Genocidal intent? Deserters recount Rohingya atrocities

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. President Donald Trump dismisses it as the deep State Department. America's foreign service is demoralized, help and increasingly sidelined. Thanks in large part to Mr. Trump's efforts, we examine the agency's decline and what it means for global diplomacy. And many women in China suffer the expectation that by age 30, they should have a good job, a husband and a baby. A new television show thumbs its nose at a standard that arose in the era of Confucius, and viewers are lapping it up. But first, We wiped out about 20 Muslim villages, says Xoning Tun, following orders to kill all, irrespective of children and adults. Private Tun says his orders came directly from a senior commander in the army of Myanmar. His battalion, he says, killed about 80 Muslims, men and women, the elderly and children. They also raped Muslim women. He lists name after name of his superiors as he recounts the rapes. There were a lot of them, he says. He cannot remember them all. The emotionless testimony which emerged this week is haunting, shocking, but it's entirely in line with allegations that have been made for years against Myanmar's military. In 2017, the army went on a rampage in Rakhine State, home to the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority. Stories emerged of soldiers burning whole villages to the ground after unspeakable violence to the residents.

They came at 8am and hacked my husband to death. I witnessed this. They hacked him with a long knife.

The army claimed to be putting down a Rohingya rebellion, that military abuses were just false rumors. But testimony from Private Tun and another soldier claiming similar orders from on high makes these horrific allegations harder to deny.

Private Miuyun Thanh and Private Za Nang Tan are two Burmese soldiers who are currently being questioned by the International Criminal Court for their role in the persecution of the Rohingya.

Charlie McCann is our Southeast Asia correspondent.

They say that they participated in the massacre of a number of Rohingya. One of them was involved in the rape of a woman. And taken together, they may be responsible for the killing of some 180 Rohingya. It's a striking moment because this is the first time that Burmese soldiers have openly confessed to the atrocious acts that were committed in 2017 in Rakhine State.

And how have these confessions come to light?

Two videos have surfaced. In these videos, the soldiers recount the crimes that they say that they committed in 2017. So Miuyen Thanh, in a kind of monotone, he talks about how he participated in the massacre of 30 civilians, women, children, the elderly among them, and helped to bury them in mass graves. Zane Tan said that his battalion wiped out about 20 Muslim villages and that he stood sentry while his superiors raped several. Both say that they were there as part of what the Burmese army calls clearance operations, which razed many Rohingya villages and led to the exodus of about 740,000 Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh.

Where did these videos come from?

Well, they were filmed in July by the Arakan army, which is a rebel militia which has been engaged in fierce fighting with the Burmese army for the last year and a half. And this week, the New York Times and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported their confessions. And the fact that these two soldiers are now in the Hague being questioned by the icc. How they wound up in the Hague is still unclear. According to the Arakan Army's commander, the two soldiers deserted the Tatmadaw, which is the name for the Burmese military, and the Arakan army says that they helped them to escape. Last month, we know that they crossed the border into Bangladesh, where they asked for protection from the Bangladeshi government. And the lawyer involved in another case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice has told me that the ICC prevailed upon the Bangladeshi authorities to have the Two soldiers sent to the ICC in the Hague for further questioning.

But allegations of this sort about these kinds of atrocities have been widespread since the campaign against the Rohingya started. Why is this so significant?

The Burmese government did form a panel to investigate allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine State in 2017, and it did conclude that war crimes had taken place. The Burmese courts have also convicted seven soldiers for killing 10 Rohingyas in that period. But otherwise, the Burmese authorities have failed to properly investigate the accounts of human rights abuses gathered from fleeing Rohingya and have not punished nearly enough. The government maintains implausibly that any harm inflicted on civilians was neither orchestrated from on high nor systematic, but an unfortunate side effect of the army's pursuit of armed Rohingya rebels. This testimony to the contrary from these two Burmese defectors marks a significant strengthening of the evidence against these Burmese generals.

So why has this video come out now then? If the military has sort of closed its ranks and claimed to have taken care of the bad actors, it is.

Suspicious that the Arakan army was involved in producing these videos. The Arakan army has an interest in portraying the Tatmadaw as bad actors. And the Burmese military, which says that they have viewed the videos and analyzed them, says that the claims of these soldiers are false and that their confessions were probably made under duress. With that said, the evidence gathered by the UN suggests that the two soldiers battalions, as well as other units they mention in their statements, did commit atrocities in Rakhine State in 2017.

And so what happens now? You say there's this interplay between the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. What happens with these revelations now?

So the ICC looks at crimes committed by individuals, whereas the icj, the International Court of Justice, looks at crimes committed by countries. Both courts will be very interested in the testimony of these two soldiers. The difficulty with the ICJ case is that the prosecution will need to establish not just that widespread atrocities took place, in other words, that genocide took place, but that there was intent to commit genocide. The men's claims that in different parts of Rakhine State and under different commanders, the they are both instructed to kill all Rohingyas, and they say that their commanders instructed them to literally exterminate the Rohingya. All that points in the direction of genocidal intent, as Michael Becker, who is a lawyer who used to work at the icj, told me.

