UNITED NATIONS: The UN officer investigating grave human rights abuses in Myanmar believes that the killing of 99 Hindus by a Rohingya group in that country may have been an international crime.
Nicholas Koumjian, the head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, responded to a question regarding the 2017 atrocity that Amnesty International had documented. He said, "The incident you're talking about, a massacre of close to 100 people, is obviously very serious and could qualify as an international crime." He stated that the incident "was very serious and absolutely deserving of attention" and that "we are looking at actions by non-state actors."
Amnesty International reported that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) killed 99 Hindus - women, men, and children - and abducted several Hindu villagers inside Myanmar’s Rakhine State in August 2017.
ARSA is led by Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi, a Karachi-born Rohingya. Unlike past atrocities in Myanmar, the slaughter of the Hindus has not drawn much worldwide attention or broad criticism.
According to Amnesty International's Crisis Response Director Tirana Hassan, "the investigation on the ground sheds much-needed light on the largely under-reported human rights abuses by ARSA during northern Rakhine State's unspeakably dark recent history." The report on the killings of Hindus in 2018 was released by the organisation.