John McCain and Angelina Jolie: America Should Lead in Saving the Rohingya

Around the world, there is profound concern that America is giving up the mantle of global leadership. Our steady retreat over the past decade has contributed to a wide array of complex global challenges — a dangerous erosion of the rule of law, gross human rights violations and the decline of the rules-based international order that was designed in the aftermath of two world wars to prevent conflict and deter mass atrocities.

We’ve seen this unfold in Syria, where the United States and the international community have shamefully failed to address brutal violence that has engulfed the country for seven years, led to hundreds of thousands dead and contributed to the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II.

And sadly, we are seeing now this same lack of effective diplomacy in Myanmar, formerly Burma, where since last summer 680,000 Rohingya Muslims have been forced to flee a systematic military campaign of killings, arson, rape and other mass atrocities amounting to ethnic cleansing.

Attacks against the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship under Burmese law, are not new. They have faced decades of repression, discrimination, harassment and violence. In recent months, thousands of Rohingya have been slaughtered, countless women and girls have been gang-raped, civilians have been burned alive, and villages have been razed. Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of horrific cases, including that of a 15-year-old girl who reported being tied to a tree and raped repeatedly by a group of armed men. Other survivors described children and the elderly locked in their homes and burned alive.