So in that sense, do you think that these confessions will sort of turn the tide? That perhaps the military responsible will finally be held accountable?

These two soldiers may well be prosecuted and their testimony is going to help the lawyers attempting to bring these generals to justice. Whether the courts are able to actually enforce any conviction is very unclear, but the good thing is that Rohingya activists are hardened by this development. One I spoke to said that he was incredibly emotional when he saw the news and that he hoped that this would lend a sense of urgency and momentum to efforts to bring these guys to justice.

Charlie, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

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The State Department is America's oldest federal agency, founded in 1879, but in recent years its budgets have been cut and its diplomats denigrated by the President. The number of new applicants has slumped under your watch. The United States has faced setback after setback on the world stage, ceding leverage and influence to our stated adversaries. The current Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, faced difficult questions in July from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This is your opportunity to defend your stunningly ill conceived requests to slash the budget of our foreign policy instruments. Senior committee member Bob Menendez said State should be well funded and more effective. And in the face of a global pandemic, when our scientists, our technology and our diplomats should be leading the global response, we have instead taken a backseat and are witnessing the collapse of leadership both home and abroad. Mr. Pompeo defended his record, saying that on his watch the department had taken a hard line on foreign policy challenges, notably those posed by Iran and China.

We see the Chinese Communist Party also for what it is, the central threat of our times.

Our vigorous diplomacy has helped lead an.

International awakening to the threat of the ccp. But both at home and abroad, many are unconvinced that the world's most influential diplomatic Core is in good health.

There's a growing number of people who are saying that the State Department really is in a state of crisis.

Daniel Franklin is our executive and diplomatic editor.

There are experienced diplomats who say that this is the worst that they can remember for a generation. There are people from both parties who say that the State Department is not fit for the demands of 21st century diplomacy, which are only going to become more complicated, more demanding, as America faces a a more contested diplomatic landscape in future.

And so what are the effects of an out of date or a debilitated State Department?

Well, first of all, you risk losing influence in the world at a time when other powers are being active, at times very aggressive. And that's certainly the case of China. You know, China has now overtaken the United States, at least by one measure. And the number of missions that it has around the world we've seen with COVID 19. There are global problems that arise where America has in the past taken a lead, and this time round it's been found wanting. And that's the sort of area where diplomatic firepower can make a lot of difference.

But this administration in particular doesn't have a lot of time, it seems, for the careful business of diplomacy.

I think this administration has tended to view diplomacy as a transactional affair. There is a suspicion of the State Department. President Trump has referred to it publicly as the deep State Department, implying that its professional diplomats are out to undermine his policies. And often those professional diplomats feel undermined by their own administration and sometimes actually attacked by it. If you look at the appointment of ambassadors, America has always had a rather peculiar mix of career diplomats and political appointees. Most countries have overwhelmingly career diplomats. And under the Trump administration, that's been taken to a rather extreme level with a much higher share of political appointees than career diplomats. That's dispiriting, demoralizing for career diplomats. And it's not only the ambassador level, it's the senior appointments back in Washington, which are now dominated by political appointees.

And under Mr. Trump, there's been more than one secretary of state. I mean, how have they reflected his sort of disregard for the entire enterprise?

Well, I think his first secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who was a former CEO of ExxonMobil, was really a disaster. I think Mr. Trump himself was very quickly not happy with him, but he instituted a hiring freeze, and there was a very rapid deterioration of the staffing situation in the State Department. One experienced observer said to me that he didn't think it was possible that the secretary of State could do so much damage in the space of one year. Now, since then, Mike Pompeo has brought energy back. He lifted the hiring freeze, and he's certainly been forceful on a number of policy fronts. But there are still many critics who worry that he doesn't really defend the diplomats in his department when they're attacked by the president. He doesn't stand up for them. And there's a question about how strongly he defends the department across the board, including its budget and the detailed staffing support that needs to rebuild a really capable State Department for the future.

And to your mind, did the problems at the State Department start with the Trump administration, or are they more long standing?

These problems certainly didn't begin with the Trump administration. The preeminence of the State Department has been diminished by the multiplication of other agencies that have presence abroad, and particularly I think, the growing importance of America's military posture and the dependence for America's sway in the world on military power. It got dramatically worse under the Trump administration. Even people from the military side of things say it's got out of balance.

So what do you think needs to change?

The State Department needs a lot of reforms. Clearly, the tone from the top is important. How committed the administration itself seems to be to having a diplomatic service that functions effectively. It probably needs more money. It probably needs more diplomats. But then I think the management of the State Department needs to have a good hard look at the career structure. The career structure for diplomats is very outdated. It relies on the idea that you're going to have a 30 or so year career, that you'll wait for many years before you get a senior role. It doesn't really allow you to spend much time out for training. And the department also has a dismal record on diversity. There are only a handful of African American and Hispanic ambassadors for individual example.

