H. Res. 1091, Calling on the Government of Burma to release Burmese journalists

On Tuesday, December 11, 2018, the House will consider H. Res. 1091, Calling on the Government of Burma to release Burmese journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo sentenced to seven years imprisonment after investigating attacks against civilians by Burma’s military and security forces, and for other purposes, under suspension of the rules. This resolution was introduced on September 27, 2018 by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) and was referred to referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Summary

H. Res. 1091 expresses the sense of the House that atrocities committed against the Rohingya by the Burmese military and security forces since August 2017 are genocide, and outlines a series of findings to support this declaration. The resolution also calls for the Burmese government to immediately release journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from prison.

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Background

This resolution has been introduced as a reaction to the following actions:

• In recent decades the Rohingya people have lost, through systematic discrimination by Burmese national, state, and local authorities, a range of civil and political rights, including citizenship, and face barriers today such that they have been rendered stateless;
• The Burmese military and security forces have committed numerous crimes against civilians over many years in Burma’s Rakhine, Shan, Kachin, and Karen States;
• Beginning August 25, 2017, the Burmese military and security forces, as well as civilian mobs, carried out widespread attacks, rapes, killings, and the burning of villages throughout Rakhine State resulting in approximately 730,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh and bringing the total Rohingya refugee population in Cox’s Bazar to over 900,000;
• On November 14, 2018, Vice President Mike Pence said, ‘‘This is a tragedy that has touched the hearts of millions of Americans. The violence and persecution by military and vigilantes that resulted in driving 700,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh is without excuse.’’;
• To date, though the refugee crisis is not of their making, the Government of Bangladesh has generously accommodated the rapid and massive influx of Rohingya refugees into Cox’s Bazar;
• The Government of Bangladesh continues to express concern about the lack of accountability for the perpetrators of these crimes and the need to find durable solutions;
• In June 2018, it was announced that the United Nations and the Government of Burma had reached an agreement for the ‘‘voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable’’ return of Rohinyga to Burma;
• That agreement was contingent upon the provision of unimpeded access to northern Rakhine by United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in order to verify the necessary conditions on the ground for such voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable returns;
• Burma’s civilian government, led by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, has not yet taken the necessary steps to address the violence directed against the Rohingya and has failed to create the necessary conditions for returns, including by actively impeding access to northern Rakhine by UNHCR, UNDP, humanitarian organizations, and journalists;
• On August 24, 2018, the United Nations International Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar released a preliminary report stating that, ‘‘The Mission concluded . . . that 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.’’;
• On August 25, 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said ‘‘A year ago, following deadly militant attacks, security forces responded by launching abhorrent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Rohingya in Burma’’, and continued ‘‘The U.S. will continue to hold those responsible accountable. The military must respect human rights for Burma’s democracy to succeed.’’;
• Ihe Department of the Treasury announced sanctions on five Tatmadaw officers and two Tatmadaw units for human rights abuses in Rakhine, Kachin, and Shan States;
• On September 24, 2018, the Department of State released a report entitled ‘‘Documentation of Atrocities in Northern Rakhine State’’ that stated the military ‘‘targeted civilians indiscriminately and often with extreme brutality’’ and that the violence in northern Rakhine State was ‘‘extreme, large-scale, widespread and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving gout the Rohingya residents’’ and that the ‘‘scope and scale of the military’s operations indicate that they were well-planned and coordinated’’
• Reuters, a highly respected worldwide news organization, discovered evidence of mass murder in the village of Inn Din as part of its ongoing reporting on the Burmese military’s campaign against the Rohingya, and deployed journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo to factcheck and interview eyewitnesses to these and other events;
• On December 12, 2017, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested by Burmese security forces in a suburb of Yangon and remain in custody to date;
• On April 20, 2018, a key witness for the prosecution, Police Captain Moe Yan Naing, testified that he was ordered by his superiors to ‘‘trap’’ Wa Lone;
• On September 3, 2018, Yangon Northern District Judge Ye Lwin ruled that Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo breached the colonial-era Official Secrets Act during their investigation into the massacre in Inn Din and subsequently sentenced them each to 7 years in prison with hard labor, despite admissions by the police under oath in court that the documents in question were planted with the journalists as a front for their arrest;
• United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Burma’s Foreign Minister, Kyaw Tin, at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in August 2018 and called for the immediate release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo;
• On September 4, 2018, Vice President Mike Pence stated, ‘‘Wa Lone & Kyaw Soe Oo should be commended—not imprisoned—for their work exposing human rights violations [and] mass killings. Freedom of religion [and] freedom of the press are essential to a strong democracy.’’;
• Members of Congress, professional journalist organizations, human rights groups, and other distinguished leaders from around the world have called on the Burmese authorities to release Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from their unjust imprisonment;
• The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, signed at Paris December 9, 1948 declares that ‘‘means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group’’ and ‘‘The following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.’’

  Cost

  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has previously estimated that bills of this kind would have no significant effect on the federal budget.