and can be shared with any competent and credible body pursuing accountability in line with international norms and standards.

 The report notes that civilian authorities had little scope to control the actions of the Tatmadaw. It also finds that “through their acts and omissions, the civilian authorities have contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes.”

 “The State Counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has not used her de facto position as Head of Government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events in Rakhine State,” the report states.

 “Impunity is deeply entrenched in Myanmar’s political and legal system, effectively placing the Tatmadaw above the law,” the report states, adding that justice has therefore remained elusive for victims in the country for decades. “The impetus for accountability must come from the international community.”

 The Mission called for the situation in Myanmar to be referred to the International Criminal Court or for an ad hoc international criminal tribunal to be created. In the interim, it called for an independent, impartial mechanism to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of violations. It also recommended targeted individual sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible.

 A fuller report, containing detailed factual information and legal analysis will be published and presented to the Human Rights Council on 18 September. It will include a significant amount of satellite imagery analysis.</s>A U.N. fact-finding mission has recommended that Myanmar military leaders be investigated for genocidal acts against Rohingyas in the Rakhine state and crimes committed against Christians and other minorities in two other states.

In what is said to be the harshest U.N. condemnation of the situation in Myanmar, a new 20-page report from a mandated three-member fact-finding mission documented systemic murder, rape, sexual enslavement and other human rights abuses committed by the nation's military forces (Tatmadaw) in the Rakhine, Shan and Kachin states.

The report, based on over 847 interviews, concludes that there is sufficient evidence to warrant the investigation and prosecution of six senior military officials in the Tatmadaw chain of command to "determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine state."

Myanmar officials have claimed that there attacks on the communities were responses to security threats from rebel groups.

"These policies and practices violate Myanmar's obligations under international law and amount to criminal conduct. They are also unwarranted; military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children, and burning entire villages," the mission report states. "The Tatmadaw's tactics are consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats, especially in Rakhine state, but also in northern Myanmar."

In the Rakhine state, over 700,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to neighboring Bangladesh after the beginning of a planned government-led onslaught on Aug. 25, 2017. The U.N. mission stresses that the crimes committed in the Rakhine state "may also amount to the crime of apartheid."

The mission concretely asserts that crimes against humanity "have been committed" in the Kachin, Rakhine and Shan states mostly by the Tatmadaw. The report states that estimates show that 100,000 people are living as internally displaced persons in Kachin and Shan states on top of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas that fled to Bangladesh.

In Kachin, which borders China and India, thousands are seeking shelter inside Baptist churches. Since a cease-fire ended between the military and Kachin rebels in 2011, over 400 Kachin villages are said to have been destroyed. Previous reports have indicated that in the last 18 months, as many as 60 churches have been destroyed and several of them have been replaced with Buddhist pagodas.

"For Kachin and Shan states, these include crimes against humanity of murder; imprisonment; enforced disappearance; torture; rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence; persecution; and enslavement," the U.N. report states.

In the Rakhine state, the report stresses that additional crimes against humanity were committed that had the "elements of extermination and deportation" that could possibly amount to the "crime of apartheid."

"For both northern Myanmar and Rakhine State, the acts were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack on a civilian population," the mission found.

The military leaders the mission recommends for prosecution include Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, his deputy commander-in-chief and commanders of four military divisions, including the 33rd and 99th infantry divisions that were sanctioned by the U.S. government earlier this month.

The mission noted that while some nonstate armed groups have also committed crimes against civilians, the Tatmadaw "was the main perpetrator of serious human rights violations and crimes under international law" in those three states.

In Rakhine state, the Myanmar Police Force, Border Guard Police, local authorities, militias, militant "civilian" groups, politicians and even monks participated in human rights violations to some extent against the predominantly Muslim Rohingya community, the report explains.

The mission calls on the U.N. Security Council to respond by referring the situation to the International Criminal Court or by creating an "ad hoc international criminal tribunal." The mission also calls for an arms embargo on Myanmar and sanctions to be placed against those who are "most responsible" for the crimes.

The report criticized Myanmar's civilian leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Although civilian authorities have little control over military operations, the mission found that "nothing indicates that civilian authorities used their limited powers to influence the situation in Rakhine state where crimes were being perpetrated."

"The state Counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has not used her de facto position as head of government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events, or seek alternative avenues to meet a responsibility to protect the civilian population," the report states. "On the contrary, the civilian authorities have spread false narratives; denied the Tatmadaw's wrongdoing; blocked independent investigations, including of the fact-finding mission; and overseen destruction of evidence. Through their acts and omissions, the civilian authorities have contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes."