And what's the effect, you think of the outside influence you mention of the military over policy?

It's always going to be the case that America will want and need a very strong military force as part of its foreign policy posture. But there's a trade off between military force and diplomacy. Jim Mattis, former secretary of defense, told Congress that if you don't fully fund the State Department, you're going to have to pay for me to have more ammunition. So it's very clear that diplomacy and military strength are part of a mix of foreign policy. And if you don't have proper and effective diplomacy, then you are inevitably going to rely more on the military side of things. And that's why some people think that America has got over militarized and needs to reinvest in the efficiency of its diplomacy.

Once again, thanks very much for joining us.

Daniel thank you, Jason.

For a lot more analysis like this, subscribe to the Economist. To find the best introductory offer wherever you are, just go to economist.com intelligenceoffer. There's a proverb attributed to Confucius that suggests at 30, one must stand firm in China. The expectations for those entering their fourth decade have long been a steady job, a solid marriage and proud parenthood. But a new television show paints a different picture about what 30 something life for women might look like.

So nothing but 30 is about three women living in Shanghai whose lives are not what they should be at age 30.

Roseanne Lake writes about China for the Economist.

One is married, one is not, and one is sort of, well, in between a marriage. From a Chinese societal perspective, they're just not doing what they should be. And from the show's perspective, they are. This is a show that sort of celebrates 30 as just another birthday and not this very sort of harsh Confucian idea.

And so how does the show get that idea across?

So the show conveys this idea right from the opening scene, actually. So you see one of the characters buying breakfast at the same stall, getting the same crowded train to work as she's going through these very monotonous actions. You hear her say, shanghai makes me feel like I'm a pac man who needs to eat unstoppably in order to survive. And that's not a really unrealistic view. I mean, she's a sales manager at a luxury store. She works with a lot of very demanding clients. And she's very xin ku, as they would say in China. She's very hardworking. That's really what her life is. And then you have a second character who's completely different. She has a beautiful son who she's tenderly waking up, she's making breakfast for her husband. And you know, she's the type of wife who makes heart shaped eggs and who paints smiley faces on breakfast buns, but it says my home is a battlefield. She's battling getting her son into a top kindergarten and keeping her husband on track at work. And then you have the last character who has very sort of monotonous office job and the husband is kind of grumpy. He doesn't really pay much attention to her. And she sums this up very effectively when she says, you know, I have a cat, my husband has fish. And this reflects the dynamic of their relationship not entirely on the same page.

And so do you think the show is accurate in sort of casting the advice about 30 as old fashioned and not capturing real life in this century?

I really do. The show really does a good job of conveying a very convincing portrait of what they face with regards to their careers, with their relationships, even health. Right. Fertility comes up as a question with one of the characters. You go into a Chinese hospital and you see the cues and you understand that in order to get an appointment at an earlier date, you need to pay a bribe. And one of the other very strong elements in the show that I find to be very realistic is that of parents, the role of parents. Parents are the main perpetrators who really insist on this number 30 as such an important time in one's life. And you really feel their force, especially the character whose parents live in another city. They really want her to come home. And even, you know, in the case of one of the characters who is considering a divorce or does get divorced, she doesn't admit this to her parents. These things, this sort of, you know, walking on eggshells and trying to be reverent to your parents, but also being slightly irreverent because you're trying to sort of honor your own wishes.

And so how's it been received in China?

The show's only been out since July and the response has been overwhelming. On Weibo, which is basically China's version of Twitter, the show's hashtag has been viewed more than 26 billion times and it has sparked a lot of social debate online. There have been lots of heated discussions about marriage and infidelity.

And why do you think that's. That's happened that's come together now?

Well, we've seen this pass, Shadai, the, the. The Xi era of television that really celebrates female independence and strong willed characters that shatter the archetypes of good wife, good mother, and good daughter. China's just having this moment, you know, as a result of many different things. A lot of these women are the product of the one child policy. Right. They're only daughters and, and they grew up kind of as. Right. Their parents, for lack of any other heirs, gave them everything they had. Family, businesses, real estate, unprecedented access to education. So these are women who have a lot going for them. They really have the will to sort of make a name for themselves or just do things differently. Right. 30 in any culture is a milestone, but it was a very sort of loaded one in China. And I think the show is all about sort of turning it from an age of obligations and compromises to just another birthday. And it takes 43 episodes. Episodes to do all of this. This is not a small commitment for those who are considering watching the show, but, you know, it takes a while to undo two millennia of heavily rooted cultural norms.

Roseanne, thanks very much for joining us.

Jason, thanks very much for.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here tomorrow.