, 2017
Myanmar's government has been accused of committing crimes that are alleged to amount to genocide against the
Muslim Rohingya minority. For many years, the Rohingya had been one the primary targets of
hate crimes and discrimination in the country, much of which was given tacit encouragement by extremist nationalist Buddhist monks and the military-controlled government. Muslim groups have claimed that they were subjected to genocide, torture, arbitrary detention, and cruel,
inhuman, and degrading treatment. On 25 August 2017, the Myanmar military forces and local
Buddhist extremists started attacking the
Rohingya people and committing atrocities against them in the country's north-west
Rakhine State. The atrocities included attacks on Rohingya people and locations, looting Rohingya villages and burning them down, the mass killing of Rohingya civilians,
gang rapes, and other acts of sexual violence. In December 2017, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) estimated that during the persecution, the military and local Buddhists killed at least 10,000 Rohingya people. At least 392 Rohingya villages in Rakhine state were reported as burned down and destroyed, as well as the looting of many Rohingya houses, and widespread gang rapes and other forms of sexual violence against the Rohingya Muslim women and girls. The military drive also displaced a large number of Rohingya people and made them refugees. According to the United Nations reports, , over 700,000 Rohingya people had either fled or were driven out of Rakhine state and then, they took shelter as refugees in neighboring
Bangladesh. In December 2017, two Reuters journalists who had been covering the
Inn Din massacre event were arrested and imprisoned. The 2017 persecution of the Rohingya Muslims and non-Muslims has been classified as an act of
ethnic cleansing and
genocide by various
United Nations agencies,
International Criminal Court officials, human rights groups, and governments. British prime minister
Theresa May and
United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called it "ethnic cleansing" while the
French President Emmanuel Macron described the situation as "genocide". The United Nations described the persecution as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing". In late September that year, a seven-member panel of the
Permanent Peoples' Tribunal found the Myanmar military and the Myanmar authority guilty of the crime of genocide against the Rohingya and the
Kachin minority groups. The Myanmar leader and
State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi was again criticised for her silence on the issue and her support of the military's actions. Subsequently, in November 2017, the governments of
Bangladesh and
Myanmar signed a deal to facilitate the return of Rohingya refugees to their native
Rakhine state within two months, drawing a mixed response from international onlookers. In August 2018, the office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, reporting the findings of its investigation into the August–September 2017 events, declared that the Myanmar military—the
Tatmadaw, and several of its commanders (including Commander-in-chief Senior General
Min Aung Hlaing)—should face charges in the
International Criminal Court for "
crimes against humanity", including acts of "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide", particularly for the August–September 2017 attacks on the Rohingya. == 2019–2023: Brazil ==