Human rights advocates praised the report, as it emboldens their plea for the U.N. Security Council to recommend the Myanmar military officials for prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

"The U.N. report appropriately designates the situation in Burma as a genocide and crimes against humanity. Burmese generals should be referred to the International Criminal Court, now the U.N. has a duty to refer Burma to the ICC," Malik Mujahid, chair of the Faith Coalition to Stop Genocide in Burma, said in a statement shared with The Christian Post. "Aung San Suu Kyi is criticized, but rightfully so. Her office welcomed the deployment of the 33rd and 99th infantry. She is fully complicit. It's time for President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Mike] Pompeo to act, full sanctions on Burma excluding food and medicine."

The U.N. report comes on the heels of an extensive 160-page report by the human rights group Fortify Rights on the genocidal acts committed in Rakhine state earlier this summer. Researchers interviewed over 250 survivors and military personnel and found that the military planned the systemic attack against the Rohingya community, a minority of which is Hindu.

The report states that the Tatmadaw trained neighboring civilian populations to attack the Rohingya.

"This will necessarily shift the thinking of U.N. member states — business as usual is no longer an option," Smith said in a statement. "The next logical step is for member states to ensure those responsible are held accountable."

However, a referral to the ICC would require the backing of the five permanent member states of the U.N. Security Council. Member nation China could likely stand in the way of making an ICC referral a reality.

The fact-finding mission is planning to release a more detailed report on Sept. 18.

The U.S. State Department is also expected to release its own report on the situation in Myanmar in the coming days or weeks.</s>Geneva, Aug 27 (IANS) Top military leaders in Myanmar, including the commander-in-chief, must be investigated and prosecuted for genocide in Rakhine state and crimes against humanity in other areas, according to a UN report released on Monday.

The report — based on hundreds of interviews, research and analysis by a UN-mandated fact-finding mission — is the strongest condemnation by the UN of the Myanmar military’s actions following the crackdown on Rohingya Muslims last August.

It extended culpability for the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine state to Myanmar’s civilian government, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The civilian government, the report said, failed to speak out against unfolding events, spread “false narratives, oversaw the destruction of evidence in Rakhine state and blocked independent investigations”.

“Through their acts and omissions, the civilian authorities contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes,” it said. The UN report called for the case to be referred to the International Criminal Court of Justice, according to the BBC.

The Army’s tactics were “consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats”, it said.

The fact-finding mission went beyond the military’s actions in Rakhine and investigated its conduct more broadly since 2011, a time when the world was celebrating the country’s opening to the West and nominally democratic transformation.

The UN report found “patterns of gross human rights violations and abuses committed in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan state” that “undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law”.

The Myanmar government has consistently said its operations targeted militant or insurgent threats. But the report said that the crimes it documented were “shocking for the level of denial, normalcy and impunity that was attached to them”.

“Military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children and burning entire villages.”

The fact-finding mission concluded that there was “sufficient information” to open a genocide and war crimes investigation of senior Myanmar generals. A spokesman for Myanmar’s armed forces could not be reached for comment.

The report also noted that Myanmar authorities “do not tolerate scrutiny or criticism and use various laws to arrest, detain or harass human rights defenders and journalists”.

“The report will have a big impact internationally,” Richard Horsey, a former UN diplomat in Myanmar and long time Yangon-based analyst, was cited as saying by the Washington Post.

“Its specific finding that there was sufficient ground for investigation and prosecution of military commanders for genocide was likely to have particularly serious diplomatic, not only legal, consequences,” he said.

The UN fact-finding mission will present a detailed report to the Human Rights Council on September 18.</s>Top military leaders of Myanmar should be prosecuted for genocide against the Rohingya population in the country’s Rakhine state, a United Nations report on Monday said. The document was written by an independent three-member fact-finding mission of the UN Human Rights Council.

The report named commander-in-chief of the Myanmar Army, Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, and said he should be prosecuted of human rights abuse and genocide, along with five other generals. It said the nature, scale, and organisation of the operations against the Rohingya Muslims “suggests a level of pre-planning and design” on the part of leadership consistent with the vision of Aung Hlaing.

Last August, the Myanmar army started a brutal crackdown in Rakhine state in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army on police posts and a military base. This led to more than 7 lakh Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The mission members spoke to many Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, who highlighted serious human rights violations by the Myanmar security forces. On Saturday, thousands of Rohingya refugees staged protests at a camp in Cox’s Bazaar to mark the the first anniversary of the military crackdown.

