WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has begun a review of whether to declare the Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingya minority a genocide and should have an answer “in the not-too-distant future,” a State Department official told U.S. senators on Thursday.
“The process has begun. I can’t get into more detail than that at this point… but the secretary (Secretary of State Antony Blinken) is very committed to the review and to this process and I think we will have an answer in the not-too-distant future,” Scott Busby, acting principal deputy assistant Secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, said.
Busby testified on Thursday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee hearing looking at the U.S. response to the coup in Myanmar.
Reuters reported on Thursday that in the last days of the Trump administration, some U.S. officials urged outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to formally declare that the Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingya minority was a genocide, but Pompeo never made that call.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