The report said the “clearance operations” to drive out the Rohingya were led by the army, along with other security forces such as the Myanmar Police Force and the Border Guard Police. Some of the most serious violations were committed by the divisions reporting directly to the Deputy Commander-in-Chief General Soe Win. “Almost all instances of sexual violence are attributable to the Tatmadaw [the Myanmar Armed Forces],” it said.

In its final 20-page report, the mission said there was “genocidal intent” behind the actions of the Myanmar government. “The crimes in Rakhine State, and the manner in which they were perpetrated, are similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal intent to be established in other contexts,” it said. “There is sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw [army] chain of command, so that a competent court can determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine state.”

The mission said there was no cooperation from the Myanmar government, which did not grant its members access and failed to reply to any communication.

The report said a special mechanism be set up to keep watch on the human rights situation in Myanmar, adding that the United Nations’ own role in the country since 2011 should be reviewed to see if it did enough to prevent the crisis. The authors criticised Aung San Suu Kyi, and said she had “not used her de facto position as Head of Government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events” in Rakhine state.

Earlier, more than 130 members of parliament from five countries in south-east Asia had demanded that Myanmar be investigated by the International Criminal Court, reported The Guardian.</s>United Nations investigators on Monday called for an international probe and prosecution of Myanmar's army chief and five other top military commanders for genocide against the country's Rohingya minority.

"Myanmar’s top military generals, including Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, must be investigated and prosecuted for genocide in the north of Rakhine State, as well as for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States," a UN-backed fact-finding mission said.

Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled northern Rakhine state to Bangladesh after Myanmar launched a brutal crackdown last August on insurgents amid accounts of arson, murder and rape at the hands of soldiers and vigilante mobs in the mainly Buddhist country.

Myanmar has vehemently denied allegations of ethnic cleansing, insisting it was responding to attacks by Rohingya rebels.

But in Monday's report, the UN mission insisted the army tactics had been "consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats."

The mission, which was created by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2017, concluded in a report that "there is sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw (Myanmar army) chain of command."

"The crimes in Rakhine State, and the manner in which they were perpetrated, are similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal intent to be established in other contexts," the report said.

The investigators named Min Aung Hlaing and five other top military commanders, adding that a longer list of names could be shared with "any competent and credible body pursuing accountability in line with international norms and standards."

Criticism was also directed at Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been the target of global vitriol for a perceived failure to stand up for the stateless minority.

The report found that she had "not used her de facto position as head of government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events."

While acknowledging that she and other civilian authorities had little influence on military actions, it said that they "through their acts and omissions... have contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes."

The investigators called on the UN Security Council to refer the Myanmar situation to the International Criminal Court, or for an ad hoc international criminal tribunal to be created.

They also recommended an arms embargo and "targeted individual sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible."</s>GENEVA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Muslim Rohingya with "genocidal intent" and the commander-in-chief and five generals should be prosecuted for orchestrating the gravest crimes under law, U.N. investigators said on Monday.

The civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi has allowed hate speech to thrive, destroyed documents and failed to protect minorities from crimes against humanity and war crimes by the army in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states, they said in a report.

In doing so, it "contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes", the report said.

A year ago, government troops led a brutal crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 30 Myanmar police posts and a military base.

Some 700,000 Rohingya fled the crackdown and most are now living in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

The U.N. report said the military action, which included the scorching of villages, was "grossly disproportionate to actual security threats".

The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in countries including Bosnia and Sudan and in the Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria.

"The crimes in Rakhine State, and the manner in which they were perpetrated, are similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal intent to be established in other contexts," said the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar.

In the final 20-page report, it said: "There is sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw (army) chain of command, so that a competent court can determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine state."

The Myanmar government, which was sent an advance copy of the U.N. report in line with standard practice, has not commented.

Contacted by phone, Myanmar military spokesman Major General Tun Tun Nyi said he could not immediately comment.

The U.N. panel, led by former Indonesian attorney-general Marzuki Darusman, named the Myanmar army's commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and five other generals who should face justice.

They included Brigadier-General Aung Aung, commander of the 33rd Light Infantry Division, which oversaw operations in the coastal village of Inn Din where 10 Rohingya captive boys and men were killed.

Reuters was unable to contact Min Aung Hlaing or Aung Aung on Monday.

The massacre was uncovered by two Reuters journalists - Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28 - who were arrested as a result last December and are being tried on charges of violating the country's Official Secrets Act. The court had been due to deliver its verdict on Monday, but at a brief hearing earlier the proceedings were postponed until Sept. 3.

In April, seven soldiers were sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labour for participating in the massacre.

The report said Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, "has not used her de facto position as Head of Government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events, or seek alternative avenues to meet a responsibility to protect the civilian population".

Suu Kyi's spokesman, Zaw Htay, could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.

The top U.N. human rights official Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has called the crackdown against the Rohingya a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

Suu Kyi's government has rejected most allegations of atrocities made against the security forces by refugees. It has built transit centres to receive Rohingya returnees to western Rakhine state, but U.N. aid agencies say that it is not yet safe for them to return.

The U.N. Security Council should ensure all perpetrators are held to account, preferably by referring Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or by creating an ad hoc tribunal, the investigators said.

The Security Council should "adopt targeted individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against those who appear most responsible for serious crimes under international law" and impose an arms embargo on Myanmar, they said.

The four other generals the U.N. panel said should be prosecuted were named as the army deputy commander-in-chief, Vice Senior-General Soe Win; the commander of the Bureau of Special Operations-3, Lieutenant-General Aung Kyaw Zaw; the commander of Western Regional Military Command, Major-General Maung Maung Soe; and the commander of 99th Light Infantry Division, Brigadier-General Than Oo.

Reuters was not able to contact those four generals on Monday.

The panel, set up last year, interviewed 875 victims and witnesses in Bangladesh and other countries, and analysed documents, videos, photographs and satellite images.

Decades of state-sponsored stigmatisation against Rohingya had resulted in "institutionalised oppression from birth to death", the report said.

The Rohingya, who regard themselves as native to Rakhine state, are widely considered as interlopers by Myanmar's Buddhist majority and are denied citizenship.

"The Tatmadaw acts with complete impunity and has never been held accountable. Its standard response is to deny, dismiss and obstruct," the U.N. report said.

The report also criticised Facebook's response to allegations, including by members of the same U.N. panel in March, that the social media giant had been used to incite violence and hatred against the Rohingyas.

"Although improved in recent months, Facebook's response has been slow and ineffective. The extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined," it said.

Facebook declined to comment in an emailed statement, saying it had not yet seen the report.

Facebook said in a statement issued 10 days ago following a Reuters investigative report into its failure to combat hate speech against the Rohingya and other Muslims that it had been "too slow" to address the problem in Myanmar and was acting to remedy the situation by hiring more Burmese speakers and investing in technology to identify problematic content.

International courts have a mixed record on prosecutions for genocide.

In 2008, a U.N. court sentenced former army colonel Theoneste Bagosora, accused of masterminding the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994, to life in prison on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. His sentence was later cut to 35 years on appeal.

In 2016, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted by U.N. judges of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. He is appealing against the conviction.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Sudan President Omar al-Bashir in 2009 and 2010 over his alleged role in war crimes including genocide in Sudan´s breakaway Darfur province in 2003. He remains in office. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Adrian Croft)</s>GENEVA
• United Nations investigators yesterday called for an international probe and prosecution of Myanmar's army chief and five other top military commanders for genocide against the country's Rohingya minority.

Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled northern Rakhine state to Bangladesh after Myanmar launc-hed a brutal crackdown on insurgents in August last year amid accounts of arson, murder and rape by soldiers and vigilante mobs in the mainly Buddhist country.

Myanmar has vehemently denied allegations of ethnic cleansing, insisting it was responding to attacks by Rohingya rebels.

But yesterday, a UN-backed fact-finding mission probing violations in Myanmar said the country's "top military generals, including Commander-in-Chief, Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, must be investigated and prosecuted for genocide in the north of Rakhine state".

They should also be investigated and prosecuted for "crimes against humanity and war crimes in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states", it said, insisting that army tactics were "consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats".

The mission, created by the UN Human Rights Council in March last year, said in its report that "there is sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw (Myanmar army) chain of command". "The crimes in Rakhine state, and the manner in which they were perpetrated, are similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal intent to be established in other contexts."

The investigators named Gen Min Aung Hlaing and five other top military commanders. Mr Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, said Gen Min Aung Hlaing should step down.

The Myanmar government, which was sent an advance copy of the UN report, did not comment. A military spokesman said ahead of a news conference that he could not immediately comment on the UN report.

The report also directed criticism at Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate who has been the target of global vitriol for a perceived failure to stand up for the stateless minority. The report found she had "not used her de facto position as head of government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events".

While acknowledging she and the other civilian authorities had little influence on military actions, it said that they "through their acts and omissions... have contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes".

Myanmar never permitted the UN investigators access to the country, but they said that in the course of their investigation, they interviewed 857 victims and eyewitnesses, and used satellite imagery and authenticated documents, photographs and videos as a basis to reach their conclusions.

The report detailed horrifying atrocities committed against the Rohingya, including murder, enforced disappearance, torture, rape and other sexual violence "perpetrated on a massive scale". Information collected by the investigators suggested that an estimate by the Doctors Without Borders charity - that up to 10,000 Rohingya were killed in the 2017 crackdown - was conservative.

They also found that soldiers carried out "large-scale gang rape", sometimes of as many as 40 girls and women at once, in at least 10 Rakhine villages. "The scale, brutality and systematic nature of these violations indicate that rape and sexual violence are part of a deliberate strategy to intimidate, terrorise or punish a civilian population, and are used as a tactic of war," it said.

Warning that "impunity is deeply entrenched in Myanmar's political and legal system", the investigators stressed that the only chance of obtaining accountability was through the international justice system.

They called on the UN Security Council to refer the issue to the International Criminal Court, or for an ad hoc international criminal tribunal to be created. They recommended an arms embargo and "targeted individual sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible" .

The report also called for an independent investigation of the extent to which posts on Facebook "led to real-world discrimination and violence". Facebook said yesterday it is banning 20 Myanmar individuals and organisations, including Gen Min Aung Hlaing, to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation.</s>A United Nations report has recommended that top Myanmar military officials “be investigated and prosecuted” for the carrying out of genocide and other grave atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority in the country’s far west.

The report marks the first time that the UN has explicitly called for Myanmar’s officials to face genocide charges over their campaign in the country’s Rakhine State.

The publication comes just a year after roughly 700,000 Rohingya men, woman and children fled Myanmar over the border into neighboring Bangladesh amidst violence between the country’s army and a faction of armed Rohingya insurgents.

The report graphically documents numerous cases of mass killing, systematic rape and the torturing of children.

“In some cases, hundreds of people died. Houses were locked and set on fire. Few survived,” the report reads.

Myanmar’s military — called the ‘Tatmadaw’ — have argued that civilian deaths were unintentional in what was merely an effort to root out Rohingya terrorist groups hiding amongst the villagers.

The UN, however, dismissed such claims, concluding that, “military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang raping woman, assaulting children, and burning entire villages. The Tatmadaw’s tactics are consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats.”

The UN points the finger at particular members of the Tatmadaw’s echelon and blames five senior officials for orchestrating a campaign of ethnic cleansing. In addition, it names the notorious Commander-in-Cheif of the military, Min Aung Hlaing, as being guilty of spearheading the campaign and calls for his prosecution at the International Criminal Court.

Myanmar’s Western-backed leader, Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, was also singled out in the report over what it described as her “inaction.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, “has not used her de facto position as Head of Government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events, or seek alternative avenues to meet a responsibility to protect the civilian population,” the report says.

This is, however, not the first time that the UN has taken aim at Suu Kyi, who was described by former US president Barack Obama in 2012 as “an icon of democracy.” Back in December 2017, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, suggested that Myanmar’s leader could be “culpable” for the crimes being meted out at that time against the Rohingya, which included forced displacement and mass killings.

"Given the scale of the military operation, clearly these would have to be decisions taken at a high level," said the high commissioner.

The UN Panel also called out social media, particularly industry giant Facebook, for allowing what it described as ‘hate speech’ against the Rohingya to go unchecked online.

According to the UN, Facebook, which has become one of Myanmar’s most used websites in recent years, has been exploited by vigilante groups and the country’s military to propagate hate speech and anti-Rohingya “propaganda.”

Facebook responded immediately to the allegations on Monday by declaring that it has blocked the accounts of 20 Myanmar officials and organizations found by the UN to have “committed or enabled serious human rights abuses.”

The United States, which has long championed Aung San Suu Kyi as a poster girl of democracy promotion, is reportedly conducting its own inquiry into the Myanmar military’s campaign. A State Department spokeswoman has been quoted as saying that the UN report clearly demonstrated “widespread human rights abuses” by security forces.

Yet, one official widely cited on condition of anonymity has said that the latest UN findings could lay enough pressure on the Trump administration for it to take some kind of firmer action, likely in the form of heavy sanctions against Suu Kyi and her government.
A United Nations Human Rights Council report based on 875 interviews recommends Min Aung Hlaing and five other generals in Myanmar be investigated and prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes since the 1960s.